IN A FLASH, a poof, a swirl of the magic wand, we, the Carlins, were officially living the American Dream.
After a year in a small apartment on Beverly Glen, where my mom had inadvertently invented her new hairstyle, “Boom Bangs,” we moved into a three-bedroom house on Beverwil Drive, just inside the Beverly Hills border. And I mean just inside. Three doors to the south, and we would have been what they officially call “adjacent.” Not that this was really important to Mom and Dad, but I’m sure it lifted their spirits. We were in Beverly … Hills. Swimming pools and movie stars!
The house itself was wonderful. It was a Spanish-style three-bedroom with a big modern kitchen, formal dining room, a laundry room, and a courtyard. Just off the courtyard, near the front of the house, my dad made an extra room into a home office—a place for his stuff. And in the backyard was a playhouse—a place for my stuff. It was perfect except for a huge cluster of ferns in the courtyard that I was convinced would eat me. To the adults they just looked like ferns. But in my four-year-old mind, they were the tentacles of a monster ready to come alive at any moment and snatch me up.
We were the typical American family. We had lots of pets that were all named by my dad: Squeezix the parakeet, Frick & Frack the hermit crabs, Bogie the Maltese terrier, and a black cat named Beanie, which came with the house. Mom seemed to be feeling better about being in Los Angeles now, and she eased into her new Beverly Hills–housewife lifestyle: She got her hair done weekly at a fancy salon; she relished decorating the house. She found wallpaper for the kitchen that said, “Ha Ha Ha, Ho Ho Ho, Hee Hee Hee,” scattered in wild and wacky black-and-white sixties graphic writing—God, we were hip. And, being a proper 1960s Beverly Hills housewife, she immediately hired a black maid, Anner Rae, to do the housework.
Dad stepped seamlessly into his role as a 1960s clean-cut family provider/husband/father by rarely being home. He was on the road for weeks at a time doing gigs at big fancy clubs like the Copacabana and the Playboy to pay the bills. All this new money allowed him to buy Mom whatever she wanted for the house or herself. And although I wished he could always be home, it made the times he was around extra special for me. He taught me how to climb the tree in the front yard, how to ride my two-wheel bike along the sidewalk, and every day we’d go to Roxbury Park down the street, where he’d push me on the swings and buy me ice-cream sandwiches.
We were just so damn white picket fence.
Well, kind of.
“Now this bowl here is yours—‘Kelly’s Spice Cake,’” my dad said to me as I sat on the kitchen counter mixing the ingredients in the bowl he was pointing to. Then he pulled another bowl over, poured in another box of cake mix and a Baggie of weed. “And this one is ‘Daddy’s Spice Cake,’” he said as he put that bowl in my lap. I happily stirred in the extra “spice.”
I loved spending time with my daddy. Especially in his office, where I’d spend hours and hours coloring and drawing pictures, while he wrote material, listened to music, and rolled joints. Rolling joints was a daily routine. I watched him clean the weed, roll the weed, and smoke the weed. By the time I was ten, I could also clean the weed and roll the weed. But it took until I reached the ripe old age of fourteen before I would smoke the weed.
Dad’s office was filled with wild posters (an upside-down American flag, the Zig-Zag rolling papers, a few Bill Graham rock-and-roll posters), and crazy tchotchkes (a hand grenade, an ashtray in the shape of a hand giving the finger, an old toy car of an NYPD paddy wagon). The freshest rock and roll spun on the turntable—Dylan, The Stones, or The Beatles. I loved lying on the floor and looking at the pictures on the front covers of those records: the funny cake on a turntable of The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed; the pen-and-ink drawing of Revolver; and then the strange one that was just white—The White Album. The very first song that ever registered on my young mind was from The White Album—“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.” Before that song, music was just sound in the background, but the day I heard the words, “All the children sing!” I was hooked. A children’s song! I played the song over and over, skipping around the house singing at the top of my lungs, “Hey, Bungalow Bill/What did you kill, Bungalow Bill?”
When Dad was on the road it was hard on me, but on the phone before he’d sign off, he’d routinely ask, “Are you my Stinkpot or Baby Doll?” To make up for the long trips, he’d come home with lots of presents. He’d bring salt water taffy from Atlantic City, or a snow globe from Chicago, or a little stuffed animal from parts in between. When I got a little older he’d send me postcards from the road. My favorite thing was when he would buy a bunch of them and write only one word on each postcard so that I would have to put the sentence together myself. He was a big kid himself, which drove my mom nuts most of the time because she felt like she had to be both the mom and the dad in the house.
