Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Marilu Henner
Episode Date: April 6, 2023GGACP celebrates the birthday (April 6) of actress and best-selling author Marilu Henner by revisiting this no-holds-barred conversation from 2020. In this episode, Marilu talks about the sex appeal o...f Danny DeVito, the physical comedy of John Ritter, the star power of Burt Reynolds and the "gift" of her unusual (and uncanny) memory. Also, Larry David pens a love letter, Charles Durning teaches ballroom dancing, Gilbert flirts with Princess Leia and Marilu looks back at the films "L.A. Story," "Johnny Dangerously" and "Cannonball Run II." PLUS: The legend of Andy Kaufman! Bob Costas' "Ed Ames moment"! Shirley MacLaine works the room! Ol' Blue Eyes plays the MDA telethon! And Marilu picks her favorite episodes of "Taxi"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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TV comics, movie stars, hit singles and some toys.
Trivia and dirty jokes, an evening with the boys.
Once is never good enough for something so fantastic
So here's another Gilbert and Franks
Here's another Gilbert and Franks
Here's another Gilbert and Franks
Colossal classic Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast
with my co-host, Frank Santopadre.
Our guest this week is a much admired actress of stage and screen, a former radio host,
a former TV talk show host, a best-selling author, a lifestyle guru, and one of the most refreshingly candid and forthcoming
figures in the entertainment business. You know her work from films like Noises Off,
Cannonball Run 2, The Man Who Loved Women, Perfect, L.A. Story, Johnny Dangerously, Man on the Moon, and dozens of
appearances on the small screen in shows like Sybil, George and Leo, Providence, E.R., Grey's
Anatomy, Party Down, Two and a Half Men, Brooklyn Nine-Nine,
and, of course, the long-running comedy series Evening Shade and the iconic series Taxi,
in which she starred as Loveland cab driver Elaine Nardo.
She's also worked extensively on Broadway and Off-Broadway stage
in shows such as Grease, count them, 10 books
at topics of health, fitness, diet, and child rearing.
In a career that began way back
when she was named the Outstanding Teenager of Illinois,
she's worked with some of the most celebrated artists in the last half century,
including Burt Reynolds, John Travolta, Francis Ford Coppola, James L. Brooks,
Carol Burnett, Steve Martin, George C. Scott, Michael Caine, Andy Kaufman, Blake Edwards, just to name a few.
She's also worked with several guests we've had on this very show,
including Ed Weinberger, Amy Heckerling, Griffin Dunn, James Burroughs, Richard Kind, and Treat Williams.
Hey, she even worked with the Andrew Sisters.
Please welcome to the show a performer of multiple interests and talents.
A woman who claims that she finds Danny DeVito sexier than Robert Redford.
The pride of Madonna High School, the delightful Mary Lou Henner.
Oh my gosh, that is hilarious.
And it's funny because you guys, you talked about everything except the one thing that everybody talks about now.
And it's like, I can't believe you didn't mention it.
And it's probably better that you didn't.
Why?
And that's the whole memory thing.
That weird, yeah.
We'll get to it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know.
But it's like, it's so funny because people always talk about that, like, first thing.
And so it's like, oh, you don't want to talk about taxi?
You know, things like that.
It's just funny.
So last night when I was thinking, okay, Mary Lou Hanna is going to be on the show,
it got me to call my old friend Larry David.
Oh.
Oh, my gosh.
Do you know my history with Larry?
Yeah. years ago.
I want to hear what he said.
I want to hear what he said.
Me and Larry David years ago used to talk to each other often and call each other.
And it would always be something in the trying to get laid category and failing horribly.
We both would regale each other with stories.
So he told me a story that belongs on curbing your enthusiasm.
He was a regular on the show Fridays.
Yes, correct.
And at the same time, I was on my terrible season of SNL.
Oh.
So he was a regular on Fridays.
Right.
And you were the guest host.
That's right.
March 19th, 1982.
Of course. There she goes. That's right. March 19th, 1982. Of course.
There she goes.
That's when it was.
This is going to get very annoying.
I know.
That's why I'm on my third and final husband.
Yeah.
You'll go Tuesday, 1803.
No, I don't go back that far.
