These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Part 2

to expect. However, early in our talk, Letterman discussed his college years in the nineteen sixties and now once the draft was changed, Letterman avoided going off to Vietnam. In those days, you get the student deferment, and Balsa was prinsipally a teacher's college in those days, and so they wanted teachers. He was chock full of guys who wanted

that student deferment and also the teaching deferment. I was not studying teaching, so the minute I graduated was reclassified one A went for my pre draft physical in April and they said, okay, we'll call you. And then in the meantime before I was called, Nixon announced the National Lottery they were going to end the draft. They were

trying to step down the Vietnamese War. My birthday was three forty two or something like that, at A three undred fifty six, So that meant even though I was one A and had my pre induction physical and was ready to go, it was over for me. At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was. I felt guilty because I had friends who had gone, and I had friends who had been in the Marine Corps, and I just felt like, well, why met these guys went, Why shouldn't I go? And then it dawned on me pretty quickly.

I had been among the really really lucky. Yeah, what was the political landscape like at Ballston when you went there? Well, it was just starting to Uh. I used to make jokes that they would have student protests, but it was to get the cafeteria cooks to wear hairnets. But it was. It was creeping in. It was not a hot bed. It was not Madison, Wisconsin. It was Muncie, Indiana. But it was starting and there were sit ins and demonstrations, and you know, Bobby Kennedy had spoken on campus, so

it was starting, but I wouldn't say it was. It wasn't quite lit up the way it might have been in other regions. You mentioned booth announcers, and I remember I did a YouTube search. I wanted to find this guy that was literally the voice of my childhood w r Andy come on and say, you know, uh next on Million Dollar Movie, Barbara stan mctells Gary Cooper where he Can Go? And Ball of Fire and he just said this voice, it was just it just haunted me. Well,

that's interesting. You mentioned that guy I had the little kid voice from Indiana. I wasn't that guy, but I still had to do the job. And I can't impress upon you enough how tedious it is to sit there for eight hours watching programming and logging everything that happens. If you lose audio, you have to log that. If you lose video, you have to log that. You have to log sign on, sign off, every commercial, every station break.

And at first I was scared, silly, but then, like everything else, you get accustomed to it and you become blase. And so I would just start wandering the building. You know, it was so embarrassing. They would will the booth announcer please report to the announced booth, and oh my god, I've missed the so and so. The main announcer was a guy named Rob Stone. Tremendous voice and hopeless alcoholic, I mean a real alcoholic, go hand in hand, yeah,

kind of. Certainly in those days it was not uncommon. He would come in and he would bring a point with him. And so in the spirit of this, we who were working the sign off shift, we would always send somebody out for beer, and we would be at the station late at night signing off, and myself and the director and whomever else was there, we'd be drinking beer. Oh my, with this fun. In those days, you would do a five minute new summary before sign off nightcap news,

and then you would do the the broadcast statement. You'd read that over the slide of the station, and then they would go to the national anthem with the waving flag. One night, a guy in the props department said, I can reconstruct exactly the station is pictured on the slide. We can make it blow up. So as you're as you're reading the thank you and good night and why not tune in w LW overnight and blah blah this and so until tomorrow, good night and good luck, I

have the thing come home. And so we did. Oh god, we were proud of ourselves. You know, we really thought we had done something. Geez. Nobody ever said anything. No, it was bizarre. Nobody got fired. Nobody asked a question about it. You know. It was this cult of four or five guys who had pulled this off, and we just thought, well, this is one. It was fun, but

too you wanted but no, nobody nobody said anything. But but what's interesting is from school and then doing the job and so forth in the booth thing the comedy gland is secreting through the entire time. What are you doing for that? Meaning? Other than blowing up the studio and in the sign off or yes, I was looking for any outlet, and it came for me doing the weather.

I knew nothing about whether you'd go downstairs and I'd have the A P machine and the map would come over, the national map, and you would go to the big magnetic board in the studio and you put the low system, and you put the high system, and you put the occluded front, and you put the rain showers, and so it told you everything any time at all that I could monkey with that, I was very happy. I can

remember two episodes. One I was had forecast sunny and dryet and we we go off the air and blah blah, and I go outside this this is horrible thundershower. The rain is coming down in sheets, and I was just twenty ft away, just oblivious of this. This uh dangerous is coming through this one of these violent Midwestern summer thunderstorms coming attacking the station. I got to be well known because this Sunday Night show was on after the ABC Sunday Night Movie, and in those days that was

big programming. Yeah, we got a bunch of complaints. And this was when people were wearing a bell bottom pants. I don't think he could buy regular pants. Got a lot of calls about he's either not wearing underpants or he needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself. Do you want to clear that up now? Were you wearing a pan? Of course I was where it was Indianapolis. We were not talked to go out without our It's whatever problem was perceived was not mine, I assure you.

And then where do you go from there in terms of underpants, and well, if you wish. I got tired of sitting in the booth and tired of working weekends. And also they didn't. They didn't want me there. They would keep bringing in auditions for my job. That really hurt my feelings, but I couldn't argue with them because

I didn't know what I was doing. But the cumulative effect of being on TV a lot there, we get this memo once from the search department and of all of the people, the the anchor team and whomever else, I had the highest queue rating of anybody there, and it was only by accident, really, So I started looking for a job, couldn't get hired out of the market. Some people I knew were coming in to start up a talk radio station, so I went to work at the new talk radio station in that format. It was

news talks for us w NTS. When I resigned to quit, give my notice to the general manage, the guys ad and it chilled me at the time. He said, really, you're leaving this TV station to go work for a brand new radio station. And I said yeah, and he said you will never be heard of again. So I went to the station, worked there for a year, realized that I had to make a move. Nobody would would listen.

