Still Foolin’ ’Em Read online

  That afternoon, I was reading the paper in the kitchen when the phone rang. Janice answered it and said, “Oh, he’s right here. I’ll put him on.”

  “Who is it?” I mouthed. Janice just shrugged. I took the phone and said hello.

  “Kid, this is Ted Williams. How ya doing?” I had never spoken to him before, and that strong voice almost knocked me over. How had he known it was my birthday? Janice had this wonderful smile on her face as Ted continued: “Listen, your lovely wife tracked me down and invited me to your party tonight, but, kid, the good Lord is pitching me tight. So I can’t make it, but I love what you do. When you do the Oscars, it’s like watching a great hitter. You see the pitch and wherever it is, you hit it solid. You don’t foul any off. I love to see that.”

  I was in shock to be on the phone with him, but I managed to say, “Ted, is everything hitting to you?”

  “You bet,” he said. “It’s a great metaphor, isn’t it?”

  To this day I think he’s the only Hall of Famer who has used the word “metaphor” in a sentence. He continued, “Hey, I read that you own a piece of that team in Arizona.” Janice and I had bought a tiny interest in the Arizona Diamondbacks.

  “Yes, I do, Ted.”

  “Well, that’s where I’d like to play. With that dry air, you hit a ball with the right kind of spin, it’s going to keep going. Man, I’d hit .285 there.”

  “Only .285?” I asked the last man to hit .400.

  “Billy, I’m in a wheelchair,” he replied. Before we said our good-byes, he told me he had sent me a gift and hoped I would like it. Like it? He’d sent a large photo of himself with Babe Ruth and had signed it to me. Wow.

  The party was spectacular. Jack Sheldon and a fifteen-piece dance band were onstage, and Wolfgang Puck was in the kitchen. The party wasn’t just for me; I also wanted to thank my friends and family for always supporting me. Marty Short sang a few songs, my hero Mel Brooks got up and sang with the band, my brother Rip belted out a few, and then Rob Reiner went up onstage and acted as a host as one after the other of my good friends, including Richard Lewis and Christopher Guest, got up to speak. Marc Shaiman performed a funny personalized song he’d written. Janice also sang a song for me, Jenny and Lindsay made a beautiful toast, and then Joel and Rip presented me with a large gift-wrapped present, flat and roughly seven feet tall. It was the door of my bedroom from our house in Long Beach, which I had decorated with decals of ballplayers of the fifties. That fantastic gift is now the door to my office closet. Sometimes when I’m having a bad day, I look at that door and wish I could open it and go back in time.

  Janice then announced a gift from George Steinbrenner. It was a World Series ring from 1996! My name had been engraved where the player’s name goes. His card read, “To our 26th man, Happy Birthday, your pal, George and the New York Yankees.” Wait, it gets better. Janice then told the crowd, “You know, I can do impressions also. Here’s Mrs. Muhammad Ali.” She started to do her own impression of Ali, which got big laughs, and then she stopped and said, “Why am I doing him? Here he is.” And Muhammad Ali walked out. Some people—like me—almost fainted. Janice had arranged the whole thing. “Happy Birthday, little brother,” he whispered in my ear. “Gotcha.”

  My mom always said, “Do something special on your birthday.” The party was the perfect way to end my forties and start fresh in my fifties. It was a time to take stock. Who was I? Was I the Oscar host who did When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, and Midnight Train to Moscow, or was I the guy who got dissed by Orson Welles, told to fuck off by Charles Bronson, and punched by Joe DiMaggio? Oy.

  Kiss Me Twice

  I guess when you write a book covering your first sixty-five years, there has to be at least one scandal, so here’s mine: for over three years I had an amazing affair with Sophia Loren. We made love everywhere. At her villa in Italy, in the back of a Maserati, on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean, and once behind the monuments at Yankee Stadium during a rain delay.

  I was thirteen when our trysts started, and they went on and on, sometimes happening twice a day (once five times in an afternoon), until I was sixteen and saw Joey Heatherton on Hullabaloo. But that was a fleeting moment of lust compared to the enduring memories I share with Sophia. My Sophia. If only I could meet her someday, I said to myself. If only.