Because Dad was a picky eater like me, he made me peanut butter sandwiches whenever I didn’t want to eat what my mom had cooked, much to her displeasure (“George, how will she ever learn to like new foods if she doesn’t try them?” “Well, I never try new foods, and I’m just fine.”). And sometimes, when Mom was out, he’d even make me pancakes for dinner.
My dad relished sharing things with me, this little person who knew nothing of the planet yet. He’d explain how things worked—cats purring or music coming out of the radio. And he knew the names of stars—he loved astronomy. He also taught me new words. No, not those words. I’d learn those words easily enough in a few years. But when I didn’t know what a word meant, he’d write it and the definition down on a piece of paper for me. But the most special moments with my dad were what I would call “Daddy’s big teaching moments.” They came when the world was revealing itself in a new way and Dad knew that it was important for me to witness it and understand.
A perfect teaching moment showed up in 1969.
“Look, Kelly. This is really happening right now.” Dad had woken me up in the middle of the night and plopped me down in front of the TV to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing. He, Mom, and I watched as the module sat on the chalky surface of the moon. He kept repeating, “This is really happening right now.” Maybe he couldn’t believe it himself.
Dad pointed at the TV. “This isn’t like Gilligan’s Island. This isn’t a TV show. There are really men on the moon right now. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened.”
As he himself took in the enormity of it all, he wanted me to be a part of this species-size historical moment, too. He wanted me to understand that I was part of something bigger than myself. That we all were part of something wondrous.
And yes, he was probably high at the time.
* * *
With Dad on the road so much, and sometimes gone for special days like my birthday, my mom always found ways to make up for it. She was very clever and loved celebrating birthdays and holidays. For my fourth birthday she made it truly magical.
Like all kids growing up in the TV age, I loved watching TV. When I was almost three years old, my dad was on the variety show The Jimmy Dean Show. Mom was excited because I was finally old enough to watch Dad on TV with her. When the show began, she positioned me in front of the TV. The announcer proclaimed, “And here’s George Carlin,” the audience clapped, the intro music crescendoed, and Dad began to speak. I had no idea what was going on. Mom pointed to my dad on the TV and said, “Look, Kelly, it’s Daddy. Daddy is on the TV.” He started talking, but I wasn’t clear on what was happening. Daddy? TV? All I knew was that my dad’s voice was coming out of a box and that there was a really small man stuck inside it. I began to cry and scream, “I want Daddy!” I ran out of the room, hysterical.
Who wouldn’t be, upon the realization that her father was stuck inside a box?
But now that I was four, I had gotten the hang of this TV thing. I no longer ran from the TV screaming when he was on, and I even got to stay up late to watch him when he was on at night. I still didn’t understand exactly what the TV box was or exactly how my dad got in it, but I knew that was where he sometimes worked.
I loved to watch cartoons—Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, The Jetsons—but my favorite show was Hobo Kelly, which wasn’t a cartoon but a local children’s show, and it was special. First of all the star was named Kelly. In all my four years on Planet Earth, I had never met another Kelly, and here was one living in the TV box, the very same TV box where my daddy worked.
But the real reason Hobo Kelly was the best was that every day she sent birthday presents to kids through the TV. She’d announce a name, “Billy Rogers in Encino, Happy Birthday!” And then the real magic began. Next she’d say, “Go look under your parents’ bed!” Hobo Kelly sent a birthday present whooshing through the air. It would spin and fly on the screen.
When I got home from school one day, my mom handed me two Chips Ahoy cookies, and said, “Why don’t you go and watch Hobo Kelly?” I sat through the whole show, thinking nothing of it, and then at the end she said, “Kelly Carlin in Beverly Hills, Happy Birthday! Go look under your parents’ bed!” And Whoosh the present spun and flew through the air. Once I realized that Hobo Kelly was really talking to me, I leaped up, flew up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom, and practically threw myself under the bed.
And there it was—a perfectly wrapped present. Magic. Pure magic.
Hobo Kelly had sent me a present through the air! And not just any present but the perfect present—it was a set of Colorforms just like we had at school, and now I had my very own. My mom played her part perfectly, looking as shocked as I was as I ripped open the wrapping, “Look at that! Colorforms! Hobo Kelly knew exactly what you wanted!” I beamed and basked in the perfection of it all.
All during this time things were moving ahead with my dad’s career. After the Kraft Summer Music Hall gig wrapped in the summer of 1966, Dad moved right into step three of the big “Danny Kaye plan”—becoming an actor. He played Marlo Thomas’s agent, “George Lester,” in an episode of That Girl. He quickly discovered what a pain in the ass acting was—he had to say other people’s words while hitting marks for cameras, and then sit around for hours and hours until his brain atrophied from boredom, only to do it all again. He began to have serious doubts about this acting stuff.
