All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business

Comedy is a very powerful component of life. It has the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by. You can struggle when things are bad if you have a sense of humor. Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye. It’s a defense against unhappiness and depression.

Failure is vital. It is an incredibly important quotient in the equation of a career. After you wipe away your tears, it’s not a bad experience and under the right circumstances it will make you better, both as a person and as an artist. I think it’s important to fail, especially between the ages of twenty and thirty. Success is like sugar. It’s too good. It’s too sweet. It’s too wonderful and it burns up very quickly. Failure is like corned beef hash. It takes a while to eat. It takes a while to digest. But it stays with you.

We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Carl was an immediate and intuitive foil and partner, feeding off my energy and adding to it. I once took Scotch tape and attached my nose to my cheek, my lower lip to my chin, and an eyebrow to my forehead. I looked cruelly disfigured. I burst into the writers’ room, and Carl immediately nurtured the bit: Carl: How did it happen? Who did that to you? Mel: The Nazis! They did it to me. Threw me in a ditch and did it! Carl: You mean they beat you? Disfigured you? Mel: Oh no. They took Scotch tape and stuck it all over my face. Carl broke up and hit the floor, clutching his belly and laughing like crazy. For me that was a home run. Anytime I could make Carl laugh, I knew I had a winner.

Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad if you have a sense of humor.

I always thought a rich lie is better than a poor truth:

If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Comedy brings religious persecutors, dictators, and tyrants to their knees faster than any other weapon.

Carl: I want to talk about the impact of the Ten Commandments. Mel: There were more. But they weren’t important. Carl: Can you tell me one? Mel: Certainly, “thou shalt not squint.

I think Peter Falk had one real eye and one glass eye, and having one eye was probably better for shooting pool than having two.

Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye. It’s a defense against unhappiness and depression.

I was at my best when I was backed into a corner. Like a cornered rat I had to somehow jump out of it. I would never surrender. Carl knew he would never get the same answer twice, and I loved to surprise him. Carl: Who is the favorite of all your girlfriends of all time? Mel: Shirley. Carl: What was so special about Shirley? Mel: Her friend Leila. Carl hit the floor.

In every classic comedy duo, from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Martin and Lewis, in order for the exchange to work, the quality of the straight man had to be as dynamic as that of the funny guy. Carl was the best at this. I could use a single question as a springboard to unplanned exposition and tangents that would be as much of a surprise to Carl as they were to the audience. Carl was a gifted partner: While he deferred the punch lines to me, he knew me well enough to follow along and cross paths enough to set me up for more opportunities. He also knew he could throw me a complete curveball and I’d swing for the fences. We were a great ad-libbed high-wire act, and like the best high-wire acts, ours was dependent upon complete trust and respect for each other. Carl once said, “A brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to behold.

The writing of this book serves as a kind of confession. You, the readers, will be my confidants. I’m going to tell you all my secrets. Things I’ve never told anybody. Things I don’t want anybody to know! I don’t want you to breathe a word of what you find out in this book. Keep everything under your hat! Wait a minute, wait a minute…that might not work. I’m not in a confessional booth, and a lot of you are probably not priests. This is a book!

All I can say is that in my case comedy was keeping the joy of a happy childhood going strong.

Comedy made me friends, big friends to protect me from bullies. I made them laugh, and you don’t hit the kid that makes you laugh.

Fort Sill is in the southwest corner of Oklahoma. It's cold, it's flat, and it's windy. If you ever have a chance, don't go there.

They seized on that word and with my blessing made a beautiful cabernet sauvignon called Harumph. So if you’re disappointed when you don’t get a “harrumph” out of your audience, you can always buy a great bottle of Harumph wine instead.

I got it! I got it! I got it!…I ain’t got it.

The movie may be slapstick, but it is not slapdash. It has been conceived and completed as a coherent whole, done in luminously perfect black and white. Everything, most particularly the music, is poignantly faithful to the spirit of old times…. There are Vaudeville jokes that may well be older than Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself…but they are spaced along a carefully developed story line which is executed by a team of hugely talented comic actors rather than one-lining comics.

In keeping with James Whale, I went back to old-fashioned 1930s editing techniques

I didn’t realize it but I might have created the first cell phone. Had I patented it, I probably would have made so much money that I wouldn’t have had to write this book.

Comedy is a very powerful component in life. It has the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by. You can struggle when things are bad if you have a s sense of humor. Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long good bye. Its a defense against unhappiness and depression.

Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad if you have a sense of humor.

That’s the wonderful thing about the theater. Unlike in the movies where once a movie is finished and released you can’t change it, in the theater a show is a living thing. When you realize something is wrong you can actually fix it and mount a new production.

We held our breaths for a month and a half until we got word from the Red Cross that he was alive and a prisoner of war. The Red Cross went to prisoners of war and they did a lovely thing, they recorded them saying or singing things and they sent those recordings to their loved ones back home. Lenny loved to sing so he recorded a song called “Miss You.” My mother would put that little cardboard record on every night and cry. Every single night! Finally I said, “Mom, maybe just hold the record? Maybe don’t put it on so much? I mean he’s alive, but it’s depressing hearing him sing every night!” Even though we loved him dearly, truth is he was slightly off-key. —

But let’s get back to Melvin Kaminsky.

When Ethel Merman belted out “You’re the Top” even though Uncle Joe and I were two miles away in the cheap seats, it was thrilling but maybe a little too loud. What a voice! They said she could hold a note longer than the Chase National Bank.

Lizzie” or a “Flivver.