A Little Hanky Panky Started It All

August 13, 2020

39 years ago today, Gene & Gilda met on the first night of shooting on the set of Hanky Panky.  Because I am feeling nice, here is the whole chapter from Gene Wilder: Funny and Sad about how they met and later married:

CHAPTER 11
THIS NICE JEWISH GIRL FROM DETROIT

"I've been married twice and both times to Catholic girls...I think next time I'll
be healthy enough to at least consider 'going out' with a Jewish girl."

- Gene Wilder

The script was called Traces.  It was a comic murder mystery in the tradition of Hitchcock that Gene Wilder wanted to do simply so he could once again work with his good friend Sidney Poitier.  Gilda Radner, who had a year earlier left her star-making five-year run on Saturday Night Live, was cast as the woman Gene falls in love with in the film, which was retitled Hanky Panky.  It didn’t take long before their movie romance developed offscreen as well.

“I’d give it all up for love,” Gilda once said of her career, and in Gene she had found someone who she described as “funny and athletic and handsome, and he smelled good.”  Never so much attracted to the good-looking guy so much as the funny one, Gilda confessed, “A funny man is irresistible.  More than any looks, more than anything.”

Ironically, Gene didn’t look forward to working with “this nice Jewish girl from Detroit,” as Gilda often characterized herself.  In a 1986 interview he and Gilda did with Marilyn Beck, Gene said, “I thought this aggressive Detroit Jewish bitch was going to come on, improvise through every scene, [and] say, ‘No, no, no, no.  That’s not how we do it on Saturday Night Live,’ and push her way through.  And this little timid girl comes on...  She was just Miss Shy.”

In addition to Gene expecting Gilda to be difficult, Gene was quite different than Gilda anticipated he would be.  “She thought I was queer,” Gene said, “because she saw Stir Crazy and she got it in her head that I was tutti-frutti.  Just because Richard kissed me one time.”

“After seeing his movies,” Gilda admitted, “I thought, he’s much taller than I ever thought.  And much handsomer than I ever thought...  And not as tutti-frutti as I thought.” 

Gene and Gilda’s paths almost crossed before Hanky Panky.  “She had seen my movies and I had seen her on television,” Gene said.  “But we never met until August 13, 1981, on the first night of shooting Hanky Panky.  She says she saw me one time when I came to the NBC building to do an interview.  She wanted to come over but felt uncomfortable about doing it.  I wish she had.”

There was one complication for Gene and Gilda’s blossoming romance – Gilda was married.  Her husband was musician G.E. Smith, who for years was the bandleader on Saturday Night Live.  They were married a year and the marriage was already on the skids.  Meeting Gene just confirmed for Gilda that the marriage was over.  Gilda and Smith soon got an amicable divorce and remained on friendly terms.  Prior to Smith, Gilda had been romantically involved with Peter Firth, Bill Murray, Chris Sarandon, and Kevin Kline.

Hanky Panky began production in August 1981 with a cast that included Richard Widmark, Kathleen Quinlan, and Robert Prosky.  The film had many similarities to Silver Streak – both films mixed elements of comedy, romance, and suspense – as Gene once again portrayed an innocent nice guy wrongly accused of murder.  In the film, Gene plays Michael Jordon (a name which now elicits laughter, though at the time the other Michael Jordan had yet to reach notoriety), a Chicago architect who has recently moved to New York.  After sharing a taxi cab with a pretty young woman (Quinlan) and mailing a package for her, Michael is nearly killed by a bunch of thugs who believe he knows about a top secret computer tape. 

Michael tracks the young woman down at her hotel, but she just wants to be left alone.  After she’s shot to death, Michael finds her body and is assumed to be the murderer, leaving him no choice but to flee.  Along the way he meets Kate Hellman (Radner), who believes Michael is innocent and helps him as they run from both the cops and the killers.

The film gave both Gene and Gilda ample opportunity to join together their unique brands of humor.  Typical of this is one of the film’s broadest scenes in which the pilot of the small plane they are flying in suddenly dies.  Michael refuses to accept the fact that he now has to land the plane himself and keeps telling Kate to ask the dead pilot questions.

Upon its June 4, 1982 release, Hanky Panky was a failure with both audiences and critics.  Years later, Gene said, “If I made one mistake professionally in my life, I think it was at that point in my life doing Hanky Panky.  If I made one great choice in my life, it was doing Hanky Panky because I met Gilda, who changed where I live, how I think, how I feel, what work I do...”

