Meet the Parents
Despite being their contemporaries and, on the surface, having a great deal in common with Frank and Estelle Costanza, Morty and Helen Seinfeld are quite unlike them. Both as parents and human beings, Morty and Helen shine brightly when contrasted with the always-squabbling Costanzas from Queens. They are argumentative on occasion, set in their ways, and eccentric in their own right (especially Morty), but the Seinfelds are, by and large, agreeable sorts.
Not surprisingly, the Costanzas’ behavior—with the relentless vitriol—turns their stomachs, so much so that they resort to making excuses to avoid them. Although they don’t always achieve this in the Florida condo communities they call home, they prefer the serene life in their golden years. In the episode “The Raincoats,” the Seinfelds avoid having dinner with the Costanzas—despite Estelle having prepared a big pot of paella—by telling George that they have other plans. They also reveal to Jerry for the very first time how they really feel about his best friend’s folks. Plain and simply, they can’t stand the sight of the Costanzas. As far as the Seinfelds are concerned, their incessant fighting makes being in their presence—even for a moment—very uncomfortable. Jerry is shocked to learn that they never, ever liked Frank and Estelle Costanza. He didn’t think people of their age bracket could “detect abnormal behavior” among their own kind, as it were. Morty and Helen set him straight that they can indeed do so, especially where the Costanzas are concerned.
On the other hand, the Seinfelds think very highly of Jerry, their beloved only son, even if they aren’t exactly sold on the merits of his profession and prospects of earning a decent living. While Morty is prone to flights of fancy, Helen is, typically, a voice of reason. She looks out for both her husband and her son and valiantly endeavors to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Raincoat Man
Jerry’s dad, Morty Seinfeld, made a pretty fair living as a salesman, peddling raincoats for thirty-eight years. He takes particular pride in having invented the beltless trench coat, which he considers his grandest achievement in life. In “The Raincoats,” we are clued in on the origins of this sartorial innovation. Morty, the story goes, went to work for a man named Harry Fleming in 1946. While in Fleming’s employ, he invented a popular fashion in a roundabout way. After tripping over a toy of young Jerry’s one night, and removing the belt on his trench coat to threaten his son with a whipping, Morty caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He liked what he saw: the beltless trench coat.
Morty Seinfeld is not one to rest on his laurels and lounge around, day in and day out, in his retirement. He is always thinking about ways to earn money—including resurrecting his beltless trench coat—the “Executive,” as it was called—and constantly frets over dollars and cents. Saving a buck is job-one with him. In the episode “The Cadillac,” during one of Jerry’s visits to his parents’ condo, Morty Seinfeld, the cost saver, struts his stuff, preparing to go out to dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon to catch the early-bird special: “a tenderloin, a salad, and a baked potato for $4.95.”
Morty is civic-minded, too, and active in condo politics. He serves as the president of the tenant board. His term, unjustly, comes to an abrupt end after his son buys him a new Cadillac. Seeing Morty driving around in such an impressive set of wheels sets tongues wagging and the rumors flying in the condo complex. On the gossip grapevine, word spreads like wildfire that the Seinfelds are living well beyond their means. Worse than all that, a chorus of whispering voices say that Morty has sticky fingers and is pilfering from the tenant board’s till to pay for his extravagant lifestyle.
In something of an ironic twist, Morty is impeached from his position as tenant board president when Mrs. Choate, a woman on the tenant committee that he was counting on to support him, unexpectedly changes her vote. In the episode “The Rye,” none other than Jerry mugged this very lady on the streets of Manhattan, taking from her person by force a loaf of marble rye bread and calling her an “old bag” for good measure. Now, when Morty insists his son is not a thief, the newly empowered Mrs. Choate declares, “Like father, like son. I vote to impeach!”
Mother Knows Best
Helen Seinfeld is very protective of her family. “How could anyone not like him?” she’s been heard to say in reference to her son. This maternal love for him goes a long way in explaining why Helen has utter disdain for Jerry’s neighbor Newman. She despises the man and exhibits the same contempt toward him as Jerry does.
Helen worries about Jerry all the time. In “The Pen,” even his plans to go scuba diving concern her. “What do you have to go underwater for? What’s down there that’s so special?” Her son’s pithy response: “What’s so special up here?”
Helen’s mother, Nana, is still among the living and so is her loquacious brother, Leo. In the episode “The Pony Remark,” Jerry inadvertently insults an elderly relation named Manya at a dinner at the latter’s residence. Unbeknown to him, Manya had ponies when she was a young girl in Poland. She thus takes great umbrage when he recalls, while growing up, that he couldn’t stand kids who owned ponies. In fact, Manya storms away from the dinner table, plunging the room into silence, and dies of a heart attack that evening.