She only does within her own lifetime. So, Larry told me a story that he took you out on a date.
Yes, he did.
And, yes.
I want to hear more.
What did he say?
He goes, so I was working with Mary Lou Hanna.
You know, the girl from Taxi.
I didn't date Bernie Sanders.
Oh, my God.
And he, they both sound exactly the same.
I saw, they do, amazing.
But now, having you do both of them,
it's just, I mean, having you do Larry,
I realize, whoa, even more so.
So he said, you know, he of course was very attracted to you.
Oh, we flirted my entire week,
and I was going through like a separation
from my husband at the time, my first husband,
my first ex-husband.
And we, but I was like, oh my God, this is,
I'm in love with this guy,
and I just thought this is not the right timing.
And we ended up going on a date.
This is my side of the story.
We ended up going on a date and he was so darling and so wonderful.
And I had such a huge crush on him, but it was just like a weird time in my life.
And by the time it wasn't a weird time and I was divorced, he wasn't available.
So that's what happened.
But he didn't tell you that part, did he?
No.
The story he told me.
He didn't get laid.
I just want to make that very clear from the very beginning.
Unfortunately, I guess, but no.
We never had like that kind of thing.
With me and Larry, the term he didn't get laid goes without saying.
Now, he told me, and he went into long detail.
He said, so, you know, the date was, the date went well.
I got a couple laughs from her.
And then he said, so then it became a problem.
I was asking some friends of mine, when do you make the second phone call?
And he was obsessing about the second phone call.
Aw.
And then he decided to write you a note.
Write me a note?
I still have that note.
I still have that letter.
I do.
I do.
And it's funny because we've seen each other quite a few times since then.
And we always say, oh, you know, the one that got away, the road not taken, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Because I still have a big crush on him.
Yeah.
So he said he was, you know, he went, he called all his friends.
He goes, when should I?
I didn't even know this part of it.
When should I?
I'm going to have to really tease him next time I see him.
When should I call her next time?
Should it be like a week, two days, a month?
Really?
That's so funny.
And then he said he wrote you a note.
He composed it very carefully.
And he sent you, he said, he asked one of his friends,
his friend John that both of us know,
who gets laid as much as me and Larry do.
And he asked him for advice. And he said, send her the note now. And he sent her,
and he always felt, he lived with the thing that that was the worst mistake.
Oh, really? No, I still have it. Tell him I still have it. Oh, that's so funny. No,
tell him I still have it because it was so charming and funny.
And what he did in the note is he did what he said to me at dinner and then what was the really bubble above his head,
what he was really thinking and saying when he said these things.
And it's so funny. And it's all about, you know, ripping my clothes off and blah, blah, blah.
But he's being very polite at the dinner. And he was a genius always.
See, you could take that note and bring it to any studio.
And probably get it on Netflix.
Yeah, they'll offer you a billion dollars to make it into a series.
Probably.
It's so funny.
Yeah, so he sent the note.
And he lived in shame and horror.
Oh, my gosh.
I didn't even know this part of the story.
Wow.
That he screwed up horribly.
No, not at all.
No, it was just a bad—he knows.
It was a bad time in my life because I didn't—
I was really going through a separation when we worked together
and then subsequently a divorce within a year.
So it was just a bad time.
You know, it was like we were separated.
I went on this date.
I had such a good time.
I was hoping to go out with him again and then thought I have to, you know, settle what's going on at home first.
But your first book, which we were talking about, Mary Lou, before we turn the mics on, your second husband called you a Jew groupie.
Yeah, always.
You know, I always say that as a Catholic.
Mary Lou, I'm a Jew.
That's why I'm here, babe.
I'm your groupie.
Just in case you're asking.
I think Catholic schoolgirls always have a thing for Jewish guys
because we have what is known as our prayer book or our missal,
and it's for mass every day.
You go to Catholic—in Catholic school, you go at least—if you don't go every day, you go to mass in the morning in October, during Advent, during Lent, and during May, every morning.
And so we have these missals, these prayer books with the gospel and everything else, and it's the mass.
And we had holy cards, and the holy cards were always of the apostles and they were these
long-haired, bearded Jewish guys.
So I think it's,
we're programmed,
it's in our DNA
to have crushes on Jewish guys.