When they met, Gene was living in Los Angeles while Gilda was residing in a house she had recently bought in Stamford, Connecticut.  They lived together on and off for two and a half years.  In 1982 they comforted each other as they each suddenly lost a close friend and colleague – on March 5, 1982, Gilda’s fellow Not Ready For Prime Time Player John Belushi died of a drug overdose at age 33, and on December 2, 1982, Marty Feldman died at age 49 of a massive heart attack brought on by food poisoning on the last day of filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City.

In the summer of 1982, Gene took Gilda to France for a two-week holiday.  Gilda had only been there once before when she was eighteen, and had found it a less than thrilling experience.  With Gene as her guide, she saw France in a totally different light and, according to her, “learned it could be a pleasure and I could love it.”

Shortly after they returned from France, Gene and Gilda broke up.  “Gene said he was suffocating, that my needs were smothering him,” Gilda wrote in her 1989 autobiography.  Gilda also suffered from bulimia, something she admitted to during her Saturday Night Live years.  But bulimia remained an ongoing struggle for Gilda, and even after she and Gene were married, she continued to force herself to vomit after dinner.  It got to the point where Gene saw there was little he could do to help her and eventually just tried ignoring Gilda’s eating disorder.

During their breakup, Gilda bought a dog to help her through this terribly lonely period.  The female Yorkshire terrier was named Sparkle.  Not long after getting Sparkle, Gene and Gilda got back together.  Luckily, Gene was a dog lover (in the 1960s he adopted a small female dog named Julie) and he and Sparkle had no problem taking to one another.

For Gilda, her goal was to convince Gene to settle down and marry her.  “Gene built a tennis court and a wine cellar in her Connecticut house,” said Gilda’s friend Pat O’Donoghue.  “That made her a lot less insecure.  It was sort of like an engagement ring.  For a brief moment there, she was truly, finally happy.”  Having been married and divorced twice already, Gene was in no hurry to walk down the aisle again.  In her autobiography, Gilda wrote, “My new ‘career’ became getting him to marry me.  I turned down job offers so I could be geographically available.  More often than not, I had on a white, frilly apron like Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year when she left her job to exclusively be Spencer Tracey’s [sic] wife.  Unfortunately, my performing ego wasn’t completely content in an apron, and in every screenplay Gene was writing, or project he had under development, I finagled my way into a part.”

Gilda’s finagling worked, for she found herself with a part in Gene’s next film, The Woman in Red.  Victor Drai, a first-time producer who had done everything from designing clothes to selling real estate (and is now a nightclub impresario who is opening his own Vegas hotel in 2012), had bought the rights to a 1977 French film called Pardon Mon Affaire.  Drai thought Gene would be ideal for the American version as a mild-mannered family man looking for a little adventure in his life.  He knew Gene’s agent, and soon Gene and Gilda found themselves having a series of dinners at the home of Drai and his live-in girlfriend Kelly LeBrock.

Gene had doubts about Americanizing Pardon Mon Affaire.  “He believed that he really didn’t want to do a remake because he figured the original was so good and it’s really a discredit to the original when you do one again,” said cinematographer Fred Schuler.  But Gene soon realized that a remake could stand on its own terms, and he ended up writing the screenplay adaptation and directing as well.

In the film, Gene plays Teddy Pierce, a shy, quiet advertising executive living in San Francisco.  One day Teddy is in the parking garage of the building he works in and notices a beautiful young woman in a red dress.  As she walks over a ventilation grate, her dress flies up à la Marilyn Monroe.  From this moment on, Teddy becomes obsessed with pursuing this mysterious woman in red as he lies to his wife and children.

For the supporting cast, Gene assembled his old friends Charles Grodin, Joseph Bologna, and Michael Huddleston to play his male buddies who cover for him.  For the title role, both Gene and Gilda thought Kelly LeBrock would be perfect.  LeBrock, who was a 23-year-old model with no prior film experience, was terrified about starring in a movie, but after enough convincing, LeBrock agreed to do a screen test for Orion Pictures and soon found herself with her first film role.  She found the entire experience to be very positive.

“Gene was wonderful,” LeBrock said.  “He was very busy but he still made time for me...  The set was one of the nicest sets I’ve ever been on...  I still hope I will find the same feeling that I had on that set.  It was a family.  We had a great time...  There was only tension on the set one day, and that was the scene of going over the [ventilation grate].  Everyone knew it was kind of an important scene to the film, and everybody sort of got a little bit uptight.  They just wanted it to be really good, and sometimes when you’re on a set people get nervous off each other.