It was a daytime station. This was tremendous. They had a daytime license, which meant the radio station come on when the sun came up and went off when the sun went down. Literally. Yeah. And then the winter we were off at three in the afternoon. I had the midday shift, and I come in at noon and two hours later I'd be going home. It was it was afternoon. And then in the summer. Conversely, you were on the

like nine thirty or ten. It was awful. It was Watergate, and and people assumed, well, the guy's got a talk show on the radio, but he knows everything there is to know about Watergate, and I knew nothing, and people wouldn't call in, and I'd have to read endless pages of wire copy. I remember reading it sorry about Gordon strachan str A c h A N. His name kept I'm going up a special counsel, so and so Gordon

Stratch and adviser of the White House, Gordon Stratch. And finally the phones light up and I, thank god, did I say yes, He says, it's not Stratching, it's Strang You're mispronouncing the guy's name. I said, okay, thanks you everything, no click buzz, So there you go. Were you ambitious during this time? Did you have an ambition. Yeah, I wanted to. I really thought, Um, I really thought I could write half hours situation comedies. I thought I could.

What did you watch one? In my childhood it was completely different. It would have been stuff like Saturday Morning Nonsense. Then as I grew older, you get Mayberry, the Andy Griffs Show, Ozzie and Harriet, Nelson and Nelson's and that kind of stuff. And then later on and in those days, it was all the Mary Tyler More things, the Bob Newhart Show, on the Mary Tyler More Show. And I really thought, oh, I can write one of those Mary Tyler Moore shows. And it turned out I couldn't. As

you know, there's a template for writing those things. They used the template because it's successful. And if you don't know the template and you think you can make a or version of it, it's a very foreign object to them. To you, you think, look, I've improved on the template, but they don't want that. They want something to Yes, that's right. I mean we're talking about Mary Tyler Moore. That's pretty good stuff. Smart and you're in l A at that time. No, I'm still in Indianapolis, and I

would be sending scripts and looking for an agent. Finally a guy said, yeah, if you come to Los Angeles, he said, I'll be your agent. So with that encouragement, I just left. And I don't know about you, but you know your friends say, okay, here you can meet with so and so, and and you can meet mel Blank's son, you can meet with him and and I know this one, and I know that one, and so you go out there with high hopes. I guess it's like the Pioneers and the kind of Stoga wagon and

they run out of beans. You know, they're in Salt Lake and they got nothing need. So within the first week you run through all of your appointments and then you've got nothing. Then your Shanghai. That's right on the show was there in l A. Remember when I went to l A. I did a soap opera at thirty Rock. The show is about to go off the air and on every forget this guy that was the producer. Here, we're in the hallway and they asked me to extend my contract for a few months, and he says that

line to me. He says, what do you think you're gonna do? Go out the Hollywood, become a star in the movies. I'm walking down the hollies going do listen to me? Come back here? You you don't walk away from me? And I walk away from the guy and I go to l A. Now, were you ever haunted by that? Did you? Honestly? Did you? Did you? Because in my case, I thought the guy was. I said, oh, yeah, I haven't considered that. Of course you do. Did you

ever think you were going to be? I mean, I don't want to get you know, crass about it, but you live a very very good life. You've been an enormously successful man. Did you ever dream you would be as successful as you are? Never? No, And I'll tell you the same for you, same for most people in this uh in show business. You're just lucky enough to get to do exactly what you want to do all

your life. So that's the success, you know. I always thought there was some commission that was going to come to my door of my apartment I was living in and West Hollywood, and there were not. They're going where the Motion Picture Acting Commission? And we've got the reports, Mr Bob. We're gonna take it to the airport. By the way back to me. I think you're not gonna get into. I know the origin of this is is your personal fear, But I think that commission is not

a bad idea long overdue, honest to God. Can we get that up and on its feet? Can we get a bill? I remember there was a guy, a writer for the Old Tonight Show, somebody calling his His listing in the white pages was it's Marty Cohen. It was not Marty Cohon, Marty Cohen, president of show Business. Just oh that's lovely. So were you? Were you doing stand up every in Indiana? Uh? No, never did. In fact, one of the things that I didn't like doing was

when I was at the radio station. Part of the deal was we just sold a thing to Kroger grocery stores. But part of the deal is we want you to go out there and m see the song songs. And I hated it, and I finally told the guys that I can't do this. So one of my big built in fears was getting up in front of people that I didn't know and trying to, you know, hold their attention. Let alone be funny, But for me, the road map to pursue was handed to you via Johnny Carson and

The Tonight Show. They would have comics on it would be David Brenner and they would say, and there will be appearing at the Comedy Store. And it seemed to be that the connection between the Comedy Store and the Tonight Show was pretty close. So even though I mind that facility that particularly, it was the farm system for the Comedy Store, and great guys were coming out and

getting on and Steve Landisberg and on and on. I say on and on because I can't remember the name, so I just yeah, even though I wanted to be a writer, because I didn't have the courage to tell my family and friends that what I really want to do is, you know, somehow get famous and beyond TV. So when when I went out there the first monday I was in California when I moved in, I wrote down some stuff and went to the Comedy Store and

got on stage. It was it was awful. I've never been in a darkened room with the spotlight and it was just like a train coming at me. So I did my little five minutes from route left and then the owner of the place, yeah, you should come back and do some more. So I thought, are you kidding me? And she's no, you can mc so I came back and I was the fantastic Yeah, Derek. So that was nine seventy eight. Three years later I was on the Tonight Show. That worked so much better than it should have.

I think it must be harder now, Beau wasn't three years of just work in that room and work in the mic and working stand up. But it was. I mean it was fun because every night you go there and you were hanging around guys Jay Leno and Robin Williams and George Miller and Tom Greson and Jeff Altman and anybody now who's you're aware of you would see every night. And it was great fun. I mean, my god, it was great fun. Didn't make any difference what you

did during the day. You knew that when it got dark, you'd be on Sunset Boulevard. The place would be packed. And in those days, the only room she had was this tiny, little original room and it was next door to U Art Labelle's. He would have a fifties dance party in the next room on the weekends and you would get a lot of gang guys going to Art Label's. Guys non U barrio. Um is that all right? Yeah?

