The Classic Stand-up Comic

Jennifer Fisher's take on Classic Citizens reminded me that Rodney Dangerfield in 82 years old. I hope that he gets a rimshot during his funeral. If this is (fair & balanced) drollery, so be it.

[x The Weekly Standard]
It's Not Easy Bein' Rodney
Comedian Dangerfield's autobiography is outrageous, entertaining—and surprisingly frank.
by Duncan Currie

I don't get any respect. 

EVERY Caddyshack fan has a favorite line from the 1980 movie and for sheer kitsch, it's hard to trump the exclamation by millionaire loudmouth Al Czervik following the climactic scene: "Hey, everybody! We're all gonna get laid!" In and of itself, it's not that funny; it's not even a joke, really. Except that the actor playing Czervik is Rodney Dangerfield. Coming off his lips, the otherwise churlish outburst somehow seems utterly hilarious--and utterly inoffensive, so endearing is Dangerfield's persona. He has, we might say, the comedic equivalent of the Midas touch: a combination of lovable charm and impeccable delivery that turns a lame wisecrack into one of Caddyshack's most memorable utterances.

It's hard to believe now, but prior to Caddyshack Dangerfield wasn't a big movie star. Nor, for that matter, did he make any real money from the film. As he explains: "It actually cost me money to do Caddyshack. I had to give up at least a month's work in Vegas. So it cost me $150,000 to do the movie, and they only paid me $35,000. People think I've made a fortune off reruns, merchandising, and stuff like that, but I got nothing: $35,000; that was it. My part in Caddyshack did get me into doing movies, though, so I guess it paid off in the end."

He relates that story--and many more--in his new autobiography, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs. The book is an impressive achievement. It manages to be at once a touchingly frank memoir, a droll (and often outrageous) narrative, and a how-to guide for young comedians. It's alternately light-hearted and sad, hysterically entertaining and surprisingly poignant. Dangerfield has lived a rich life, a complete life--and a long life. He is now 82 years old. "According to statistics about men in their eighties," he writes in the introduction, "only one out of a hundred makes it to ninety. With odds like that, I'm writing very fast. I want to get it all done. I mean, I'm not a kid anymore, I'm getting old. The other night, I was driving, I had an accident. I was arrested for hit-and-walk."

Dangerfield is a throwback: a stand-up comic whose routine consists almost purely of old-fashioned (and timeless) one-liners. (Indeed, one of his earliest show-biz idols was Henny Youngman: "His act was laugh after laugh after laugh--boom-boom-boom.") His humor has always been largely self-deprecating--replete with gibes about his sex life, his looks, his age, and, of course, his perpetual inability to get some "respect" from his relatives, his friends, his wife, etc. (Three samples: "I'm not a sexy guy. I went to a hooker. I dropped my pants. She dropped her price." "My uncle's dying wish, he wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair." "I tell ya, my wife likes to talk during sex. Last night, she called me from a motel.")

In 82 years, Rodney's told a lot of jokes. One is reminded of Mark Steyn's observation about Bob Hope: that he "made more people laugh than anyone in history." Dangerfield isn't too far behind. Indeed, it's probably not unfair to say that, among comedians, he has made fun of himself more than anyone in history.

But success wasn't easy to come by for the Long Island native. Born Jacob Cohen on November 22, 1921, Dangerfield endured a fairly nightmarish childhood. His father, a vaudeville performer, was rarely home--"I figured out that during my entire childhood, my father saw me for two hours a year"--so his mother raised him; although "raised" is perhaps too charitable. She was a cold, bitter woman, totally devoid of maternal instincts. She regularly forgot her son's birthday, never tucked him into bed at night, and generally treated him as an abject burden. "I never got a kiss, a hug, or a compliment," he writes. "I guess that's why I went into show business--to get some love. I wanted people to tell me I was good, tell me I'm okay. Let me hear the laughs, the applause. I'll take love any way I can get it."

Dangerfield has of course gotten plenty of love from audiences over the years--partly because he is so lovable. One senses that he realizes this--that cultivating a lovable image has been a deliberate goal of his all along. Indeed, he offers the following advice to young comedians: "From the moment you walk onstage, try to make the people like you. That's the most important thing. If they like you, you can get a big laugh with a mediocre joke. If they don't like you, you've got some serious thinking to do about your career choice."