But what about that reference
in the intro, Mary Lou?
And I bring it up again
because Dara pointed to herself
that she agrees with you
about finding Danny DeVito
sexier than Robert Redford.
And Dara pointed to herself
she's on your team
oh my gosh
Danny is one of
the sexiest men
I've ever
you can just tell
he like loves women
he loves sex
he's just
he's like a little
devilish guy
he's so much fun
I adore him
he was kind of
the Yoda of the group
and he was my confidant
all the time
and our dressing rooms
were right next to each other
so we really like bonded
and we talk all the time he is so no Danny's hot you don't become a star like that unless you have
some okay I said this on another podcast but I'll just because it'll cut to the chase my family we
have an expression in our family pf and pf it refers to the sexual quotient of something you
know like you could say oh man there was was so much PF at that restaurant last night.
Or, oh, I saw that movie.
No PF between the two co-stars.
And you're constantly talking about PF, PF, PF.
And what it really stands for is penis factor and pussy factor.
And it's what radiates off of somebody.
You know, it's like BDE.
People talk about BDE.
No, that's too sexist.
It's got to be PF because then it's like BDE. People talk about BDE. No, that's too sexist. It's got to be
PF because then it takes care of everybody. Gotcha. And it, you know, because it can,
and some of the sexiest people are not really what you would consider conventionally handsome
or beautiful. And in fact, sometimes those people are boring and they have no PF. But Danny is,
has a gorgeous face and he is sexy. Tons of PF.
Now, can you please tell me that I have pussy factor?
I don't know.
This is our first date.
I don't know.
And yours would be penis factor.
Yours would be a different PF.
If you have pussy factor, you're in trouble, Gil.
Now, this brings me to the next question.
Okay.
Did Danny DeVito ever nail you?
No, no, no, no.
He was with Rhea the whole time that we were all together and everything else.
No, no, no, no.
We're all really good friends.
His birthday was just last week, and I texted him and stuff.
He's great.
I love Danny.
I love all those guys.
I'm still close to all of them.
You still stay in touch with everybody?
Yeah, I just talked to Judd last week.
Tony.
That's great.
Tony, I talk to the most.
Jim Brooks, I talk to
even more than I talk to Tony.
And we just had lunch recently
a couple weeks ago
and I'm going to see him
in the next couple of weeks.
And Tony and I
performed together.
No, no, no,
I'm close to all of them.
Then Judd was in town
and we were trying
to get together.
And Chris,
I went to his engagement party
and then he got married
and, you know,
no, we're all really close.
That's nice.
Yeah, it's great.
It's great.
Judd Hirsch, you said you learned a lot from him.
I love that you're working on, you're getting your information from my book from 25 years ago.
Because I wrote it when I was pregnant with my son, and he's now 25.
He turned 25 in May.
Gilbert has no actual information.
We can talk about 25 years ago. I remember all of it. It's no actual information. We can talk about the 25 years ago.
I remember all of it.
It's fine.
Oh, yeah.
No, Judd was great.
I mean, he's a great guy.
You know, he's intense and funny and passionate and a brilliant actor.
And, yeah.
And Jewish.
See?
Oh, may I remind you again, I'm a Jew.
I know.
I think he's got a little crush on me.
Is that what's going on here?
Is that what's happening after Larry David?
You have a crush on everybody.
I know.
Carrie Fisher told him something similar, Mary Lou, that he was her type.
Oh, yeah.
I like those kind of, yeah.
Neurotic?
Carrie Fisher told me.
I love Carrie.
Carrie told me that, and I repeat this to everybody,
she was once looking at me smiling on a roast we did together,
and she said, you are just my type.
Short, Jewish, and funny.
Oh, yeah.
Well, funny is mandatory.
Not Jewish.
She didn't say Jewish because she's a Jew.
She said, I'm thinking of Jew because I'm getting horny looking at you.
So, no.
Thank you.
She said, short, funny, and cute.
Oh.
Okay.
And you took it?
You liked it? Yeah.
Of course.
He's going gonna run with that
and I'll repeat it
to anybody
who has me too
I gotta
as long as we're
bringing up Taxi
let's talk about
your favorite episode
because I just watched
it again last night
oh you did
because you heard me
talk about it
shut it down
oh shut it down
parts one and two
that was a great episode
because
you know Taxi
the guys hated to lose anything.