Low Riders. Yeah, and uh, one night, a friend of mine, Johnny Dark, is on stage and a guy comes up and he's got a gun and he's standing next to Johnny while Johnny is doing his little singing impressions of whomever, and and he had to quietly, you know, talk his way out of the guy using the gun. And it was exciting. Sivan Richard Pryor would come in, and Freddie Prince would come in, So you say, yeah, night after night. But still in all, how could that not be fun?

So did Carson find you there? Well, they had a guy, you know, they had a team of guys when I was there that would come in. Uh. And in the meantime, I got on this Mary Tyler Moore show, uh to write and perform and that was it was me and Michael Keaton, Jim Hampton and Dick Shawn and Susy Kurtz and uh, Julie con Judy con Judy con thank you very much. So from that show, uh, they said, oh, well we'll put you on because you're on that show. You can come out and do stand up and then

you go sit down and talk to Johnny. And without that you never know what the formula is. You could be on nine times and never get to sit on with Johnny. You could be on for six years and every or you could be bumped forty times never But because of this, Oh and he's appearing on the so and so Show, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I got to sit down with Johnny and and that was again, that was craziness. That was That was another one of those you know what. Oh yeah, it's such a jolt.

The material is so committed. You don't have to think about anything, You just have to start talking and it all comes out. The adrenaline takes days to burn out of you. Holy God, you're sitting next to Johnny Carson. I mean, you just can't believe it. I mean to me, and I think most guys my age who were out there doing that one. The fact that it worked. You know, really, I drove in a pickup truck with my wife to l A and three years later I'm sitting next to

Johnny Carson. That's not supposed to happen, you know, it's just not supposed to happen, but it did. Do you think that Carson was someone who do you think he saw himself? And you do you think he saw the midwestern boy. I don't know, Jean and you, I don't know. I mean, it was so easy for other people to make that comparison. Uh, and that seemed to be the formula. But I don't I don't know if he felt that way or not. Um, I don't. I can't answer that.

And then what happened after that, Well, your life changed immediately. Suddenly you weren't just a guy who was at the comedy store. You were the guy that had been on with Carson. And then I was on I think two or three more times, and then I started hosting the show, and again that was another you know, you just feel like it's like it's like winning the World Series or your rookie season. What's the gap of time between when you first sat down with him when you started hosting.

The first time I was on was November of seventy eight, and I think I hosted. Uh. It was Monday night opposite the Academy Awards. It was the Good Spring, Yeah, in April, I have in April of March April, yeah, and it was I was frozen. I was as frozen as I can remember. Peter Losally coming up to me during the commercial break and he said, you've got to loosen up. You've got to loosen up. Thanks that tip page.

I remember the first night I was saw on the Tonight Show and I'm I'm telling you, four guys at the comedy store, this was it. This was like people lining up to squeeze through a funnel, you know. This was it the Tonight Show. Fighting in competition and backstabbing in bad mouthing to get to the Tonight Show. It is gonna make or break you if if you don't

do well, you'll never be heard of again. There's there's no such thing as a guy bombings first time on the Tonight Show and then having a delightful career that just doesn't happen. You're gone. So there's a lot of pressures. So I am getting ready to go out there just behind the curtain. And my manager at the time, Buddy Mora, who was with Jack Rollins and uh Charles Joffey. They handled Robin Williams and Woody Allen and Dick Cabint and some other guys. So that was a big deal for

me to be with these people. And Buddy and I nice enough guy, but we never I never saw Ey'd eye on much. And I think a lot of it was my immaturity about show business or just ignorance. Not immaturity. I you know, I had no time to be immature. I was ignorant. So we're standing there and Johnny saying, our next guest as a young blah blah blah blah, and Buddy says to me, and any Buddy always whispered. Everything was a whisper it. But he says, Robin got popeye,

and I said, what are you talking about? His final words to me, as I'm going on the tonight show from the first time, telling me about a booking for one of his other clients, you know, And I just never got over that. My thanks to David Letterman for giving me some of his valuable time. Some talk show guests arrived with a predetermined almost Arthur Murray asked pattern of stories and anecdotes, and many shows in fact encourage

that on. Here's the thing. Some of my guests showed up to have a genuine conversation and during that time discussed very personal, even raw moments in their careers and lives. Such was the case with Audre McDonald, who spoke movingly about the difficulties she found as an artist studying and

then launching her career in New York. This was my third year and it had been just yet another year of floundering and doing poorly in all my classes, and teachers just saying, you know, you've got to get give over to your operatic sound, and me not wanting to, not knowing what that was. Um. And when I would get close to an operatic sound, I'd say, I don't want to sound like that. So I felt like I was just being pushed and they were doing their job rightfully.

So this is like, this is your Juilliard to study. This is what you're gonna do to push me into a place that just wasn't me artistically. So that coupled with being one by yourself in New York and being treated poorly by um whatever his name was, what's his name? I were so good to say that no, no, no, no, no, he's he's fine. He's a great guy now, but in any rate, um. So all of that combined with me being sort of like the great hope from my my

hometown too. You know, Ordre is gonna make it if anybody's gonna make it on Broadway it's gonna be Audre. I the boy was the catalyst. That's sort of like sort of broke that. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. But it was three years of I'm in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. I'm failing miserably, but I'm here in Disneyland where I'm supposed to be, where I said I wanted to be. So I I I slit my wrists one night. What happened? And you

write about this? Have you written about this? I haven't. I guess I should. I speak about it all the time, but maybe one day I'll write about it. And found you. Um. I slit my wrists and then realized what I had done and called the student affairs director who I had become close with, and said, I helped me. Someone came and helped you, and they helped me, and they took me to a mental hospital. Um. It's interesting this mental

hospital still there. Um Gracie Square Hospital. It's next door to um my uh my O B G y N who delivered my six month old. Uh what a circuit. So I almost didn't make it, and now I made it and I had to pass it. You know, every week to go to my O. B. G. Y N appointment, I had to pass Gracie Square Hospital and every time I passed it, there was a part of me just you know, waddling down the street. Pregnatives can be some

twenty nine years later, I would, um, I would. I felt such relief and joy and you know, a sense of yes, I I get I get the big picture. Now, one month in the school year was that that that happened. It was January or February, So it's at the midpoint. Let's say, and you take off oficusly and you come back when you come back the following fall, you don't.