  Funny how things work out sometimes. In 1992, I was now a grown man and had just hosted the Oscars for the third straight year. It was a great night for many reasons: the show was going well, I was in good form, and, most importantly, it was the only time my mother was in the audience. We had watched the Oscars together so many times, but rarely the whole thing. Proving that nothing changes, even back in the fifties the show would run long, and so this little New York schoolboy would be sent off to bed around—you guessed it—sound effects editing. Before getting into bed, I would brush my teeth and hold the toothbrush like it was an Oscar and thank people! “And to Clark Gable: man, we had fun.” (Years later, whenever I hosted the show, I kept a toothbrush in my breast pocket, just to remind myself where I’d come from.) In the morning when I got to the breakfast table, I would find, in my cereal bowl, a paper napkin on which Mom had written out the names of the big winners.

  You can imagine what it was like for me that night walking out onstage, the audience applauding my entrance and me getting to catch my mother’s gleaming eye. I could see her smile and shake her head in proud wonder at me, her little Shredded Wheat eater, hosting the show it had once seemed I’d never be old enough to watch to completion.

  I almost lost it; for at that moment as I walked out onstage, seeing my mom, thinking about my dad and my brothers, where this whole journey had started, my emotions ran wild like a rioting soccer crowd. But I held it together, and of all the times I’ve hosted (nine—which means that if I host every year from now until 2022, I’ll catch Bob Hope), it was my favorite.

  Once the show was over, my brain spun with a jumble of thoughts and questions. Was it okay? That worked, that didn’t, should have, shouldn’t have, glad I talked to Jack in the audience, good ad-lib there, I knew that joke would kill—man, that was fun! There was more adrenaline than blood in my veins as I made my way to the Governors Ball.

  My family had yet to arrive, and sitting at my mom’s place setting was an older man. From the back he looked familiar, and as he sensed I was standing there, he turned toward me. It was Burt Lancaster! Burt Elmer Gantry, Sweet Smell of Success, Trapeze, Apache, Jim Thorpe, Doc Graham, and assorted pirates Lancaster! I’d never met him before.

  He smiled that huge movie-star smile, which lit up his huge movie-star head, and out of nowhere asked, “Have you ever been an acrobat?”

  “Uh, I did tumble a bit in school…” I weakly responded.

  “You move like an acrobat,” he said.

  I had no idea where this was going, but before either of us could say another word, I heard a woman’s voice with a beautiful accent call out, “Billeee, Billeee.” It was the voice from my dreams. I turned, and there was Sophia Loren.

  I flashed what in my mind was a debonair killer smile, which, as I think about it later, was probably the goofy grin of a thirteen-year-old. She motioned me over to her with her index finger, just the way all of our encounters had begun. I walked toward her like a zombie in a trance, and being the Jew I am, all I wanted to do was apologize.

  She reached out her hands to me, and I grasped them as she pulled me closer to her. (Just writing that sentence almost gave me a chubby.)

  “Billeee, kiss me twice…” She turned her head as I kissed first her right and then her left cheek. She told me how much she’d enjoyed my performance (as the host) and how she loved my acting in movies, that I reminded her of Cary Grant in a way, all the while holding my hands and looking at me with those seductive dark eyes. She was so beautiful, and yet something was different about her. Then I realized that this was the first time I was looking at her without a staple in the middle of her body.

  I turn
ed to see that my family was now sitting down and my mother was talking to Burt Lancaster, making motions probably showing him how I indeed could do back flips when I was seven. I didn’t care. At that moment, it was just me and Sophia.

  * * *

  The next year I was hosting again and was in the wings watching the show and going over what to say during my next appearance when I felt a mouth close to my left ear. “Billeee, Billeee…” The gentle aroma of her perfume and her breathy whisper made me break out into an instant sweat (another almost chubby). I turned, and there she was, taking my breath away again. “Kiss me twice,” she said. Then she looked me in the eye and said, “This is special, I want you to meet someone,” and I’m thinking, Threesome.

  Kiss me twice.

  She left for a moment and returned with Federico Fellini!