So they would just shape it like, you know,
I mean, it was just like so meticulous all week
and they'd just shape it and carve out
anything that wasn't working
so that whatever we shot ended up on film
and ended up as the episode.
So we always had a, you know, Tuesday run through
and they got to the Tuesday run through for the episode
and they said, we can't get rid of anything. This is too good. It's so good, it's going to run over. We're
about to go away for Christmas. Let's make it a two-parter and make it a two-part episode that
we shoot in one week. And because Danny and I were like the leads of that episode, we had the most to
do, they felt like, okay, if any two people can handle it, Mary Lou and Danny can. And so I went
and rehearsed our little tango number and everything else over at his house.
And Rhea was watching us and making sure that we were really good.
It's about where the cabbies go on strike, and I am the shop steward.
And in order to settle the strike, I negotiate a date with Danny.
And the two of us walk through the garage and do this negotiation.
And that's my favorite scene
that I ever got to do on Taxi.
And if you notice,
I am wearing very high boots and painful shoes
because I had to give myself a stomach ache.
Otherwise I would laugh too much
because Danny was the devil
and he was always making me laugh.
And that was the one where you dressed
and did your hair.
Oh my gosh, I've got like four coats on. I have no makeup. That was the one where you dressed and did your hair. She's an apocryphal.
I've got like four coats on.
I have no makeup.
I have a little tight bun in my hair, and I have no personality,
and he takes me on this date.
But it's really funny.
I mean, it's great.
And we do a tango, and he's been greasing palms all day.
He says, you know, and oh, he was fantastic in that episode.
And he keeps saying as part of the negotiation,
he wanted you to call him Stallion.
Stallion.
Oh, my God.
Okay.
So, yeah, because I say, okay, all right, I'll go on the date with you.
It's lunch.
We, you know, I meet you at the restaurant.
We sit at separate tables and everything else.
And, you know, and then he negotiates.
He goes, no, no, no.
Okay.
I pick you up.
It's nighttime.
I pick you up, something like this.
And then within earshot of at least three people,
you must call me stallion.
And none of this is negotiable.
I say, except stallion.
He goes, especially stallion.
And Danny was such a devil
because I'd always laugh when he said stallion.
So what he'd start to do is like lean forward,
stamp his foot, snort a little.
You know, he would like constantly add things to make me
laugh at him. I also found it interesting that you said that Louis De Palma was the most
indispensable character. Oh, no question about it. He's the only one that, the rest of us could
have come and gone, you know, if the show had lasted a long time, that people could have gone
in and out of the series. But Danny was so unusual and so rare as a character and so special.
I mean, when he comes out of that cage for the first time in the first episode,
and he goes like, Rieger, Rieger, Rieger, you know,
because Alex Rieger, that's Judd Hirsch's character's name.
And he comes down, and people realize the height difference.
A star was born.
People went crazy.
And we spoke to James Burroughs.
Oh, yeah.
We had him here a couple of weeks ago.
And he said that old thing like, if Danny DeVito was normal height, people would have hated him.
How mean he was on that show.
But he becomes this lovable character who's a prick.
Yeah. But you know what?
Danny gets so much for free because not only is he a brilliant actor,
but there's not only a pathos because of his height,
but also there's something he knew how to mine a character in such a way.
And he'd always take it back to no matter how they tethered him out to be a nice guy.
Like there was an episode where I get him fired
because he peeks in
at me in the bathroom.
Oh, the peephole, yeah.
The peephole one.
Yeah, Louie Goes Too Far
it was called.
Anyway, fourth season.
Anyway, so I get him fired
and he comes to my house
and begs for his job back
and he ends up telling
this beautiful story,
which is a true story
based on Danny's life,
about how his mother
had to shop for him
in the Huskies.
He had to shop in the Huskies
department with all the other mothers and kids.
And that was a real Danny story.
And the two of us are crying and stuff. And he says,
Oh, Nardo, is that how I made you feel?
And I say, Kindly. He says, Oh, I'm sorry.
And we hug. And of course, at the last
second, he grabs my butt.