I came back, um the following fall for a little bit, and then I got an opportunity to audition for something that ended up being the Secret Garden actually, and I asked the you know, administration office and my the dean, what I should do, and they said, you know, go do that. It's okay, take the time off to go do that. It seems like that's where you want to be. So and they they probably didn't want to disappoint you at that point. At that point, you want to go,

sing on, bro, go do it. Yeah, we don't ever want to get your way. You know. The thing is there was actually a lot, not a lot, but they had a special arrangement with Gracie Square Hospital. They were a couple of other Juilliard students there that I had wondered what had happened to I was there. I was at the hospital for I mean Gray Square, I think is private hospital. I was there for a month. Um. They evaluated me and said, you you're not going anytime soon? Um,

And did that change you? I was so heavily medicated. They I was heavily medicated. And when you say that, it's so compelling to me because when I see you, I think of you. I think of you like you know, you're so strong your personality and perform I view you as a person that's going to go. I'm going back into the burning building to save the baby. Well that is me now, But I think maybe that experience helped make me that now. I mean, look, I'm still a met.

I mean everybody's a mess, always a mess. I you know, and I what I understood at going on, Yeah, and I realized, you know, I'm someone who suffers from depression. And but I've learned in the years a how to deal with it, be to find, you know, find my joy and see you to realize that, like alcoholism, it's something that you wake up every day and you say, yeah, that's still something that I have to deal with, as

opposed to saying oh I'm just not depressed anymore. Just but to learn how to cope with that and my my art gives me a lot of joy and keeps me, keeps me strong. So what's the first job you do? This is a tired question, but I can't help back asking upposedly something like you, what's the first job when you do? When you sit there and go, I got this. I think I got this, Like I'm over the no no meaning you know that the sky is the limit

for you. You're out there and you're doing it and you're connecting to that material you know, and you go, I think I really really have a shot at my dream coming true. Here it was Sally Murphy and I she was she was Julie Jordan, and I played Carrie Pippridge.

And who was the guy Michael Hayden was Yes, yes, yes, Nicker Lincoln Center, which is also crazy for me to then open in in Carousel at Lincoln Center, where at Vivian Momont Theater where you can look up and I can see the school that I, you know, had a hard time in and and I remember standing in those in those windows at Juniyard, looking at Vivian Beaumont, seeing Patti Lapone performing there, and going why am I not doing that? And then how do you feel? Um like

luckier survivor in the world. I mean, and I felt a sense of gratitude, a sense of relief, and a sense of Okay, I get it, I now get that I was on my paths you greet. That was certainly one of the most moving conversations I've had during my run on Here's the Thing, Thank you, Ordre McDonald. Some artists have come on my show, and although I am a fan and thrilled to meet them, there aren't necessarily

any surprises. There were, however, some wonderful surprises. When I sat down with Carly Simon, one of the greatest singer songwriters in history. Carly revealed her wide ranging knowledge of all types of music and music history, and also identified the man who may be the most important man in her life. And no it's not who you think. I met Jake at summer Camp. We were both counselors at Indian Hill Camp in the Berkshires, and Jake was the

swimming counselor and he also taught literature. These were very arty kids, and I was the guitar teacher. All all the kids met me for the first time. They had known each other from them before. Jake wasn't there yet because he had hepatitis and was in the hospital. But they said, oh wait till you meet Jake, you'll be You'll just fall in love with each other or be

friends for the rest of your life. I don't think anybody had ever ever quite introduced me to somebody before I actually met them with those terms that they would be lifelong friends. And the day that he got there,

they prepared to cook out. The campers did, and they said, now we want you to come down to the cookout, and Jake will come down to the cookout, and you'll stand opposite each other, but with with your backs to each other, and at the kind of three, you'll turn toward each other and light and you'll see what we mean about that, your two halves of one person. And

so it was one to three. We turned across this fire which was raging between us and we both smiled and we recognized each other in ourselves and vice versa, and it was quite amazing. And Jake just dropped me off here today. What was it about him? Was he writing songs? And was he he was a musician and into songwriting, And no, Jake was at that point he

had just graduated from Harvard. He was the editor of The Crimson and he went in he was writing for Newsweek magazine, he was writing for Talk of the Town, and he was he was the young writer on the scene. He was the young prose writer on the scene when we started writing songs together. He then also got into to working with Terence Malock and he worked on Days of Heaven and on bad Lands, and he wrote King of Marvin Gardens with Jack with Jack Nicholson in that.

And so he's he's a man of all words, most of them quite quite funny. He's an unusual beyond journalism and screenwriting. He was a lyrict as he was writing lyrics. Well, he had never written lyrics before. But I had this melody da da da da Da Da Da Da da da and the whole song because I've written that for an NBC special called Who Killed eerie. That was the

background music for that. So when I was going to make this demo, I couldn't get lyrics for it, because if I write a melody first, I can't seem to find lyrics to it. It's got to be the other way around. I write lyrics first. And so I had this melody, and Jake was by then my best friend, and I said, do you want to try to write a lyric? So I gave him on a little cassette. I gave him that melody and he came back a day or two later with with a full lyric, except

for one verse, which we edited out. My friends from college, they're all they have their houses and there they have their silent news tea for saying readin and hate them for the things. They hate themselves, Oh what they and yet they drink they laugh. Close the wound hid the lyrics because there's very pungent lyrics in that song. They hate themselves for what they are. Who is he talking about? Well, his girlfriend was just about to move in with him.

Jake and I lived apart, lived one block away from each other, but we shared each other's lives and our friends were each other's friends. And I met most of the people that I know today through through Jake or vice versa. So, his girlfriend Rickie was just about to move in with him, and he realized that she was going to be moving into his rooms. And that's an invasion of territory for certain people, And I mean it

means a whole lot. It means not only are you going to be in my rooms, but you're I'm not going to be able to get you out of my rooms if you're living with me. So, from Jake's point of view, that that song was, you know, are we going to marry? Are we not going to marry? And we had talked a lot about marriage and a lot about the fact that being in love with somebody, living with somebody didn't necessarily indicate that you had to get married, as it had a situation for our years. We're different.

