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

separated, and Howard would start grabbing onto Sid’s leg. And then they’d cry even more.
    But the way Howard kept leaping on Sid like a little monkey was absolutely hilarious.
    So that’s how I started going off to bed: I’d jump on my father’s back, then he’d set me down and I’d grab his leg. Then he’d drag me into bed. That started me thinking that someday, maybe, I could be funny.
    “The older relatives weren’t as much fun.
    They always looked miserable. Always with a frown.
    I called them the upside-down people, because if you
    put them upside-down, they would look so happy.”
    —Billy Crystal, 700 Sundays
    Just like Sid Caesar, I started doing fake accents and gibberish with my grandmother. She spoke Yiddish and Russian, and whenever she would talk about something that she didn’t want us to understand, she’d switch from English to Russian or Yiddish. So I would start doing my version of Sid to her—in Russian. She’d just look at me, trying to understand, then she’d say, “You’re a crazy man.”
    I first started doing funny stuff in school as a little guy. Steve Allen was a huge influence on me. I loved his “Man on the Street” segments, and all of those great characters—Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Jose Jimenez. My friends and I would improvise bits from the show, then my brothers and I started doing the Nairobi Trio from The Ernie Kovacs Show . And when the comedians put out record albums, my dad would bring them home from his store, the Commodore Music Shop. We’d memorize them in a split second, then do the routines for the relatives. We were taught very young how to steal from the best.
    Pretty soon Jonathan Winters became my favorite guy. My father had great taste in comedy, and he’d let us stay up late to watch the best ones on Jack Paar’s Tonight show. And if Jonathan Winters was on the show? Oh, my God. It was like going to the playground for us. Or like watching sports. Getting to stay up late to watch Jack Paar!
    You know what I would do sometimes when I watched Jack Paar? I would take my chair and put it next to the TV set, so that it looked like I was Jack’s next guest. I was about seven.
    And I knew my family was watching me—and laughing. I was always on. My family loved to laugh and would always encourage us to get up and do it. That’s where it starts—by making your folks laugh. And we had such a big family—with cousins and aunts and uncles—that there was always a big room to play to. I mean, I’ve played smaller crowds now than I did as a kid on Passover.
    And, of course, there was my Uncle Berns. What a funny man. He was very much like Sid Caesar—he had those same skills. Sid was a great physical mime, and Berns had the same kind of ability, being a clown master. For us he was the magic man . And he would encourage us to be funny in any situation. He was dangerous and bawdy, the uncle you could play with.

    He was also the one you could actually perform with. He was a big guy—like six-four—and I was a little guy. He’d walk in and—boom!—I’d be up on his shoulders, and we’d put a top coat around us, so that I looked like I was an eight-foot man! Or we’d do fake operas, where we’d all pick a language and . . . just do it.
    He was like a big kid—God bless him.
    “Uncle Berns was a true eccentric—bigger than life.
    He taught us about color and expression. He equated
    comedy and art. ‘Who’s funnier than Picasso?’ he’d say.
    ‘Everyone has three eyes and six tits!’ ”
    —Billy Crystal, 700 Sundays

Chapter 9
On the Road
    N ot too long ago, I found an old childhood diary of mine. The little burgundy leather book with the gold lock, the key long lost, had been my loyal friend from the time I was 8 until I was about 11. I dusted off the cover and there was the name I’d been born with, Margaret, embossed on the front in shiny block letters. I’d been nicknamed Margo, which I couldn’t pronounce—it came out Marlo. And that’s