So then it's like, Yep, he's still
Louie. No matter what, he's still louis you know no matter what
he's still louis i remember when i saw that i thought you know him grabbing your ass was perfect
oh yeah sometimes you watch something and you go gee that character wouldn't right that it shows
he's still the same yes right it's a credit to the actor, though, that he could pull off playing somebody so evil.
I know.
And so vulnerable.
And delicious, though.
And so vulnerable.
Oh, my gosh.
And so sad.
I know.
You know, that there's a pity to him.
I mean, every layer.
He's fantastic.
Yeah.
Have you guys talked to him yet?
You've got to get him on the show.
He's a talker.
We haven't had him yet.
We'd love to have him here.
He's so, he's great.
He's fantastic.
Danny's one of a kind.
Yeah.
He's the only one that was totally indispensable to the show.
And became a terrific director, I might add.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, War of the Roses and Hoffa.
Really good work.
He started directing some of the taxi episodes and stuff.
So, you know, that's where he kind of cut his teeth on that.
And then he ended up directing things after the show. I also watched Delane's
Secret Admirer again. Oh!
I mean I've seen these dozens of times
That's so sweet, thank you so much
That one, and he's good
in that one too, he has moments in that one
but that's really your episode
and Chris Lloyd's episode
That was a really special one, and if you ever watch
it again, all the names that as I'm trying to
figure out who is it that's sending me the secret,
the conceit of the show is that I break up with somebody once again, and I'm having a terrible time,
and so all of a sudden I start getting these beautiful love notes.
And I think it's this one guy in the garage, but then Judd realizes who it is,
and it's really Reverend Jim, Christopher Lloyd's character, writing them to me.
But as I'm trying to guess from Judd, I start naming off all these names,
and it's all the crew guys.
Oh, great.
So I just started naming all of them.
Perfect.
I just, yeah.
That last scene is magical, too, when you come into your apartment.
He cuts up his van.
He cut his van up to build you the castle.
Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Yeah.
I mean, that's one of the keys to what makes that show great,
is the sweetness.
Yeah, because, you know, it's funny.
Years ago, years ago when the DVDs first came out,
my boys were young.
We were taking a road trip, and they were like,
we're going to watch some videos.
It's like, no, you're not watching anything.
We're playing games.
We're going to, you know, sing songs.
We're going to do this.
And they said, what about Taxi?
And I said, okay, maybe when it gets a little dark, we can put on
taxi. So now I'm listening to, because I'm not the kind of mother where my kids have seen everything.
I just was never that kind of mom. I wasn't show and tell mom. So they start watching and I'm
thinking, oh God. And I can only hear it in the back seat from the back seat. And I'm hearing
like little titters and stuff. By the third episode, all Danny had to do was walk out and they were cracking up. You know,
it's the kind of show that it's so character driven. And it's funny because you know those
people and they're so special. You know, it's amazing. And one thing we ask every actor,
are you one of those people who watches yourself and goes, ah, why did I do it that way?
Well, I think having the memory I have, I don't have to watch it to feel that way.
I remember what I did.
You know what I mean?
I'll think back on a line.
I'll be like, oh, why did I do it that way?
I'm always, I'm very self-critical, but I don't mind.
That's good.
I take my little whip out and try to learn for next time.
There are certain things that I love that I did and certain things that I wish I could do over again. Well, we've asked
this question of a lot of the actors that we've had here. Are you able to escape into it and lose
yourself in the story? Or this is, of course, this question specifically for you, the person
with the miraculous memory, or do you find yourself thinking about things that you were
going through in your life at that particular time? Well, with Taxi, especially, like people ask me, oh, what was
going on this episode or whatever, and I'll always give them the date we shot it rather than the date
it played because it was my experience of it, and I'm like doing lines from it and everything else.
So it's, you know, it's, I don't forget what the experience was like shooting it
or what the episode was about.
So is that what you mean?
Yeah.
Do I, like, lose myself?
Like, oh, I can't believe I even said that as the character.
The show is so well written.
Do you actually allow yourself to get carried away?
Do you get caught up in the scene?
Oh, well, you do because it is so good.
But I'm still there.
You're there.
You're thinking about it.