Um what what what? What? What situation of yours? Were you referring the men in your life? Every man that I was that I was with, I felt I had to marry if I was going to sleep with them, or if I was going to have sex with him. In any way, I felt as if I as if I had to marry them and have children yeah, and so times were changing, and this was this was a very different era that Kennedy years were upon us and the hippie doom, the Woodstock era. The times were hugely changing.

I mean, I didn't didn't necessarily have to marry the person that you were living with and raise the family of our own, you and me. Um, that's the way they I've always heard it should be you want to marry me, and then oh, will marry you, but with resignation exactly. And so that's how the song really came

to life. Was about the disillusionment of my parents marriage, which was about walking home at night and tiptoeing by my mother's bedroom and she she calls out, sweet dreams, but I forget how to dream, and my father sitting in the living room with his cigarette cigarette glows in the dark, and so it's it's it's all about the separation of the people who are supposed to be married or supposed to live in one happy house together for really not happy and live being in that house, and

how that affects you when you see them. You wrote a book, and a lot of it includes some of your childhood and your marriage and everything you know. You're both your marriages, and you I think your book only goes up through your first marriage. But the idea being that you know, what do you leave in and what do you leave out? Well, you know, this was very important.

When I first got asked to write my memoir was six and I was and I was called on the phone by Jacqueline Onassis and she said, Carley Carling, you

would make a wonderful writer of a memoir. And so that's how I started, and I wrote about sixty pages at that point, and realizing that I was leaving out the very nucleus of the story, which was about my parents and their marriage and the the thing that happened to their marriage, which was that which was the great divide of having my brother's tutor come to live with us, and he and my mother fell in love, and that was a separate relationship which existed in the same house

that she lived in with my father and us and and all and all of the kids. So trying to leave that out was almost impossible when that formed the very essence of me that I was trying to write about in the first place. Everything was a lie. Everything that I saw as the truth, I was denied the veracity of And so when I said, well, Mom and Dad are still in love, aren't they, to my older sisters that say, yes, they are. They're very much in love. And then I would ask my mother and father, you

know you don't ever kiss? Can I see you kiss? And my father would bend my mother down in a theatrical kind of bogus bogus kiss bous and u. And it looked strange to me. There was something very awfu about it. But I was supposed to believe that they were in love. Perform for you, tend to mollify you well once and then she was off with what was what was her name, Ronnie? Where was Ronnie from? Ronnie was um a teacher or he was going to teaching school at Columbia at the time. He was nineteen and

she was forty two. Where he was from Pittsburgh, Ronnie from Pittsburgh, and they were they were in love for many years. It killed my father a combination of that relationship that she had with Ronnie and the fact of his relationship at Simon and Schuster, where he he started to do things in a in a way that the accountant who they had brought on board in the company, this guy named Leon Schuster didn't want him to do

and said, therefore, my father. At the same time, as as he became sort of sick with grief over his relationship with my mother, he got more and more out of the loop at Simon and Schuster, and they sort of tried to move him up or out of the mainstream with Max and Leon and and that kind of killed him all further. And then he drank too much, too much, he ate too much ice cream and smoked too many cigarettes, and that made him ill. And so it was a perfect storm and he got and he

died at the age of sixty. No sign from people who don't know the Simon and Simon and Schuster was your father. And yes, at the met Max Schuster, his old college friend from Colombia. They met. They were both selling pianos Steinway, I guess at steinwan Son. And they said, let's let's go out to lunch and let's let's go into business together. Oh what shall we do? What about books? And so they made a little sign which they put on the office at the office space that they had rented,

saying Simon and Schuster publisher What books? And the first book that they published was the Crossrood Puzzle Book, which made them a fortune and which started them off with great footing. With good footing, great speed, opportunities galore, and they were the very center of the publishing world. And yes, yes, and your mother where My mother was from Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her mother, she by, was Cuban and came to the

United States on a banana boat. She was Cuban, but she was from Africa, but her grandmother had spent some time in Cuba. I have the whole lineup, or your part black or you part of Cuban or both. I'm black. She's an African Africa, Yes, your maternal grandmother. Yes, and she was African and went to Cuba. That's right, that's right.

And then she was schooled in England, and so she spoke with an English accent, and she was ashamed of what she probably didn't even know she was, but she bleached her skin her whole life, and so she passed as white. But she spoke with an English accent. And we used to always ask her about what her background was, and she would say, when I die, will find nothing but nothing. And I never talked about the past. So

we weren't able to get very much out of mother. Yes, we weren't able to get anything out of her, but she was such a character. Did your mother have a career? My mother did not have an official career. Now, she was a singer, but she and she was a wonderful singer, but she her career was raising her four kids. In your home and your father, from a young age becomes a very successful uh publisher in the name is really

a pianist. In fact, when he when he had a bunch of heart attacks and strokes towards the end of his life and he didn't have his mind and he didn't have the capacity of the full fullness of his mind, he always thought he was going to Carney Hall, when in fact he was just going downtown to dinner with my mother, and he said, Sissy, you forgot to get off at st I'm going to be late. Because he

always thought he was going to be playing it. He didn't always think, but once in a while he had the fantasy that he was going to be playing at Carney Hall. He was a great piano. Classical. Yes, so music in your home is classical music. Santastical on the part of my father and the circle of people coming in and out of your home who were celebrities. And I have two uncles, one on my father's side and one on my mother's side, started jazz magazines, one Downbeat

and the other Metronome. So they were very good friends and they and they had all the drummers and the jazz players in this house that we lived on the eleventh Street, so there was music from from the jazz era, and then my mother always sang the show tunes because this was the great era of of Oklahoma and Carousal and show and Porgy and Bess was actually performed for my mother and father first by George and Ira Gersh when they came over to our house, and my mother

