Read Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny for Free Online Page A

with laughter, then picked up little Tony and gave him a great big hug.
    Four years old and the kid’s timing was impeccable.

    Tony and Dad. The kid didn’t get the nose—but he got the timing.
     
    DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .
    Two friends meet on the street.
    One says, “I haven’t heard from you in so long.
What happened?”
    The other says, “Well, frankly you’ve become
a bit pretentious.”
    The other guy says, “ Moi? ”

Chapter 8
Comedy Begins at Home—Billy Crystal
    When it comes to comedians, I’m a sucker audience. I laugh hard and I laugh a lot. But there are only a few comics who can make me cry, too—and I did plenty of that when I watched Billy Crystal perform 700 Sundays, his one-man Broadway show about growing up in Long Beach, New York. Unlike with most comedians, Billy’s family members (and there were a flock of them) recognized his natural comic gift and encouraged it. They were his first adoring audience, and even supplied props to help him develop his childhood antics. This may be why there is such an ease about Billy when he performs for us. We seem like his family—laughing, clapping, adoring. As Billy recalled for me, it all started with his dad . . .
    —M.T.
    “Dad started taking the time to show us
    the really funny people on television, to inspire us . . .”
    —Billy Crystal, 700 Sundays
    B illy: In the early days of television, the characters that the comics created made you feel: These are my uncles, these are my aunts, these are the same people I know . And if you wanted to be funny—if you wanted to grow up funny—this was the best time. Sid Caesar. Ernie Kovacs. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner doing The 2000 Year Old Man . This was the time.
    These comedians had a way of being Jewish, but without doing an accent or talking about stereotypical things. They just broke it all down.
    So, for me, this was where it all started, with these visual, funny guys.
    I very clearly remember watching Sid Caesar’s spoof of The King and I . At the time, The King and I was huge, and Yul Brynner had suddenly become the biggest star in the world. So Sid played him just like in the movie. Bald. Wearing capri pants. And, of course, barefoot. He makes his entrance, then he hits that famous pose. And suddenly he screams and grabs his foot!
    “Who’s smokin’ in the palace? There’s no smokin’ in the palace!” He’s obviously stepped on a red hot cigarette.
    Well, I’m watching this on TV—I must have been four or five—and that immediately became my thing. “Who’s smokin’ in the palace?”
    So, of course, Dad brought home a bald wig—and now it became a real thing for me.
    “ ‘Pop, listen,’ I said. ‘I want to be a comedian. Is that crazy?’
    ‘Billy, it’s not crazy,’ Dad said, ‘because I think
    you can be one. And I’m going to help you.’ ”
    —Billy Crystal, 700 Sundays
    Then there was Sid’s “Uncle Goopy Sketch,” which was probably the greatest sketch they ever did. It was a spoof on Ralph Edwards’s show, This Is Your Life, where they’d bring on someone famous and honor their life with people from their past. Sid’s sketch was based on a real This Is Your Life episode with broadcaster Lowell Thomas—who obviously did not want to be interviewed by Ralph Edwards. He was terribly disagreeable throughout the whole show.
    Edwards would say, “Lowell, this is a voice from the past!” and he’d say, “I don’t care.” Edwards said, “We’ll see everybody at the party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel afterwards!” And Thomas said, “I’m not going.”
    Well, in his spoof, Sid played the reluctant This Is Your Life recipient, and Howard Morris played his Uncle Goopy. And there’s this moment when they bring out Uncle Goopy, and he and Sid see each other, and they just both start weeping—I mean, really funny weeping.
    And Howard was this little guy, and he’d jump up on Sid, and Sid would carry him all around the stage. Then they’d be