“Gene never raised his voice, he was never out of line or anything...but you could feel the tension.  It was difficult because they were trying to get the dress to blow up, and it wasn’t working well, and they had to change the tactic.  They had to keep trying the dryers in different positions and all.  And time is money on a set, and it wasn’t a big budget film.”

Gilda played Ms. Milner (though, as Gilda pointed out to David Letterman when promoting the film, her name is never mentioned), a hideous woman who works in Teddy’s office who thinks Teddy is really interested in her.  Some critics were baffled as to why Gene would cast Gilda in such an unattractive role with not a lot of screen time.  “She looks like a ghost in this movie,” said Gene Siskel.  “She does nothing funny.”  Despite such criticism, Gilda won the Best Supporting Actress award from the now defunct Your Choice for the Film Awards, an awards program whose nominees were voted on by a panel of film critics and whose winners were chosen by the public.  Gilda beat out fellow nominees Peggy Ashcroft (A Passage to India), Christine Lahti (Swing Shift), Geraldine Page (The Pope of Greenwich Village), and Theresa Russell (The Razor’s Edge).

To write the songs for The Woman in Red, Gene acquired the talents of Stevie Wonder.  Wonder’s songs resulted in a hugely successful soundtrack album, and his “I Just Called to Say I Love You” went on to win both an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Song.  In his Oscar acceptance speech, Wonder thanked Gene and dedicated the award to Nelson Mandela, who was still in prison at the time, which resulted in Wonder’s music being banned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

The Woman in Red opened on August 15, 1984.  It was one of the first films to receive the new PG-13 rating from the MPAA, the first being Red Dawn, which opened a week earlier (Dreamscape, which opened the same day as The Woman in Red, also received the PG-13 rating).  It did respectable business at the box office and received mixed reviews.  On the positive side, Leonard Maltin called it “Wilder’s best film in years,” while Time magazine’s Richard Schickel found it “a well-made sex farce of classical proportions” and “the summer's first comedy for adults.”  Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Wilder, who has improved greatly as a director, has also written the screenplay, and does it with an eye to everyone’s sympathetic foibles...  Whether Teddy is taking up horseback riding to impress Charlotte or turning instant hipster with a silly new suit and hairdo, Mr. Wilder manages to make him reasonably likable.”  Pat Collins proclaimed The Woman in Red the “best romantic comedy of the summer” and found Gene to be “at his irrepressible best.”

A month after The Woman in Red's release, Gene and Gilda were married.  Gilda had been trying for the better part of two years to convince Gene to marry her, and she ended up having Sparkle to thank for Gene’s proposal.  “She was very insecure, terrified of so many things, afraid to be alone for the shortest period of time,” Gene said.  “I thought, having been married before, this could be a disaster.”

Gene and Gilda were ready to leave for a vacation in France with Sparkle.  They had planned to fly from Los Angeles to New York first to visit Corinne and Gil, then leave for France.  While waiting in a private passenger lounge in the airport, Sparkle accidentally ate rat poison.  A panicked Gilda rushed Sparkle to the vet.  Gilda told Gene she would meet up with him in New York.  Gilda spent the whole day at the vet’s office while Gene flew to New York.  When Gene landed, Gilda called him to let him know Sparkle was fine and said, “I know you love me and you know I love you.  You’re so tired.  You need a vacation.  You go on to France and when you come back I’ll meet you in Connecticut and we’ll be together and we’ll be happy.  But let’s not worry about anything.”

“I’d been waiting two years for her to say something like that,” Gene later said.  Upon his return, Gene gave Gilda an engagement ring.  Orion sent them to Europe to promote The Woman in Red, and in between attending the Deauville Film Festival and doing interviews in Rome, Gene and Gilda found time to stop in the south of France where they were married on September 18, 1984 in the small thirteenth-century village of St. Paul-de-Vence.  He was 51, she was 38.  They were married by the mayor of the village in a ceremony performed in French that included only eight people, among them a Belgian couple from L.A. whom they were close friends with, some friends who owned a Danish restaurant in the south of France, Corinne and Gil, and, of course, Sparkle.  The wedding party celebrated at the Danish restaurant of Gene and Gilda’s friends, and later that evening Gene and Gilda enjoyed a traditional French wedding dinner in the chateau they were staying at.  Since they were still in the midst of promoting The Woman in Red, Gene and Gilda actually spent most of their honeymoon in Rome.

When one rude French reporter asked Gene, “Why didn’t you marry the beautiful girl in The Woman in Red?” he immediately replied, “I did!”

Pete Hamill: 1935 - 2020
August 5, 2020

Pete Hamill, one of America's greatest writers, has died at 85. 