That was a Tuesday I had a stomachache.
Yeah.
I had Italian for lunch.
Because I got off dairy.
I get that.
You do.
Sometimes I'll watch a scene in a movie and I'll go, oh, God, I was having a rotten day that day.
I always like to notice what take they use.
Like, oh, man, that was take 13.
I loved 11, but we lost the light on 11, you know,
or something happened on 11 or something like that, you know.
Now, we've hinted at it before all through the show,
but tell us about this really weird talent that you have.
Talent that I was born with.
You know, I've had this thing my whole life.
I didn't know it was that rare until the whole 60 Minutes thing came up
because Leslie Stahl is a friend of mine,
and she was offered a story about a woman who had an unusual memory,
and she passed on it because she said,
it's not that unusual.
I have a friend with the exact same memory
because anyone who knew me knows,
has always known that I have an unusual memory
because it was always like, oh, remember the last time we saw each other, blah, blah, blah.
And so then she passed on the story.
They put it on Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer.
And then three years later, Leslie called me and she said, we are going to do a story on it.
So basically what it is, it's called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.
And the people who have it remember virtually every day of their life.
They've wired us, put us through an MRI,
taken 300 measurements of our brains,
and they have found nine areas 10 times larger than the normal brain.
Wow.
So it's kind of like freaky and interesting.
Now, isn't it?
I also heard, I don't know if you have this too,
where you could say a date to you, and you could say whether it was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Yeah, sure she can.
Okay, I have no way of knowing if this is right or wrong.
You're going to give me a date?
1973, August 5th.
August 5th, 1973 was a Sunday.
This is scary
look it up
do you have it
we have Dara
in the next room
we'll have our
cross check it
August 5th, 1973
was a Sunday
that's amazing enough
you saw how fast
I said it right
oh god
but I heard you
on an interview
and you were actually
you could remember
somebody threw a date
at you
and you could remember
you were in a restaurant
you remember what you had no I can tell you what I was doing on date at you, and you could remember you were in a restaurant. You remember what you had.
Yeah, no, I can tell you what I was doing on that date.
You had an argument with somebody.
You had a lover's quarrel.
Yeah.
It's uncanny.
Now, I'm asking.
We're looking it up.
Well, we believe her.
She's never wrong.
But I still have to have that confirmation.
That's okay.
This is scary.
What about February 7th, 1961?
That's my birthday.
Oh, that's your birthday.
That's my birthday.
February 7th, 1961.
So I was little.
Okay, so February 7th, 1961 was a Tuesday.
Unbelievable.
Right?
Wow.
It was a Tuesday.
Okay. It was a Tuesday. Unbelievable. Right? Wow. It was a Tuesday. Okay.
It was a Tuesday.
Yeah.
But August 5th, I can tell you exactly what I was doing.
And what I saw the movie, Oh, Lucky Man.
If you remember that movie.
Sure.
Malcolm McDowell.
Yeah, Malcolm McDowell.
Uh-huh.
On that day.
Oh, my gosh.
And there was a softball game because I was doing the first national company of Greece.
And it was, and we did it in Rancho Park.
And the ushers beat us that day.
Incredible.
And Barry Bostwick pitched.
Barry Bostwick.
Very good.
Who was playing Danny?
Right, Danny Zubik.
1973.
We're back to 73.
Why do you keep picking the same year?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Pick another year.
1978.
Uh-huh.
1978.
Okay.
July 12th.
That was,
okay,
that was a Wednesday.
Oh, you know what?
Oh my God,
78?
Yeah.
That was our first
camera blocking day on Taxi because we started July the 5th.
Oh, yeah.
And our first episode that we shot was July 14th.
You mentioned that in the book.
So that was Wednesday.
Nice kill.
Oh, fuck.
You just landed on that.
See, I can ask an intelligent question by accident.
Yeah.
No, it's fun for me because sometimes I'll put,
you know,
I'll hook up my phone
and I'll listen to
an entire album
and I'll pick a year
and just go through
every day of that year
and just refresh
what I did
and like think about it
almost like I'm watching
a movie of myself.
It's a gift, really.
But not watching,
I'm inside my body.
It's a gift.
It's a gift,
total gift.
