Charles Grodin - How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am

Copyright 2009 by Charles Grodin

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Grateful acknowledgment is given to Carson Entertainment for permission to reproduce letters sent to Charles Grodin by Johnny Carson.

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First eBook Edition: April 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-55464-0

To all of us who are finding life a lot harder than we had in mind

This book is the result of an effort to write about the events that informed my actions and values. It covers the 1940s to the present. I figure if I try to understand myself better, it may help me better understand others. Well maybe not, but it cant hurt.

M y first memory of something having a powerful, lasting effect on me came when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

I was a six-year-old growing up in Pittsburgh. I asked my brother, Jack, who was twelve, if the Japanese would be coming to Pittsburgh. He said, Yes, they will. I asked, Well they wont be coming to our house, will they? He said, Yes, they will. I said, Well Im going down to the basement. They wont come down there, will they? He said, Yes, they will.

Amazingly, thats the only tense moment Ive ever had with my brother. Decades later, he did once give me a look when I commented on his orange golf pants.

I met my lifelong friend Herb Caplan when we were four years old. We had moved into a small house with a wall connecting to another small house, which had a wall connecting to another small house. Herb and I shared a wall. When we were around ten, we would pound on it to get the others attention and yell through it, mostly saying, Ill meet you outside in five minutes. Amazingly, our parents didnt complain, or more likely they werent home.

Herb always has been and remains today one of my closest friends and one of the wisest. On my birthday, he said, Its only a number, and if you read the obituaries you easily see what matters is not the number of your years but the state of your health. Recently, he said to a mutual friend who was complaining about this ache or that pain, You can make yourself old. In other words, we can choose different ways to see things. Choose happy or at least positive thoughts. That may seem obvious, but how many of us do that?

Herb and I have had a lot of laughs over the years, but the best one he gave me recently. Its a true story.

When Herbs father, Larry Caplan, was in his eighties, Herb would accompany him into the doctors examining room. The doctor once asked his dad, Mr. Caplan, are you afraid of death? Mr. Caplan said, No, but Id like to know where Im going to die. When the doctor asked why that was important, Mr. Caplan said, Then I wont go there.

My sixth through tenth years coincided with World War II. The headlines in the papers (there was no television then) were all about the Allied forces and the Axis forces. I knew the Allied forces were us and Great Britain and some other countries, and the Axis forces, the bad guys, were Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Although it wasnt really true, I somehow thought our Allied forces were doing great from the beginning. I had no doubt about the outcome. My inherent optimism that has served me so well through life showed itself very early.

In the years since the war, Ive only encountered the Japanese in Japanese restaurants. Theyre always extraordinarily nice, although I get a little nervous when they do their hibachi thing and start flipping those knives around, but I would be nervous if anyone started flipping a knife around.

In the forties, the president was always President Roosevelt, the heavyweight champion of the world was Joe Louis, and the New York Yankees were the baseball champions. Those were the constants.

One day in 1945, when I was ten, I was walking home from Hebrew school and heard a radio on someones porch on Mellon Street where my fathers parents lived (as did Gene Kellys family). A voice on the radio said that President Roosevelt had died. It was my first visceral experience that there were no constants. Everything has an expiration date.

Around the same time, a young friend of mine, Jerome Wesoky, was roller-skating down a hill at the corner of my street and hit a streetcar that had stopped to pick up passengers. He went under it. The conductor, not knowing, started up and the trolley went over Jerome, killing him.

Mr. Schwartz, who ran the grocery store at the corner, stood between the crane lifting the streetcar off Jerome and us kids who went to see what was going on. Thankfully, he made us turn our backs. Again I learned there are no constants. At ten, that was abundantly clear.

Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, right around that time I was impeached as president by the teacher of my fifth-grade class. She said it was because I talked incessantly. I find that hard to believe, but thats what she said, so its probably true. I mean, why would someone make that up about a ten-year-old president? Besides, Im perfectly capable of talking incessantly now, so Im not a good witness for myself.

That was the first time I was removed, fired, kicked outwhatever you want to call it. Not that much later I got kicked out of Hebrew school for asking, I have to assume too many times, what the Hebrew words we were being asked to read on the blackboard meant. I honestly cant imagine I was rude, but looking back, Id say my persistence in asking was considered rude by the rabbi. I always saw persistence simply as persistence, especially if its done with respect, which I promise you is always how I persist. At least, thats my perception.

Getting kicked out of Hebrew school turned out to be a most fortunate experience, as it resulted in me studying with the father of my best friend, Raymond Kaplan. Rabbi Morris Kaplan was the only teacher I encountered in grammar school, high school, college, or acting class of whom I can say, Now, thats a teacher! At least, the only one Id give an A.

Rabbi Kaplan wove spellbinding tales from the Old Testament. I remember walking down the street alone with him when I was about eleven. It was 1946. I asked him if we can dream when we die. He said, kindly, No, sonny boy. That hit hard.

Years later, when I visited him in Los Angeles where he had become the head of the league of rabbis, I told him I had married a gentile girl. He put his head in his hands and sobbed. When he regained his composure, he said, Children of parents who are Jewish and another religion become the biggest anti-Semites.

My daughter, Marion, considers herself Jewish even though the tradition is that a child takes the mothers religion. Marion also has as big a heart as anyone Ive ever known. If a loved one is dying, I cant handle being there, which I see as a major flaw. I come only if asked. Marion, without being asked, crawls into bed beside the person.

So I had been impeached as president at ten and kicked out of Hebrew school at eleven. By the time I reached high school and our economics teacher, Mr. Kennedy, kicked me out of class, I was used to being kicked out. Again, it was for the same rap, asking too many questions or the same question too many times. I got high grades, and I always assumed that if I didnt understand something, some of the other kids wouldnt, either, but wouldnt say anything, so I jumped into the breach and was again kicked out. I learned early on that if there was a breach that needed jumping into and no one jumped, I would.