Luckily he was also getting more TV spots. He was on the Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas shows, and in the summer of 1967, he landed another run on a summer-replacement show—Away We Go, with Buddy Greco and Buddy Rich. Most of the time he relied on his usual schtick, the bits that got him the jobs in the first place—the famous “Hippie-Dippie Weatherman” and “Indian Sergeant” routines. The TV hosts and producers loved those bits, and the gigs paid the bills, so he couldn’t really complain. But he was getting bored with it all. He wasn’t evolving as an artist, or getting to try out the new stuff he was writing. Even when he brought new stuff to the table, they’d say, “Just do that ‘Hippie-Dippie’ thing.”
At least there was one saving grace—when he got to work with someone like Buddy Rich, the world-famous jazz drummer, there was plenty of good weed to go around.
With Mom and Dad doing their parts to create our American Dream, I did mine, too. My mom knew that spending too much time with only adults was not good for me. I needed friends and mental stimulation. So I was off to school—a Montessori school—at the age of four. Montessori was a school that allowed children to explore reading, writing, and ’rithmetic at their own pace. It let you find your own way into your own learning. Mom had prepared me well. Around the time I was two years old, she’d started teaching me my letters and numbers with beautiful flash cards she’d made by hand. I could dutifully recite the alphabet on request with only a slight misstep around the w. Regardless of what all the adults said, I knew that it must be pronounced “double-doo.”
Though I was armed with a lunch box full of my favorite foods—a sandwich of Oscar Mayer bologna with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread, Oreo cookies, and carrot sticks—my first day of school did not go as planned. As my mom backed out the door with all the other young mothers waving and smiling, thrilled to have a few hours of freedom in their day, I panicked. I realized I was not going with her.
I was positive that if my mom left, she might never return. My thoughts began to race along with my heart—What if she set her hair on fire again? Then I would be left here forever with these strangers because Daddy was somewhere on an airplane. And I don’t know where he is!
I immediately leaped at my mom and clutched her leg. I held on for my very life. And then the tears came and came and came. I was inconsolable.
Finally the teacher, Miss Morgan, said to my mom, “I know it may be hard, but in the long run it’s best if you just make a clean break and leave. She’ll settle in eventually.”
I heard this and thought, Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that!
I did not “settle in.”
Every morning as my mom tried to leave I cried and clung. Once she left, I transferred my clinging to Miss Morgan and followed her around the classroom. When she walked, I walked. When she sat, I sat—on her lap. I was cling wrap. She was a saint.
Eventually I realized that (a) my mom was going to keep dropping me off at this godforsaken place no matter what; (b) she was somehow managing to survive without me; and (c) she came back every afternoon to pick me up.
After two weeks I grudgingly settled in.
And boy, did I settle in. I quickly figured out what this place called school was all about. Sure there was playing “Red Light, Green Light” at recess, or finger painting in the afternoon, or even learning to peel a carrot (which I must admit was a bit of a revelation). But really, it was all about knowing the right answers. Seeing the happy look on Miss Morgan’s face when I got a question right was pure bliss. Being first with my hand up and having the right answer, and making no mistakes in my reading and writing book, became imperatives for me. I felt the charge of having power over something.
Although I felt confident now about the things happening inside the classroom, I felt lost on the playground. It was like I was living slightly outside it all. “Wanna play jacks?” Lisa, a girl in plaid pants, asked me the first week at school.
“Sure. You go first,” I said, not knowing what jacks were, but also not wanting to let that fact be known. Did I miss the day where they explain all of this to you? Is there some manual I’m missing? I never let on about my ignorance. I knew I’d be seen as stupid if I didn’t pretend that I knew what was going on. So I faked it.
* * *
Because of Mom’s hostess days at the Racquet Club, she loved to entertain, and now that she had a big house to do it in, she decided to throw a party—a surprise party for my dad’s birthday. Parties and holidays gave her a purpose—eggs to devil, celery sticks to stuff with cream cheese, and decorations to hang. When coordinating an event or a project, my mother was in her full stride and glory.
I was especially excited about this party because not only had I never been involved in such a production, we were going to surprise my daddy. My mom gathered a few old friends (Elaine from the Racquet Club, along with her new husband, Bill Brennan, who had just moved to Los Angeles), a bunch of new friends from Dad’s TV work, and our family (my dad’s brother, Patrick, and his family, my aunt Marlene, and my cousins Dennis and Packy, who had lived in Los Angeles since the late fifties). Mom decorated the house with streamers and a huge sign that said, “Happy Birthday George!” and then we baked a cake.
Once the guests arrived, Mom gave me the most important job: to be the lookout who hid in the backyard to wait for my dad’s car to come up the alley.