The immediate aftermath of her passing unmasks a great deal about the Seinfeld family dynamics, including Helen’s saintly patience with her son and Morty’s profound tightfistedness. For starters, sticking around for Manya’s funeral means that the Seinfelds lose their non-refundable “supersaver” airplane tickets for their return trip home. This pecuniary fact of life is foremost on Morty’s mind. Meanwhile, Jerry is concerned that family and friends will blame him for the old woman’s sudden passing. After all, she had just had a checkup and been given a clean bill of health from her doctor. Did stress in the wake of Jerry’s pony remark augur the heart attack that killed her? Initially, Jerry is on the defensive, but not for very long. It’s the conflict of interest that bothers him most of all. He’s got a championship softball game on the very afternoon of the Manya’s funeral service.
To underscore the Seinfeld family’s mindset, which is in stark contrast with the Costanzas’, Helen Seinfeld makes it clear that Jerry is under no obligation to attend the funeral service and, if he wants to participate in the softball game, that’s what he should do—and she means it. She wouldn’t hold his not showing up for the funeral against her son, and neither would Morty. In the big picture, Jerry can do no wrong in his parents’ eyes, whereas George Costanza can do no right when it comes to his own.
Jerry with his folks, Morty and Helen Seinfeld (Barney Martin and Liz Sheridan).
NBC/Photofest
Barney Martin: The Funny Cop
Barney Martin led a long, interesting, and diverse life. Landing the role of Jerry Seinfeld’s father on Seinfeld was the proverbial icing on the cake—recognition, finally, for making us laugh for so many years in so many character roles. At the show’s wrap party in 1998, Martin said, “Playing Jerry’s dad was like having whipped cream on top of a mountain of ice cream.”
In many respects, Barney Martin was the quintessential New Yorker—from a simpler but more rough-hewn snapshot in time. He was born in the New York City borough of Queens on March 3, 1923. Al Smith was New York’s governor, and Warren G. Harding the president of the United States in the so-called “Roaring Twenties.” Like many men of his generation, Martin fought overseas in World War II. He was a navigator for the U.S. Air Force. After the war he returned home to the States, entered the police academy, and was accepted into the New York City police force. His street savvy enabled him to rise through the ranks from beat cop to detective. Always known as a very funny and equally clever man while on the job, he wrote material for deputy police commissioners, spicing up their otherwise dour briefings with flashes of wit and humor. Martin put in twenty years as a cop while simultaneously freelancing as a television writer for the likes of Name That Tune, a game show, and The Steve Allen Show. In 1956, he even appeared as one of the impostors, Jack Bothwell #2, on the popular To Tell the Truth: “Will the real Jack Bothwell please stand up!”
Throughout the 1960s, Martin secured various roles on television, turning up in everything from The Patty Duke Show to The Soupy Sales Hour to Car 54, Where Are You? His TV parts in the early days of his acting career were typically small. He often played characters credited as the “deli owner,” “bartender,” and “handy man.” Martin got his big break in show business when Mel Brooks cast him in The Producers in 1968. He played Goering in this classic comedy with its lead characters—blustering theatrical producer Max Bialystock and timorous accountant Leo Bloom—out to make a fortune by producing an absolute flop of a play called Springtime for Hitler. After his performance in this exceedingly funny and well-received movie, Martin began getting more substantial work. He frequently found roles on the Broadway stage, appearing in such plays as South Pacific, The Fantasticks, How Now Dow Jones, and All American. He is recognized for having breathed life into the role of Amos Hart, the ambitious and selfish Roxie’s timid and vulnerable husband, in the Bob Fosse musical Chicago. He introduced the song “Mr. Cellophane.”
Barney Martin’s multiple television credits in the 1970s and 1980s included The Odd Couple (1970–1975), Happy Days (1974–1984), The Tony Randall Show (1976–1978), Barney Miller (1974–1982), Benson (1979–1986), and Hill Street Blues (1981–1987). He also played Ralph Marolla—Liza Minnelli’s father—in the 1981 movie Arthur, starring Dudley Moore.
Interestingly, Martin came from an Irish-Catholic background, yet played with such honesty and humor Jerry’s very Jewish dad. Countless Jewish Seinfeld fans, he once said, lauded him for the authenticity in his performance. They told him, too, how much he reminded them of their own fathers. Barney Martin’s old New York upbringing—accent included—had an awful lot to do with his playing Morty Seinfeld so convincingly.
Sadly, Martin died of lung cancer on March 21, 2005, at the age of eighty-two. At the time of his death, he and his wife, Catherine, had been married for sixty-two years. The couple had two children—a son and a daughter. Passing away from cancer in 2002, Martin’s daughter predeceased him by three years.