  “He loves you, Billeee,” Sophia said.

  “Mr. Fellini…” I began, but he put his hand up and shook his head as if to say, “Don’t talk.”

  “Billeee, you drive this show like it is a race car. You take the turns, you hit the straightaways, you are a maestro.” Fed—we were now on a first-syllable basis—was then interrupted by the stage manager telling him, “One minute—I want to get you to your mark, sir.”

  “Billeee, before I go,” he said, taking my hands in his, “please, kiss me twice.”

  That almost spoiled everything, but it was Fellini! They left together, and I stood in the wings and thought, Oh my god, isn’t this WILD! I never want to lose that feeling of awe when I meet great artists. Later, at the ball, we had a drink together and I hobnobbed with the two of them. One more champagne and I would have asked Fellini, “Why 8 1/2, why not just 8?”

  In 2011, Sophia called and asked me to host an evening honoring her at the academy. We showed clips of her magnificent career, and then I brought her up onstage and interviewed her for almost an hour. My first question to her set the tone: “You are Italy’s greatest export to Hollywood. Why is there no good pizza in L.A.?” She laughed and relaxed and we had a great conversation. If this was a date, I was in. As I drove home that night, I couldn’t help but think how rare it is that two former lovers—even if only one of us knew about the affair—can end up as friends. Funny how things work out sometimes.

  Still Foolin’ ’Em

  I stared at myself in the three-way mirror. I was wearing an unbuttoned tuxedo shirt, underwear briefs, formal black silk socks to the knee—I call them talk-show socks because if you’re on a show and cross your legs, you don’t want skin to show—and my patent leather shoes. I carefully pulled my tuxedo pants on so as not to catch a heel on the newly sewn hem. One usually puts his shoes on after his pants, but Alan King taught me to put my shoes on first because you don’t want to bend down to tie them as you’ll break the crease in your pants. I silently went over my thoughts and jokes as I slipped the suspenders over the shoulders of my pleated shirt. On the mannequin form was a brand-new tuxedo jacket, its beautiful black satin lapels shimmering in the glow of my dressing room lights. I didn’t put it on yet—not the right time. I stared at myself in the mirror. Hmm, I thought, this is who I am now. A little older, a little wiser. “Still foolin’ ’em,” I muttered, as I always do before facing the crowd.

  That is always my ritual. I kept going over my lines in my head, Start with this, go with that, as I buttoned my shirt with my dad’s silver tuxedo studs. I was nervous and had a little lump in my throat. Hosting an evening like this is not easy.

  I’ve been accused of being sentimental, and this time I plead guilty—I think it’s 50 percent because of my genetic makeup and 50 percent because there is something special about being the father of the bride. Jenny, my firstborn, was getting married today.

  Jackie Kennedy once said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” And it’s true. The greatest compliments I’ve ever received are about how Janice and I raised our girls. Now, I know part of that is because I’m in show business. When your kids are in a show business family, people tend to give you credit for being a good parent simply if they’re not on TMZ for being arrested for their third DUI in the past two weeks.

  I sniffed the beautiful white rose before I slipped it into the buttonhole on my lapel, its familiar scent lingering for a few seconds. My feelings about the moments and milestones in my life with Jenny were starting to crystallize. Which is what happens if your name is Crystal. The first time I’d held all eight pounds, four ounces of her, I’d known this day would eventually arrive. But I hadn’t known it would come so fast. Today I would walk my daughter down the aisle and then, with Janice alongside, stop as Michael, her husband-to-be-in-a-few-minutes, walked toward us. I would then lift her veil, kiss her on the cheek, shake the lucky man’s hand, and give her away forever.

  As I straightened my crisp white tuxedo shirt the way Alan King had taught me to do, by opening my fly, reaching in, grabbing the fabric, and pulling it down until it’s smooth, I found myself jotting down notes on her “first sleepover”—the first time Janice and I were alone for a night in three years. All parents have that moment, when they realize they can have sex again and not worry about being noisy—if only they remembered how to have sex. Well, somehow we managed, and nine months later, guess what blessed little event occurred? That’s right, exactly nine months to the day after we decided to send Jenny on another sleepover so we could have sex again, Lindsay arrived.