Hamill endured numerous health problems in recent years.  He was on dialysis and wheelchair-bound.  According to his brother Denis, also a writer, Hamill fell at his Brooklyn home on Saturday, August 1st, fracturing his right hip.  He was rushed to New York-Presbyterian/Brooklyn Methodist Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery but his kidneys and heart failed while in intensive care.  He died on Monday, August 3rd.

A regular at the legendary Lion's Head Tavern in the Village, Hamill was the last of the old school, hard-drinking newspapermen who epitomized New York's gritty golden age of journalism. His 1994 memoir A Drinking Life is probably my favorite book. It's a nostalgic look back at his coming of age in 1940s Brooklyn.  A very lucky guy from a young age, the book is filled with lots of kiss-and-tell, personal and professional highs and lows, and his battle with the bottle, a habit that he kicked at age 37.

I probably own more of his books than any other author, and his style of prose has been more influential on my fiction writing than anyone else.  Aside from A Drinking Life, my other Hamill favorites are the novels Flesh and Blood (1977) and Loving Women (1989), the journalism collections Irrational Ravings (1971) and Piecework (1996), and the remarkable short story collection The Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook (1980).

Hamill had a brief, controversial stint as editor of the New York Post in 1993 and later as editor-in-chief of the Daily News. 

He won a Grammy Award in 1975 for writing the liner notes to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

He sent me a letter over 20 years ago when I was still trying to get my Gene Wilder bio published.  It was handwritten, sent from his Horatio Street apartment, and very encouraging.  He told me keep writing, go on to the next project, and not to wait for editors to make decisions.  I met him once, and he graciously signed two of his books to me, both with unique inscriptions. 

Hamill was friends with Bobby Kennedy, and helped disarm assassin Sirhan Sirhan on the night of June 5, 1968 as the mortally wounded Kennedy lay nearby.  He hung out with Sinatra and dated Shirley MacLaine, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Linda Ronstadt, yet remained down to earth and real.  A nice guy who never forgot his Brooklyn roots, Pete Hamill led an amazing life.

In addition to his brother Denis, he is survived by another brother, Brian (best known as Woody Allen's still photographer); his second wife, journalist Fukiko Aoki; and two daughters from his first marriage.

Regis Philbin: 1931 - 2020

July 28, 2020

There are certain beloved entertainers who you know are up there in age but you just think will go on forever.  Regis Philbin was one of them.  Philbin, who died on July 24th one month shy of his 89th birthday, was a cultural icon.  His family said he died of natural causes but it was later revealed he died of a heart attack brought on by coronary artery disease at a hospital in Greenwich, Conn., where he and his wife Joy had a home.  Philbin, who lived across the street from the Upper West Side WABC-TV studio he shot his morning show, had a successful triple bypass in 2007.

Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most on-screen television time, the proud Bronx native had the warmth and humor of someone you'd want as your next door neighbor.  He dominated morning television for nearly thirty years before retiring in 2011.  His chemistry with co-host Kathie Lee Gifford was undeniable.  When Kathie Lee left, the show was never the same.  Kelly Ripa is not very engaging and, unlike Regis, is a total phony who cruelly stopped talking to him after he left the show, taking it personally.  Regis admitted he was dumbfounded by the cold shoulder, as he simply left because after three decades and having just turned 80, he felt it was time to retire.

The tributes to Philbin have been many and deserved.  I was an early fan of his while he was still doing the local morning show here in New York before it was syndicated and rebranded Live!  Our paths almost crossed several times but alas I never had the pleasure of meeting the man. 

In a business that thrives on illusion and insincerity, "Reege" was the real deal.  Like Joan Rivers, what you saw on TV was what you got in person.  He was a wonderful singer, having grown up idolizing Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and Dean Martin.  He had a natural talent for hosting, whether it was Live! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or even the Miss America pageant.  He really was the daytime equivalent of Johnny Carson.

Regis admitted one of his few regrets was that he did not make it big until he was in his fifties.  He won two Daytime Emmy Awards and one lifetime achievement one.

In addition to his wife of fifty years, he is survived by two daughters with Joy and a daughter from his first marriage.  His only son, from his first marriage, died in 2014 at age 49.

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A Revolutionary Podcast

July 4, 2020

Earlier this year I was interviewed by Jamey DuVall for his podcast. He was particularly interested in Start the Revolution Without Me. I did not hear from him for six months until a few days ago when he sent me this link. It is a massive undertaking, incredibly detailed and very ambitious. He breaks down films from the year 1970 by month. Go to February. The Start the Revolution segment begins at 18:45 and I start yapping at 28:00. Thanks to Jamey for including me in this very special project.

