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I was looking forward to an evening in. With leftovers, a nice glass of red and a few episodes of Only Murders in the Building. The first two worked out well, the latter disappointed me somewhat. Martin Short was working the room a bit too much for my taste and the great Steve Martin, acting and producing, seemed ever so slightly distracted behind the eyes. We switched to The Kominsky Method with which I had dabbled – binge watching makes me feel vaguely sordid, so I don’t do it – but what a welcome choice it was.
Michael Douglas is quite wonderful as the unfashionable actor running a studio coaching drama students. Bedraggled and world-weary he may be, but he knows his stuff. He has an ex-wife, an over-concerned daughter and a new relationship with one of his more mature students.
His agent Norman is played by the late, great Alan Arkin and, like many classic TV comedies, it is the relationship between the two curmudgeonly men that is the spine of the comedy. The rhythms are entirely Jewish, just as they are in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the dependency between Sandy Kominsky and his agent are exactly the same as Larry and his agent Geoff in Curb. We could be in the Borscht Belt. They are “standing on the shoulders of clients”. It is all a bit “in”, which works for me, of course, and is written by the inspired Chuck Lorre of The Big Bang Theory and Roseanne.
At the funeral of Norman’s beloved wife he takes the stand and says (I paraphrase): “I have known this wonderful woman since the days of Singing in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown…” perfect pause then, crumpling his notes “Oh no, that was my eulogy for Debbie Reynolds.” Bittersweet, playing against sentiment, all the things I love to watch in comedy.
The choice of the name Kominsky set me thinking. Lorre may have named him for the basketball hero Frank Kaminsky, who played for Raptors 905, or footballer Thomas Kaminski, the Belgian goalkeeper, but it is more likely perhaps that he was paying tribute to those great Jewish legends David Daniel Kaminsky, aka Danny Kaye 1911-1987 (who would be 114 and a half today) and Melvin Kaminsky, aka Mel Brooks, still firing on most cylinders at 99 years,
The name itself, Kam/Kominski/y with all its variants, is Polish and means one who works with stone or one who comes from various places in Poland and the Ukraine called Kamiens. Both Mel and Danny began their acting lives in showbiz as “tummlers” – social directors/ MCs – jesters almost, for the most part in the Catskills, the summer playground of the Jews of New York.
Kaye was born in the US, of Ukrainian parents. He never graduated, was fired from every job he had from soda jerk to insurance investigator, and eloped with the daughter of his dentist employer (after being fired for using the dental drill to screw into the woodwork.) His wife Sylvia Fine turned out to be his best investment as she wrote all the storytelling, tongue-twister songs that became his hallmark. He was, as anyone who saw his show at the London Palladium in 1948 will concur, an incredible all-rounder. The one moment in his variety show that every audience member will recall is that he sat on the edge of the stage and drank a cup of tea while chatting to the punters. In other words, he broke the fourth wall. Nobody could believe it. He was not a remote star on a stage but flesh and blood, thirsty for a cuppa and a chat.
Danny was a fine singer – Thumbelina, The Five Pennies and Wonderful Copenhagen spring to mind – with perfect pitch. He was a deft dancer and as a conductor, it was said, by the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos: “Here is a man who is not musically trained, cannot read music and he gets more out of my orchestra than I have.’’ This, although he couldn’t read a note of music.
He was a qualified pilot and a grade-A Chinese food chef. His star diminished in the 1960s and left him behind to concentrate all his energies to raising millions as a hands-on ambassador for Unesco. It was as though the zeitgist had moved on, leaving behind his kind of entertainer, polished and perhaps too eager to appeal, in favour of a new sardonic breed who basically asked, “Am I bovvered?”
Nothing sardonic about Mel Brooks, nee Kaminsky, it is hard to find the words for the joy he has given me, from the days of wearing out my tape recorder listening to The 2000 Year Old Man.
“To what do you attribute your amazing longevity, sir?” This from Carl Reiner in their party improvisation.
“Well,’’ snaps the 2000 year old. “Never run for a bus, there’ll always be another. Stay out of any small Italian car and eat a nectarine a day. Half a peach, half a plum. Love that fruit. Even a rotten one is good.’’
Reiner persists: “And did you know Joan of Arc?’’
‘’Know her? I went with her, dummy,’’ says the ancient one.
“I never heard of Joan of Arc… er… going with anyone…’’
‘’Well,’’ he retorts, “she was always on a mission. I used to say to her, ‘I’ll wash up, you save France.’”
After memorising his meanderings, I was completely up for Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and The Producers on both film and stage. He breaks every rule of appropriate behaviour and is excruciatingly, funny because of it. He learnt his craft on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows along with Woody Allen and Neil Simon. I would give a kidney to have been a member of that writing room.
I watched him once, at a first night, shepherding his ailing but still elegant wife, Anne Bancroft, into a ladies’ room loo and his whole stature was bent with grief. The broken-hearted clown was steeling himself, via his own Kaminsky method for the next 20 years without her.
Some time after my husband Jack died I found myself at the first night of The Producers musical. There was a moment in Max Bialystock’s office when I took in the theatrical posters on the wall. One of them was for a show called She Shtupps to Conquer. Without realising, I nudged the person beside me thinking it was Jack, because I knew he would be clocking it too.
He was gone, but the humour we shared was not.