  “Funny,” I said to myself as I tied my bow tie. I thought back to one of the bigger decisions I’d made in my life. When the girls were nine and five, I was busy on the road doing my stand-up pretty much nonstop, and one night Janice said, “We have enough money—you don’t want to be Uncle Daddy.” I got it. Luckily, I stopped going on the road to be at home just at the point in my career when I was starting to get movie offers. Sure, with movies there were times when I was away, but in the end I rarely missed games or school plays or concerts or birthdays. However, despite the better schedule and less travel, one year I thought I was going to miss Lindsay’s birthday. She was in Los Angeles turning eleven, and I was filming When Harry Met Sally … in New York. Her birthday was on a Friday, and I knew I couldn’t make it home unless there was a drastic change in our shooting schedule. Then, miraculously, it rained and I found out I could make a three P.M. flight and get back home in time for her birthday. I called Janice and told her to go to the supermarket and get a giant cardboard box, gift-wrap it, keep the bottom open, and leave it by the front gate.

  I called Lindsay from the airport to say I was sorry but that this year Daddy just couldn’t make it home for her birthday. Right then an announcement blared over the airport loudspeaker.

  “Dad, what’s that?”

  I did what all parents do with their kids when confronted with an awkward question: I lied. “We’re shooting in Central Park.”

  I then told her not to worry, that Daddy was sending her a big birthday surprise.

  I flew back to L.A., and the car dropped me off at the front gate. The gift-wrapped carton was right where it should be. Like a Navy SEAL, I crept up to the house. Unlike a Navy SEAL, I rang the doorbell, sat down, and pulled the box over my head. Janice answered the door and immediately began to do bad summer-stock acting.

  “WELL, WHAT’S THIS? OH LOOK, LINDSAY, THIS MUST BE DADDY’S BIG PRESENT. WHAT COULD IT BE?”

  I threw off the box and stood there.

  Lindsay looked at me, jumped into my arms, and said, “Somebody pinch me.”

  “Save story for Lindsay’s wedding,” I scribbled now, underlining it three times. The satin vest was next, and I was relieved that it hid the little bit of paunch I just couldn’t conquer. My notes said, “first kiss.” Oh yeah, that’s a big moment for a dad, when you find out. Of course, Jenny didn’t tell me; I found out when she told Janice, who, after promising never to say a word, called me five seconds later.

  “Billy, Jen was at a party and a boy kissed her.”

  I nervous
ly asked the natural question that any man in my position would ask: “Tongue?”

  As I put my cuff links on, it hit me: my little girl is about to get married, and her next kiss will be her first as a married woman.

  “We need you,” said Janice, poking her head through the doorway.

  “Look at you,” I was barely able to say, my glistening eyes meeting hers.

  “Don’t make me cry—I’ll have to redo my makeup,” Janice said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I replied.

  “You didn’t have to,” my beautiful wife whispered.

  “One second, I’ll be right there,” I promised. We held hands for a moment, stared at each other, and then she closed the door. I had to compose myself before I could leave for the wedding service. I took a deep breath and looked in the mirror one last time. Shirt, immaculate; bow tie, tied precisely; tux, awesome; pants, perfect crease; shoes, shiny. I started to leave, took a last sip of bubbly, and glanced at my notes once again. I folded them neatly and put them in my breast pocket.

  Sometime after dinner, I would make a speech, and then Jenny and I would dance. Giving the opening monologue at the Oscars is hard; this was harder.

  But I’d had plenty of practice. A lot of my milestones with my kids involved events where I gave speeches.

  I spoke at Jenny’s and Lindsay’s high school graduations, Lindsay’s NYU graduation, both their weddings, their engagement parties, their soccer team parties, and at their Bat Mitzvahs.

  I gave a quick speech at Jenny’s fifth birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. That was a Saturday afternoon to remember. I’m giving a happy birthday speech to fifteen five-year-olds bouncing up and down in a salmonella-infested plastic ball pit while a couple with his-and-her devil tattoos are staring at me.

  “That looks like Billy Crystal.”