was asked to sing summertime since she had a beautiful soprano voice, for them to see how it would sound in the soprano voice, or to see what it's it's. I don't know exactly what they went over there for, but my mother ended up singing soprano and on summertime, and my father ended up ended up correcting a couple of her notes, and that embarrassed her tremendously, and she always used that as the excuses to why she had

an affair and cuckolded him. No one of them. Yes, that was from my interview with the brilliant, the beguiling Carly Simon. One of the most enjoyable times in my career was when the late Robert Osborne invited me to join him on Turner Classic Movies for the Essentials, a program we ended up doing a few times together. Beyond his abundant knowledge about and passion for movies, Osborne was one of the most elegant and gracious men I've ever met in show business, so it comes as no surprise

that I did him on. Here's the thing, this is Robert Osborne. I grew up in a small town where I went to the movies a lot and fell in love with all these people also fell in love with the movie business. So all I saw were actors on the screen. So I thought, well, that's what I have to be if I want to be a part of the movie business. Nobody then was talking about film editors. There were no film schools talking about directing, you know,

any of that kind of stuff. I decidedn't want to be an actor, and so I was doing Did your parents say about that? That was fine? As long as I got an education. People yeah, they were, they were, They were not. People had said, you know, be practical, get an education and something you can make a living at. But do what you want to do. At least try it, and then if it doesn't work out, move to something else. So I started doing a little theater work in Seattle, and one of the plays I did was a play

called knightmas Fall with Jane Darwell. Jane Darwell and is the lady you would know this who played Henry Fond his mother in the Grapes of Wraps and won the Oscar for it. And she's the one that said, you know, when you finished with this, what are you gonna do when you finish your She came up to Washington to a regional theater. Yes, And so I said, well, I'm going to go to New York and she said, no, you have more of a California. Look, you should come

to California. And she said, you can stay at my house. She had a staff and all of that kind of stuff. They lived down in the valley and she said, you can at least get your feet on the ground there. I'll introduce you to an agent. She said, I think you do very well. So I did Dad with Jane Darwell and her family at her house on Ethel Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. Yes introduced me to an agent with m c A. In those days, if you could really walk and talk at the same time, you

could get a contract of the studio. That first one. He took me to his Fox and they said, we want you to be under contract. So I was there for like six months. And during that period of time, I did a television show which was a Western. That of all, I was doing a little theater group. This is a convoluted story, but I'm going to get to where I'm going. And it was a theater group run

by an actor named Francis Lederer. So I was doing some impros in the class and one of his friends came to it and I was Paul Henry, you know with the two cigarettes with Navis. So Paul Henriid was saying, well, I'm directing a western, got a part coming up. I think you'd be right for I want you to come over and read for it next week. So, you know, I was kind of new to all of this, and I thought, you know, I went to California and I got a contract right away and got a part in

a TV thing right way. I thought, this is kind of easy. So anyway, I did the TV show and I had the lead in it for this one episode. The stage we shot an outdoor sequence for this Western on was where Paul Henry made the Spanish main which meant there was also the sound stage where Fred and jinjured at all their big dance numbers. So that was

kind of thrilling to me. Didn't mean anything to anybody else in the day, Fred who So anyway, I went back the next day to thank the casting man and the people that put me in this thing for the Californians. There was this wonderful man, Milt Lewis, who had used to be a talent scout of Paramount Studios. He was in the office and I thanked him, and he said, well, do you have an appointment for the Lucy Ball auditions? And I said, no, I don't know about any Lucier

Ball auditions. And he said, well, yeah, she's putting a contract group together and so she's going to have these auditions and I think there next week, but I'm not sure. But let me call up to her office and find out instead of a secretary answering Lucy answer, and he said, I got this guy down here, and I thought he might be a good bet for your contract people. So she obviously said, well, I'm not doing anything, send him up right now. So I went up to this office.

There she was. Now, I have to tell you, I was impressed by her, but I didn't see a lot of I Love Lucy because when that was really hitting its peak, I was in college and I was studying. I had to study hall. I wasn't didn't watch TV, and I loved the movies. If it had been a Loana Turner had met her somebody, I wouldn't been able to talk. But it was Lucille Ball, and she was impressed that I'm into college because she hadn't any finished high school. This I got to know about her later.

But also she was impressed by the fact I was living at Jane Darwell's house because I had asked her in our conversation who some of her favorite leading men were, and she said, leading him in didn't mean that much to me. I like working with talented people, but it was the character actors I love. She said, I loved like Edward Everett Horton and I loved Harpo Marx and I love Donald Meek. Well I knew all those people were. And she was impressed by that because at that time,

nobody knew who those people were. There was no nostalgia, nobody cared. So it's interesting how at that point in your life, the passion you had, that curiosity you had that you've turned into a career. Yeah, the roots of it were you were just impressing a smaller circle of people that knowledge when you're there in and and Lucia is going, God, I love Jane Darnward. Yeah. Yes. So

she had said, is there any film on you? And I said, well, I just did this thing with Paul Henry and I've also done a test with Anne Baker. And so she called over to Fox. Can I see the Diane Baker test, Lucille Ball, how soon can you send it over? Lucy was somebody that the minute she wanted something, she did it. She hung up the phone. She said, they're going to send it over. It'll be here in about a half an hour. So we kept talking. The test was made for Diane, not for me, so

there was a lot of the back of me. So when it was over. Lucy didn't really say anything. She's just thanked me for coming by, and I thought, well, she wasn't that impressed, but at least I got to spend some time with Lucille Ball. Like a week later, a message comes on my voice. Uh, you're answering service. Absolutely answering service called Lucille Ball's office right away. Here's

the number. Hello Lebray and nine and calling answer phone. Yes, I called the number, and the second he said, well, Lucille Ball wants you to come to dinner on Friday night if you're available, and meet DESI. I thought, well that's interesting. So I go to Lucy's house at Friday night.