How does this affect you in your career? Well, I mean, you know, I'm inside my body. It's a gift. It's a gift, total gift. How does this affect you in your career?
Well, I mean, you know, I always tell people if they have a kid or something
or they're worried about having this kind of memory,
like their grandson has it or their child has it or something,
I always say get them into show business, get them into acting class
because you want to use that material from your life.
You know, we do sense memory exercises as actors
and you're always trying to think,
like, what can I draw on from my own life that reminds me of this character? So it definitely has helped that way. I think in the beginning, I would, like, learn my lines so quickly that I
would just do them the same way every time rather than sense around, like, hmm, why is my character
saying that? Or what does my character feel like saying now? And what is the line? So I purposely don't learn lines immediately because I know I just have to look at it twice and
I've got them. And if I can't get them like immediately, it's because there's usually a
grammatical error or there's something that hasn't tracked logically for me. It's absolutely
fascinating. I've heard you say too, that people have different triggers, that some people it's
sound or music and some people it smells.
Yeah. Everyone, I always describe it this way. Everyone has what I call their primary track.
It's like in the jigsaw puzzle of your life, what are the hard edged pieces by which you can
interlock other pieces too? So it could be travel, sports, food. Phil Rosenthal is food. And I asked
him about a long time ago and he said, food, food.
Because I said, oh, is your primary track, you know, everybody loves Raymond's scripts?
And he said, no, no, no, it's food. And then he, now he has those shows. But it, there's your primary track and then everyone has what I call a dominant sense. Everyone is a sight, sound,
touch, taste, or smell person. So when you can cross-connect your primary track with
your dominant sense, you can figure out how you receive, retain, and then retrieve memories.
Because the people who have HSAM, we just happen to have an extraordinary retrieval system.
And everything you've been through is on your emotional hard drive, and it's right there.
And that's why you can smell something, you can taste something, you can get a massage and all
of a sudden it's like, why am I thinking of Paris? Or why am I thinking of my grandmother's house or
something? Wow. You know? Yeah. I heard that smell is one of the most direct. Absolutely. Yeah. That's
really strong. That's closest to your like memory. Yeah, you could smell something and get happy or sad or angry about something.
Or buy a house because they've been making apple cider or cinnamon cookies or something.
It's like, I have to have this house.
It reminds me of my family.
You know, we've talked about it on the show before, Mary Lou, and for me, it's pop songs.
Oh, yeah, see?
There's your primary track.
Like a song, we know the song Precious and Few by Climax.
I know what room I was in, what cereal I was eating, what comic book I was reading.
And then I'll say, okay, Weekend in New England, Barry Manilow.
Yeah.
I'll know there was an ice storm.
Those are the things that actually trigger for me.
Exactly.
That's your primary track, and it's auditory.
Well, no big surprise. things that actually trigger for me. Exactly. That's your primary track, and it's auditory.
Well, no big surprise.
Look at you guys have headsets on,
and you're doing something like a podcast where you have to be a listener and a speaker.
I guess that's true.
We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing,
colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor.
Do you think you inherited any of this?
Because I've heard you say with your mom that she kind of knew that you were going to be—
she knew taxi was the right thing for you.
Yeah, she was dying at the time, too.
She was in the hospital dying.
She knew that, you know, she wanted me to go and audition and leave her bedside to go in and audition.
Oh, she was intuitive.
She was intuitive, but they didn't have the whole memory thing.
I see.
It doesn't seem to be, even though my one son, he wants to be a comedy writer,
so if you know somebody, he wants to be in a room, he's brilliant.
Graduated from Northwestern.
We know some people.
Last year.
No, last year he graduated from Northwestern with a minor in math because he's so smart.
But he's the head of his improv troupe.
He was in Meow, you know, the whole big Northwestern thing.
But he is an international bridge player.
And he plays bridge and started a bridge team at Northwestern.
They took the bronze.
Then they took the gold.
But he plays with these women who hire him for lots of money.
And so he's writing a script called Bridge Gigolo
because it's so—that's how he feels. But
it's funny. He's a brilliant bridge player. He's 23. And your other son is a filmmaker.
Is a filmmaker and he's directing videos. He directed like most of the Ben Platt videos.
Oh, that's great. He's getting bit by other people.