He's also gotten a lot of comedic mileage out of his childhood pain. It produced a litany of "no respect" jokes, such as: "When I was a kid I got no respect. When my parents got divorced there was a custody fight over me . . . and no one showed up." Or: "When I was a kid, I got no respect. I was kidnapped. They sent my parents a piece of my finger. My old man said he wanted more proof."

He wrote his first joke at age fifteen and achieved mild success as a comedian in his early 20s, before his career sputtered out. At age 28, Rodney decided to quite show business and "lead a so-called normal life." He worked odd jobs in the home improvement business and got married. But his marriage soon hit the rocks, and Rodney found himself down on his luck. He also increasingly felt the pull of the stage. "I was out of show business," he explains, "but show business wasn't out of me, so I did the only thing that made sense--I created a character based on my feeling that nothing goes right." At age 40, he made a comeback.

It was at this point that he inadvertently changed his name to "Rodney Dangerfield." Early on in his comeback, he was booked to a work a club he'd played to great acclaim years before under the name "Jack Roy." Uncertain of how he'd perform after such a long layoff, he asked the club owner to introduce him under a different name. When, the night of his gig, the emcee announced "Here's Rodney Dangerfield," a somewhat nonplussed audience looked at him with confusion. To break the ice, Dangerfield explained: "Hey--if you're gonna change your name, change it!" After the show, he asked the club owner where he'd gotten the new name. "I don't know," the owner replied. "I made it up, just like that."

He was back in the saddle--and his career soon took off. He traveled around the country playing the club circuit, and boosted his celebrity with appearances on Ed Sullivan and the Tonight Show. In September 1969, Dangerfield opened his own nightclub in New York (Dangerfield's). He gradually rose to a level of mega-stardom: first on stage and then, in the 1980s, on the big screen (through movies such as Caddyshack, Easy Money, and Back to School).

Along the way, Rodney got to hang with some of the biggest names in the biz--Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, Sam Kinison, and Jim Carrey, to name a few. He shares all the wild anecdotes--holding nothing back--in this book. Rodney has become particularly close to Jim Carrey, whom he first met while working Toronto in the early 1980s. When, in 1994, the American Comedy Awards gave Dangerfield its Creative Achievement Award, Carrey introduced him and presented him with the award. "His introduction of me was one of the highlights of my life," Dangerfield writes. Carrey also penned the foreword to It's Not Easy Bein' Me, in which he calls Rodney "as funny as a carbon-based life-form can be."

A regular target of Dangerfield's humor over the years has been the medical profession. For example: "My doctor is strange. No matter where it hurts you, he wants to kiss it and make it better. After he checked me for a hernia, I had to change my phone number." Or: "I tell ya, I think doctors get too much respect. A hooker should get more respect. She's more important than a doctor. I guarantee you, at four o'clock in the morning, drunk, I'd never walk up five flights of stairs to see a doctor."

But in one of the book's most heartfelt chapters, Rodney discusses his April 2003 ordeal with brain surgery. "Although I complain about doctors," he writes, "I'm only alive today because of some very good ones." He recounts the harrowing days when he didn't know if he would have brain surgery or heart surgery or both. Dangerfield ultimately had a successful brain operation. He praises his doctors at UCLA Medical Center as "geniuses."

It's impossible to read this book without hearing Rodney's famous voice, and imagining his trademark mannerisms. You get the sense that his jokes would be funny in any country, in any language, at any time--provided the comedian telling them were able to replicate Rodney's uncanny delivery and lovable persona, which is asking a lot. He is a true American icon; his hallmark white shirt and red tie are permanently displayed at the Smithsonian.

But still, as It's Not Easy Bein' Me shows, Rodney Dangerfield was one of the all-time late-bloomers. Indeed, the uneven trajectory of his rise to fame and fortune proves emphatically that there are second acts in American life. That, as George Eliot once wrote, "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

Rodney won't be with us much longer. "I can count," he writes, "and I know my days are numbered." But, he reassures us, he's not about to go anytime soon. Why? "There are too many people out there who owe me money."

As funny as a carbon-based life-form can be? Yes he is.

Duncan Currie is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.

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