There's no Desi, but there's Lucy. There's Janet Gayner, there's Joseph Cotton, there's Kay Thompson, Chuck Walters, Charles Walters, the director Roger Eden's, and a couple of other people, and her sister Cleo, who was actually her cousin but raised as her sister, and me. After the dinner, and they were all chatting and laughing and all of that drink drinking. Not Lucy. Lucy wasn't no drinker at that point. She she learned how to drink a little bit later on,

but not at that point. So we went in the living room and on Roxbury, right next door to Jack Benny exactly and just down the street from Ira Gershwin and around the corner from So anyway, after dinner we went in the living room. She pushes the button and the painting goes up. Putting another button, the screen comes down, and I'm thinking, did you ever believe that you would ever be? And then I thought, no, way, I always knew I was going to be here. I remember that thought.

I first started to say automatically, did you ever think God and that was the beginning for you? Yeah? And I thought, no, I always knew I was going to be with people like this, and I relaxed. Then I really relaxed as I thought, No, this is where you're supposed to yeah, and when you love this is where

I'm supposed to be. Where do you remember Funny Face, which was which was about three years old that no, But what was great about it was there's a part in Funny Face when Kate Thompson and Andrew Heppurn get up and do a number called on how to Be Lovely Together. Kay Thompson got up by the screen. I did the number so and it was, you know, fun

watch the movie. The movie was over, everybody starts to go, so I think, well, I'm supposed to go to I still don't know quite why I'm here, And it certainly wasn't Lucy was saying, you know, stay around a little boy or anything like. It wasn't that. So we got to the front door, spanking Lucy for the evening. She said, well, have you signed a paper yet? And I said, put papers. I want you another contract. And I said, well, nobody said we're doing business, yes, you idiot. Nobody's ever mentioned

anything about a contract or anything. And she said give them an address tomorrow and signed the papers anyone. So I was under contract then to Desilu and so that was for two years. The great thing about it was is that filming television. It didn't pay us much money at all, but it was like a masterclass for me because there were about twelve of us on the contract, but there were three of us who were really interested in the business, and she kind of recognized that right

away and took us under her wing. That's when I first met Bettie Davis. Bettie Davis came to l A in a play called the World of Carl Sandberg. So she took us to the play and then took us backstage afterwards to meet Betty Davis and Vivian Lee. Came a duel of angels, and so she went backstage and settled it vivianly. It took us with her. Anytime there

was somebody like that, Noel Coward or MARLENEA. Dietrich, she would take us there pick up the tabs because again she knew she wasn't paying enough money to keep for us to be able to do that. So we got this terrific education. And she also now Desi at this point was womanizing. He wasn't around much. So she would get movies that we wanted to see or hadn't seen because they weren't that accessible in those days and run them at her house. Or she would show us I

love Lucy's show. She'd done bad ones and show us why they didn't work, then show us a good one and why it did work. Yes, she also the first day any of us were in a contract there and we first met she arrived. She'd just gone to a bank which was right around the corner from Desilu and she got twelve savings accounts that she opened, put like fifty dollars in, and she gave us in each of our name, gave us to the books. And she said,

every week you have to put something away. And we were, as I say, making very little money, and say, Lucy, you know we don't barely enough to to live on. She said, it can be only five dollars, but every week put something away. You won't miss it. It'll add up. Very maternal and she said, no matter what, the thing you must do is have enough money that you don't have to make decisions based on money. For a kid from Colfax, Washington, this was just invaluable. I've been to college,

but I never had these kind of life lessons. In the course of it, she meant, my folks, and she got to know me. She said to me early on, you can do this as an actor. But she said, and I think you could do well, but it's not gonna make you happy. This is not the right line of work for you. And she said, you love old films, you love history, you love everything about the business. And you're a journalist and major in college. We have enough actors you should write about movies. And the first thing

you should do is write a book. Who said this to you, Lucy? She said, it doesn't even have to be a good book. But find a subject about the movies that nobody's done and write a book about it. And I said why. She said, if you write a book, it shows you have to discipline to sit down and do that. Yes, I did. What book? It was a book about the Oscars? Is this the book right here? Oh? My god, yeah, Academy words. I want our listeners to know that stunned expression. I show a copy of the

book that he is amazing. Yes, there he was. I know that his fans a turn of classic movies, Miss Robert Osborne. I know that because I'm one of them. I saved a very special guest for last. John Robin Bates or Robbie to his friends, is a great writer and an intoxicating racontour. This is, without a doubt, one of my all time favorite. It's the details he shares and the insights into his work and life are so beautifully crafted. His story is so smart and funny. He

should have his own show. I found myself very much like the character in my play played by Beth Marvel and Rachel Griffith at various points a writer who is a dangerous creature. And I had a note to myself play about daughter of a famous family who writes a book about her growing up in this family, something like that, the danger of telling the truth that turns out to

be a lie. And at that moment, this lady of a certain age walked by me, and she looked to me like um Pat Buckley, the old Diane of New York conservative politics, the wife of Bill Buckley. Bill Buckley and I had had lunch with her once and found her to be charming and engaged. And this woman walked by me on this beach with her hat and in a one piece bathing suit. I immediately felt the mother

in that play. And I suddenly remembered old California the way it was when I was a kid, and we were just in the throes of an election at the time, too were about to be and the Republicans of certainly of that period and even more so today, we're very confusing to me because deem recognizable to me as having a coherent, cohesive coach and argument for their principal positions, which had to be principled in some way. The play just came together in one fell swoop, old California conservatives,

the old Hollywood system, Reagan nights. I even remembered I'd gone to high school with I think, the daughter of John Gavin, and I thought, you know, because I love Touch of Evil, and I think, isn't John Gavin. No, he's not in Touch of Evil. He's in Psycho case in all these movies. And I thought about he was the ambassador to Mexica. That's right, as is the Stacy Keach character in my play. And I thought about your characters based on John Gavin to some extent, they're all

these archetypes. At the back of all this, of course, there's also Joe Mentello, who you know, we're no longer a couple, but he's my family, my best friend, and you see, being a couple of one year, two thousand and two. So it was a while and he kept saying to me, with all possible respect, nobody's waiting for the next Robbie Bates play. And you know, these are chilling words because I have so much to say and

it's not coming out. My equivalent of that, as my agent said to me, he goes, It's not that these people don't want to hire you because they don't like you. He says, they don't want to hire you because they don't think of you at all all. Jesus, Well, it's terrible, because the worst thing that can happen to an artist, I'm invisible. I no longer matter for me. Writing plays has always been very tricky. I don't know a lot.

