In the early seventies, while appearing as a guest with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, I presented myself as a malcontent, a kind of person bothered by everything. I did this because I felt if I just came out and said how I was excited about my new movie or maybe told some anecdote about it, it really wouldn’t be sufficient for someone to stay up late to watch, so I made up a character who was always outraged by this or that.
To this day, decades later, I still play the malcontent with David Letterman. I entered recently in an agitated state, claiming the stage manager had said to me just before I came on, “Your jacket won’t televise well.” Of course, no such thing happened.
When I began to do this all those years ago with Johnny, people would sometimes genuinely be offended by my responses. Johnny would ask me how I was, and I’d say, “I don’t want to answer that, because I know you’re not really interested in the answer,” and the audience would hiss, and they meant it, too! Of course, they would have no way of knowing that I was under exclusive contract to Johnny Carson as a guest.
I was originally interested in going on Johnny Carson’s show in 1973 to show those people who might have seen me in The Heartbreak Kid, in which I left my wife on our honeymoon, that I wasn’t really a cad. Many would say that the persona I felt had to choose was worse than caddish. Over the years, I continued to play often unsympathetic roles in movies. The doctor who unwittingly turns Rosemary over to the bad guys in Rosemary’s Baby came prior to The Heartbreak Kid. To this day, amazingly to me, some people confront me over that dastardly deed. I’ve actually gotten into polite debates justifying Doctor Hill’s actions.
I followed Rosemary’s Baby with Catch-22, where I threw a prostitute out the window. When Alan Arkin confronted me in the movie on that, I explained, “A lot of people are killed during wartime.”
After I did the movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman, my mother said more than one of her friends had seriously asked her why I hadn’t helped my tiny wife clear up the mess after she dropped a number of dishes. In the movie, the camera cuts to a shot of me ruefully shaking my head in the breakfast nook, but not getting up to help.
I explained to my mother that they couldn’t actually shrink Lily. They just made everything around her superlarge, and if I had run in to help, I would have appeared tiny as well, and that wasn’t the story. Besides, I said I wasn’t even there on the day they shot Lily dropping the dishes. My mother advised me to forget about it: “No one will know what you’re talking about.”
Years later, with David Letterman, we devised a bit where I came out but he wasn’t there behind the desk. He was actually in his office, but he said on the phone, which the audience could hear, that he was at home. He had an appointment with the cable people, who were late. I said in an exasperated tone that was really inappropriate, “If you are hosting a show, you can’t let a cable appointment take precedence.” After my appearance a lot of letters came in saying I should have been more understanding of David’s situation.
When I began my cable show, Johnny had recently retired. He wrote and asked if I’d like to have dinner with him whenever I was in California. One night I went to a restaurant and joined Johnny and his wife. As I began to talk about my cable show, he was openly bored. I found his response funny. I challenged him by asking what he thought was interesting. He then began to describe an upcoming event in astronomy. I looked at him and said, “You find that more interesting than show business?” He did. At the end of the dinner, he asked if I would like to join him on a safari in Africa. I said, “What! Sleep in a tent with you while wild animals try to get at us?” I chose not to go. Another mistake.
When Johnny passed away, I was so sorry to hear that he had been alone, no longer with his wife. It’s always sad to me that someone who brought so much enjoyment to all of us spent a substantial part of his life in unhappiness.
I have some notes from Johnny I’d like to share with you. I have no memory of what prompted the following note, but it’s the only one of its kind I’ve ever received from a man—or woman for that matter.
I had received three residual checks for my appearances on the Best of Carson DVDs. They totaled eight dollars and change. I wrote Johnny that I always felt that I was a tiny part of the success of the Tonight Show, I just hadn’t realized how tiny.
Johnny had bypass surgery, and I wondered if this was in store in the future for me as a talk show host, so I asked him to get me some figures on costs. Ironically, sometime after this letter both Regis Philbin and David Letterman had bypass surgery. I haven’t had that issue, but if I ever do, I’ll certainly study Johnny’s research.
I also have some notes from David Letterman, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to publish them until at least both of us are dead.