Carl Reiner: 1922 - 2020

July 3, 2020

What sad news to wake up to this morning.  Carl Reiner, legendary comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director, died last night at his home in Beverly Hills.  He was 98.  According to Reiner's nephew George Shapiro, a producer and agent, Reiner was in good spirits that day and had watched Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune with best friend Mel Brooks, whose 94th birthday Reiner helped celebrate just one night earlier.  Around 10:00 p.m., Reiner was walking out of the TV room with the aid of a housekeeper when he stumbled.  

“He didn’t fall too hard. It was a gentle buckling of the knees,” Shapiro said. Minutes later, Reiner lost consciousness. “He went out within three minutes,” he said. “He didn’t suffer. Everybody wants to go that way.”

98 is a helluva run for anyone, but Reiner's death really stings.  My first reaction was, "I can't imagine how Mel Brooks must feel."  Brooks and Reiner formed, in my opinion, the funniest comedy team ever with their "2000 Year Old Man" act, which they started performing for friends at parties before fans such as George Burns and Steve Allen coaxed them to turn the bit into five hit records.  Their last one, "The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000," won them a Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999.  After 60 years, the material never gets old - they are among the very best comedy albums of all time.

Reiner and Brooks met when they worked on Sid Caesar's landmark Your Show of Shows, and they remained best friends for 70 years. 

Reiner would go on to create and star in The Dick Van Dyke Show, write books and plays, and act in and direct numerous films.  His best known directorial efforts include the cult classic Where's Poppa? (1970), Oh, God! (1977), and four films in a row starring Steve Martin, which established Martin as a major Hollywood comic lead: The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983) (my personal favorite), and the critically acclaimed All of Me (1984), which won Martin best actor honors from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics, as well as a Golden Globe nomination.  Reiner's last film as a director was That Old Feeling (1997) starring Bette Midler and Dennis Farina.

He had a late career resurgence as a character actor in George Clooney's three Ocean's Elevens reboots, and was a familiar face on talk shows.  An old-fashioned liberal Democrat who championed leftist causes (he was a Bernie Sanders supporter), he caught up with the times, Tweeting with abandon about his hatred of Donald Trump, saying he wanted to live to be 100 just to see Trump booted from office.  If only he could have held on four more months.

Reiner won 11 Emmy Awards (though some sources say 9 or 12) and in 2000 received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Reiner's wife Estelle died in 2008 after 65 years of marriage.  An actress and singer, she was best known for her classic one-liner in her son Rob's film When Harry Met Sally... (1989) when she famously muttered, "I'll have what she's having."

After Estelle's death, Brooks, who three years earlier lost his wife Anne Bancroft, and Reiner became even closer, having dinner together every night in front of Carl's giant screen TV, eating off tray tables in the living room as they watched Jeopardy!  At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, they both quarantined in their homes, communicating every day on Skype.  A few months before Reiner's death, he and Brooks were able to cautiously and safely resume their nightly dinner ritual in person.

In addition to Rob, he is survived by daughter Annie, an author, son Lucas, an artist, and several grandchildren.

According to Shapiro, Reiner's last meal was one his favorites: a 9-inch hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut from the legendary Pink's Hot Dogs stand in L.A.  Pink's named the dog after Reiner, who enjoyed it with baked beans on the side, something that I am sure delighted Mel Brooks.

Carl Reiner was an extraordinary talent and, from what I've been reading, a really nice guy (I met them both at a book signing when I was very young but was too nervous to say anything to them).  The thought of Mel Brooks not having his best friend and dinner companion around is heartbreaking.  Both these guys deserved to live 2,000 years.

Soap Dish
June 28, 2020

Along time ago, in what now seems like another world, the 1992 Democratic convention was held in NYC. We did our radio show, "Soap Opera Radio," at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza in Midtown at a terrific restaurant called Samplings. We would have a nice dinner with our guests, then retreat to another part of the hotel to tape the radio show in a restaurant that was only open for breakfast and lunch.
 

This photo is (L-R) Linda Dano, me, my mother Bella, and John Aprea. I am so glad I was able to expose my mother to a little bit of show business. We all had steak for dinner. This was John's last appearance on our show, as he was leaving Another World to pursue film work in LA. My mother and I bought a great cake for him that read, "Good-bye John and Lucas [his character on the show]. We'll miss you both."
 

John and Linda may have been the soap stars, but my mother was the superstar. So beautiful here. A day does not go by I do not think of her and the love she gave me. Now I sound like a soap opera.