I don't have a lot to say. I reached things very slowly, and I I sometimes it seems facile and easy, and to me some of the times my thoughts and my sort of expressed opinions in place seem hollow or naive, even because I know they're deeper truths always to be found and that I'm But don't you think that seeking them and being aware of that makes you more likely to find it than anybody? You didn't go to college? Did you know why you wanted educating yourself? I wish

I had gone to college. It was a depressed and unsettled kid. And why I don't. I think I wasn't at peace with probably any element of who I was, whether it was a sort of nascent intellectual or sort of pre expressive homosexual, kid or grew up where variously l A from you were born Where in l A and you lived seven then Brazil for three years in Rio, and then South Africa for six and a half years until I was eighteen. And your father was in the

condensed milk business. My father worked for a giant multinational carnation milk. Yeah, it was a condensed milk business. So l A, Brazil, South Africa, and then back to LA. When you finally get back to l A. How old are you? So high school is over? I just finished

high school. I sort of lost time through all the travels high school in South Africa, like I couldn't get used to things like cricket and corporal punishment, you know, you'd get cane for, like not doing well on a spelling test literally came and I think I was so busy trying to be sly and charming that I forgot how to be me. That I think led me to rebel against learning itself. So I was sort of interested

in the few things. I was interested in literature history, but I wouldn't apply myself to anything except escape, and part of escape meant not going to college. I was really lonely, and I I kind of became a depressed kid and that manifests it stuff. If you can say I think I did you know you were gay? Then yes, I definitely knew that. I knew that add to your depression didn't make you feel more isolated. It wasn't proactive

the gay community there in talk about getting caned. Yeah, well, um, I think my parents, who loved me very much, were distracted by their own terrors. There are certain families that are born in terror and live in terror. Um, conceived in terror? I need you to write a player for me. I want to be called conceived in terror? Go ahead, well, no, I mean death of a salesman is is a family that lives in terror? You were how old when you

arrived in Durban? Ten to the eight years? Yeah? I was there almost eight years critical time, ten years or so all of your real back half of your childhood, your teenage years, especially you are in Durban. I guess it was seventeen or something when we left. But you had finished the high school program. No, no, I finished it in l A. You did? Where? What was that? Like? I? You know, was the only kid I knew who rode their bike to school? Because everybody else's parents had given

them a fiad literally yeah or something. Who were your friends then? Who did you become friends with? Anyone? Oh? Yeah? In fact, Jenny Livingston went on to make Paris Is Burning, great documentary, Tina Landau great theater director. Gina Gershawn my oldest friend from high school. We were in place together in the drama department. So I became friends with and I say this with real respect and love with fellow freaks. How are you feeling about yourself and about life that

last year in Beverly Hills. I think I was scared to death still. I mean, it was just a new form of foreignness, but it had the pattern of something very familiar to me. But you know, I remember being taken to a party really early on, and I had developed a kind of weird eye beforehand for art. I thought maybe I was going to be a painter or an artist storian. And I walked into this house and there is a giant David Hackney and next to it

is a giant Mother. Well, I'm ending in front of this giant painting that's famous that I've looked at in books Thames and huts and art books. While I was in Durban at the Art Library of the University. I know, the world was just very real and different, and it was easier to like have sex, and it was easier to to function. Were you writing? I guess I was

sort of writing, Yeah, what were you writing? I was writing really bad short stories about alienated Paul Bull's kids adrift in foreign countries, which is basically tell you that truth. Still what I'm doing. It just looks slightly the wallpapers prettier. Now, where were you living at that? I was living um on friends sofas, like the parents of children I went to high school with. I was. I was just this freak, you know. And I was at it with my family at the time, you know, and I had escaped and

it was just a nightmare. How do we get from there to fair Country? Gordon Davidson, you know in Pinocchio where he falls in with actors. I'm walking around. I ran into this girl I knew from high school. She said, what are you doing? And I'm sort of looking for a job. I think I'm starving to death. I'm not sure, she said to me, And I should have known. She said, well,

my father just fired me. He needs to he needs a new assistant and I was like, well, what does he do and she said, oh, he's a film producer. Who was the film producer. This is great guy, and he was. He a working producer. I'm only asking for a name. My first day at the office, he says to me, whatever you do, answer the phones, but never pick up the phone. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. And he said, you'll do fine.

And he had a gang of cronies, all of whom had contempt for the studio system and had worked around the edges of it, or in it, had done well, fallen out of favor, usually had destroyed themselves through my favorite thing, their own ambivalence. I found myself at home for the first time in my life win the nest of scorpions. Yes I did, I found myself. I said this, I know, yeah, because nobody is trying to pass. It's a den of thieves here. It was still the days

of speaker phone and they would have fights. They had a tower on Sunset Boulevard. They had a nest of rooms in a tower and they would be fighting with each other and then they would suddenly be a pause. Someone would say, geez, if you could see what I see right now, that girl walking on sunset. She is so beautiful. The fight was over. Yeah, nothing meant any codic of sex. That's right. One of the masks for a glass of waters. My first few weeks there two

what do I know. I would go to the sink, bring a glass of waters, spit it out like practically on me and say this isn't water, and I would say, yes, it's water. What are you talking about? That's water. It's I want professional water. And the whole time became about professional water. Robbie Bates. I could listen to you talk all day long. Well that's it. We started in the fall of two thousand eleven and we've conducted over two

hundred interviews since then. Thank you all for listening, and again my thanks to w n y C. But we're not done. I'm excited to announce that the podcast is moving to the I Heart podcast Network. We're going to take a few weeks off, and we will be back on January twelve with new episodes. If you're already a subscriber, you don't have to do anything different to get the

new episodes. You'll still be subscribed and the show will still be available wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that's the I heart app, Apple podcast, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. That's all for now. We'll be back soon on iHeart with more. Here's the thing.