Liz Sheridan: Actress with a Cause
Liz Sheridan, who played Jerry’s overprotective, unsmiling, but nonetheless doting mother, appeared in every season of Seinfeld. No other actor in a recurring role on the series could make such a claim. Sheridan was born on April 10, 1929, in the village of Rye, New York, on the shores of the Long Island Sound. She grew up in Larchmont, a leafy Westchester County town not far from the action of New York City.
Sheridan’s parents were Frank Sheridan, a classical pianist, and Elizabeth Poole-James, a concert singer. Not surprisingly, she had the performing bug in her genes and began a career as a dancer and actress in the 1950s. While plying her trade in the big town’s nightclubs and musicals, Sheridan, nicknamed “Dizzy,” met a fellow aspiring thespian—then a total unknown in the business—by the name of James Dean. In 1952, after a brief romance, the pair got engaged but never quite made it to the altar.
In 2000, Liz Sheridan penned a memoir about her yearlong affair with the “rebel without a cause,” entitled Dizzy & Jimmy. Its subtitle said it all: My Life with James Dean . . . A Love Story. Since its publication the book has garnered many favorable reviews. Publishers Weekly described Dizzy & Jimmy as follows:
The effervescent Sheridan, known as Dizzy, was a dancer living in a theater district residence hall for aspiring actresses when she met the twenty-one-year-old Dean, an Indiana farm boy who had come to New York via Hollywood. Their instant attraction was soon consummated. Sheridan portrays Dean as a sometimes-corny romantic, who immediately began talking about being “together forever” and “who needed always to touch and be touched.” While Dizzy managed to work, dancing in nightclubs all over New York or in summer stock musicals, Jimmy was either more unlucky or more choosy, and brooded over his disappointments.
While their love affair was short-lived, Sheridan remembered it as “just kind of magical.” She said, “It was the first love for both of us.” At one point the couple shared an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—Jerry Seinfeld country—but couldn’t keep up with the rent at the time because the pickings were pretty slim in their line of work. Sheridan recalled that Dean “looked kind of lost” when she first met him. “But Jimmy wasn’t a rebel, and he had no cause,” she said. “I think he was just shy.”
Sheridan’s relationship with the iconic James Dean piqued the interest of Jerry Seinfeld on the set of the show. She told People magazine that he approached her and asked, “So, you were a friend of James Dean, huh?” and occasionally queried, “Got any good Dean stories?” She has long hoped to see her memoir made into a movie. Appearing on BlogTalk Radio, she was asked, “If you had the ability to have dinner tonight with anyone in history, who would it be and why?” Her unexpected response: “Jerry Seinfeld. Why? I’d ask him to help me raise the money for my movie.” Sheridan, however, was not holding out much hope for a get-together, noting how difficult it is to break through the Praetorian Guard protecting Seinfeld from everybody and anybody. “I don’t even know how to get in touch with him,” she said. “He’s got so many people in front of him; you can’t get to him. And I don’t have his phone number.”
A year later, Seinfeld finally touched base with Sheridan, but he gently turned her down. She recounted how their brief chat went: “I asked him if he was a good father. He said, ‘I try.’” She then broached the subject about her movie idea. “I asked him if he would possibly be interested in the movie . . . about the book I wrote, Dizzy & Jimmy. And he said, ‘It sounds terribly interesting’ . . . like a project he would love to do, but he’s so caught up in busy, busy, busy.”
Liz Sheridan’s many television credits through the years include Kojak (1973–1978); Remington Steele (1982–1987); Family Ties; Murder, She Wrote; Blossom; and Alf, in which she had a recurring role as neighbor Raquel Ochmonek. In 2008, she co-starred with Andy Griffith and Doris Roberts in the independent film Play the Game. A bit racy and even controversial to some, we find Grandpa Joe, played by Griffith, discovering the benefits of Viagra and getting back in the game with Edna Gordon, played by none other than Liz Sheridan. An octogenarian sex scene between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Helen Seinfeld?—well, it sounds like material for a Seinfeld episode.
It should also be noted that Sheridan, like Barney Martin, was not Jewish. Yet the acting duo made a very believable New York–born Jewish couple.
Liz Sheridan was married to jazz trumpeter and writer William Dale Wales from 1985 until his death in 2003. They had been together since 1960. The couple’s union produced a daughter. At the time of her husband’s passing, it was reported that he had left his wife on the hook for close to $80,000 in credit card debt, forcing her into personal bankruptcy and a “fresh start.” Sheridan, nonetheless, took it all in stride, not looking for any sympathy. She says the three most important people in her life have been James Dean, her husband, and Jerry Seinfeld.