I did my duty, quietly hiding in my playhouse. When Dad pulled in to the garage, I rushed into the house to tell everyone to hide. Everyone immediately settled down and became quiet (it was quite the rush to see a room full of grown-ups settle down on my command). While Dad made his way through the kitchen, I thought I just might burst. Finally he bounded into the dining room, and we all shouted, “Surprise!”
Everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday,” and Mom brought the cake out from the kitchen. Instead of saying “Happy Birthday,” it said “Fuck You!” The whole room laughed, and Dad blew out the candles.
The party guests fawned over my dad and the funny cake. When their attention came toward me I hid my face in my dad’s leg and clutched tightly. I felt as if I was supposed to know what all the fuss was about over the “Fuck You” cake. I, of course, did not know what all the fuss was about. But I could feel the crackle in the air that it had created. What I gathered from watching the adults was that it was daring, funny, and outrageous.
Years later I eventually realized what that “Fuck You!” was saying to all in that room—Let’s celebrate that we are iconoclastic artist types living outside the norm. Look how daring we are! I know that’s what my mom intended. But now, when I think back on that time, I wonder if some part of that “Fuck You!” wasn’t an actual “Fuck you” from my mom to my dad.
My mom was still struggling. She hadn’t really settled in to her new lifestyle. She felt useless, like an afterthought. She told my father once that she’d felt like a piece of furniture that everyone was walking around. Although most of our days on Beverwil Drive in Beverly Hills had been sunny and happy so far, as the year 1968 ripened, so did my mother’s resentment and confusion about her place in the world.
Because Dad still didn’t want her to have a full-time job, Mom attempted to find a place for her talents and passions once I was in school. She thought about getting her pilot’s license, and it turned out that she was really good at flying. So good that the flying instructor told her she should become an instructor herself. Dad got nervous about the fact that one of Mom’s other passions that she’d been pursuing lately was drinking. Dad told her she couldn’t get her license.
She then volunteered at a local hospital as a Candy Striper cheering up patients and bringing them books from the library. She was good at that, too. Her warmth, natural curiosity about people, and sense of humor made her a favorite. But she started having panic attacks at work and then in the car, and she just couldn’t manage anymore. She quit. Her doctor, Dr. Little (whom I nicknamed Dr. Doolittle) told her that she was probably having what they used to call an “identity crisis.” It got so bad that at one point she couldn’t even sign her name on her checks anymore. He prescribed her some Valium—“mother’s little helper.”
These Mother’s Little Helpers—they did not help. They only made things worse.
One weekend, my mom and her friend Gail decided to have a girls’ weekend getaway in Palm Springs. Mom was pissed at Dad (they were arguing more and more about her being a piece of furniture and him getting to be a kid with me all the time) and wanted to blow off some steam. Mom and Gail went to the Riviera Resort—the hot spot in the desert, and a playground of the stars. The Riviera was known for the big bands that played there, and the celebrities who hung out—Tommy Dorsey, the Rat Pack, Desi Arnaz. Mom and Gail ate dinner and watched the show. By the time the show was over and the band had left the stage, Mom was riled up and drunk. She wobbled up to the bandstand and grabbed the microphone. A few hundred people looked up at her expectantly.
“Hey! Do you know who I am?” she asked them.
Hundreds of eyes stared back at her. Blinking.
“Don’t you know who I am?” she asked again.
I’m pretty sure she really wanted them to answer the question. But she didn’t wait for them to do so.
“Well, for your information, I am George Carlin’s wife. The great comedian George Carlin’s wife … and I want you to—”
The maître d’ quickly grabbed the mike out of her hand and escorted her off the stage, where Gail, also drunk, led her away. The next morning, demoralized and mortified, Mom found the maître d’ and apologized.
My mom felt alone in her pain, but she wasn’t. Right by her side, Dad was also in the midst of an identity crisis. He no longer wondered if mainstream success was worth stifling the radical truth teller inside him. He now knew that it wasn’t. And what a conundrum it was for him: Here was the dream he’d had since he was ten years old, unfolding before his eyes, and it wasn’t what he’d thought it would be.
More and more he hated the variety and talk shows he was doing, because he knew that who he truly was wasn’t present in his act. He felt like a performing monkey. The world was changing—MLK and RFK had been assassinated, Lenny Bruce was dead, men were walking on the moon, all his musician friends were speaking truth to power—and he was still doing the “Hippie-Dippie Weatherman” and “Indian Sergeant” routines. Even when he had an opportunity to do something different, like when he was booked on the Smothers Brothers show, he didn’t know how to break out of the box, and he played it safe. He was trapped.
Middle America had fallen in love with George Carlin, just in time for him to have fallen out of love with them.