My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.

It means you never know what's going to happen,' I said. 'You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.

We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.

Those songs [Mary Poppins score] didn't just get under my skin, they became a part of me then and there, and thinking about it now, they've never left.

I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.

I have also heard and read various accounts of why they [Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner] liked me. My favorites? I wasn't too good-looking, I walked a little funny, and I was basically kind of average and ordinary. I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.

Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.

In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.

Be careful not to trip over the ottoman.

I survived—and looking back, I learned not to sweat the little stuff.

The best writers were philosophers who wrapped their commentary about life in laughter.

I found myself thinking about what worked for me, and also what I wanted to do for work, what was important to me, and what I wanted my work to say about me.

I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful “cosmic superman” looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love.

Every single of one of the station's phone lines lit up. The switchboard looked like a Fourth of July display.

Like it or not, life is a never-ending confrontation with bouts of uncertainty and chapters of self-discovery. As I was about to learn, it is a series of fine messes that we enter, some wittingly, and others not.

The show became its own little world, with its own internal rhythm and high standards.

Something greater than me was happening. And yet, it was happening to me.

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can’t spread peanut butter on the jelly.

One day I noticed that Marty was missing a finger, and I wondered how he could still manage to play complicated pieces. He had lost the finger in an accident, he explained, then retaught himself to

That reminded me of my own fateful story, which I proceeded to tell him.

We formalized our group as the Vantastix and sang at dinner parties and charity events. My favorite venue though, was the City of Hope, where we went room to room singing for kids battling cancer. In 50 plus years of show business, I never had a better audience. Most of those little kids were bald; a fair number could barely sit up in bed and there was a sad handful who could not even do that. We stopped at the bed of a very sick 15-year-old boy. We tiptoed into his room and quietly sang a song; he did not react. Thinking he was asleep, we began to file out but suddenly we hear a thin voice ask, "Could I hear another one, please?" We turned around and sang a whole bunch of songs. He barely opened his eyes. But after we finished Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I saw his mouth curl into a faint smile. As far as I'm concerned, applause does not get any louder.

Hope is Life's essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right.

We knew great TV began with great writing, not great acting, and that is a distinction that can’t ever be ignored or underestimated. TV just won’t work any other way. It all starts on the page.

As I’d found time and again throughout my life—and would continue to find—you do what you can, say your prayers, and hope for the best.

I could play many types of characters on camera, but all were, in some way, going to be variations of me, and I was conscious of who I was. I wasn’t a prude or a goody two-shoes, but I was, in many ways, still the boy my mother praised for being good, and though older and more complex, I was content with remaining that good boy. I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder.

I met my agent, Sol Leon, for lunch at the commissary, and talked through my concerns. He asked the obvious questions: What kind of films did I want to make? Where did I see myself going in terms of movies? What sort of scripts should he look for? “I’ve thought about this,” I said, “and I’m pretty clear on it. I only want to make movies that my children can see.” “Only kids’ movies?” he asked. “Not kids’ movies,” I clarified. “I want to make movies that I can see with my kids and not feel uncomfortable.

Was there one way? No, not as far as I could tell—other than to feel loved, to love back, and to do the things that make you feel as if your life has meaning and value, which can be as simple as making sure you spend time helping make life a little better for other people. I

Over the past year, I have realized something about myself. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia: I hate being at home by myself. I am a people person. My life has been a magnificent indulgence. I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit? I suppose that I never completely gave up my childhood idea of being a minister. Only the medium and the message changed. I have still endeavored to touch people’s souls, to raise their spirits and put smiles on their faces.

I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder. I did have a wild side, and I showed it every time I walked through the front door and my littlest child, Carrie Beth, made me dance to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s hit song “Tijuana Sauerkraut.

And when I was in my thirties, she confessed that when I was little she and my father would go to the movies and leave me at home by myself in the crib. I would be a mess when they returned. “I don’t know how I could’ve done that,” she said. “Me neither,” I replied.