Talented family. Yeah.
I have one more taxi question. Okay.
Ed Weinberger, well, we'll ask you about
Andy later, but Ed Weinberger was here and he told us that Stan Daniels used to warm up
the audience by singing Old Man River in Yiddish. I don't know that every week. It was like, oh,
here comes Stan. We did have a combo, but you know, like a little sort of, they used to play
like Brazilian music. It was more like being on a cruise.
And then once in a while, Stan would get up there and do that.
But it wasn't like, that's funny.
I just would love to have seen it.
You know, when Reverend Jim, when Christopher Lloyd, I take, it's an episode called Elegant Iggy.
And I take him to a very high class party because we end up getting tickets to something.
And we go, and he goes to sit at the piano.
And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe he's doing this.
And he starts playing horribly, and I'm so embarrassed.
And then all of a sudden, he just starts playing the piano, and it's, you know, classical music.
That was Stan, who was really playing.
Wow.
Now, a story I heard recently.
This is when everyone shuts up and gets scared.
An important event in America and the world's history.
I know what you're going to say.
I'm already ahead of you.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Go ahead and say it.
Are you talking about Bob Costas?
Bob Costas. Well, this has to do with the say it. Are you talking about Bob Costas? Bob Costas.
Well, this has to do with the Moonlight.
Moonlight, yes.
Yes, okay.
Because Bob Costas asked me about it.
Okay, okay.
Because this was before 60 Minutes, so they were asking me about it.
Tell us the story.
Okay, so I'm with Bob Costas.
This is, you know, April 27th, 1980.
Anyway, and he came out here to shoot a bunch of shows,
and I was one of the last people.
And I'd been on his show before, but we're talking, talking, talking.
And he said, I noticed in my notes something about you, you know,
that you have a very unusual memory.
Because I was telling people about it,
but nobody knew what I was talking about until the 60 Minutes thing.
So he said, where were you the night of the moonwalk?
And I said, he said, where were you the night the men landed on the moon?
And I was like, no, somebody told you that.
And he said, no, what?
And I went, no, come on.
And I was, you know, like, come on, baiting him sort of.
And he was baiting me.
And I said, well, I was in Chicago.
And he said, no, there's more of a story there.
And basically I told him, yeah, that's the night I lost my virginity standing up in a shower.
So he said—
July 20th.
July 20th, 1969.
He said, well, you know, Neil Armstrong wasn't the culprit.
He wasn't the guy.
So that became—you know how Johnny Carson had his Ed Ames moment?
Oh, yeah, with the tomahawk.
He talked about the Tonight Show with the tomahawk. We just talked about that tonight with the tomahawk.
I became Bob Costas' Ed Ames a moment,
and he actually called me on the anniversary of the moonwalk this year.
Perfect.
Well, that's a good place in pop culture history.
Oh, people still write to me.
They call me.
They wish me happy anniversary.
People tell me in valet parking, like, oh, I saw you on Bob Costas. I always wanted to ask you
about that. Nice one, Gil. Well, as long as we're talking about embarrassing moments, what happened
with Sting on the Leno show? Oh my gosh, that was May 13th, 1993. Okay. What day of the week?
It was a Thursday. Okay. That sounds good. I was. You can
look up all these dates. I was on with, okay. Oh yeah. Cause you just read the book. Yeah. So I was
open the book with it. You opened the book with that story. I was on, I always loved Sting. I
was thought he was amazing. And my son was just bid a job for Sting. Isn't that something? That'd
be amazing. Yeah. So I was on the show.
I was so excited. I said that I got
more dressed up than I did for any of my weddings
and everything else. And so I
was on the show with him and
I just was, it was like a 13
year old girl crawled through her TV
set to meet her idol. I was
totally embarrassing. I even
said to Jay Leno, no, you shut up.
And I said, I wish I could eat this cassette so it was inside of me.
You know, and I just said so many ridiculous things you have no idea.
I said, you know your guest book?
I said, you know the guest book?
I wanted to write in one page, but then I flipped it over and I wrote,
please keep this book closed so that Sting is always on top of me.
You know?
I mean, I'm crazy.
I'm embarrassing myself on did he handle it?
I'm embarrassing myself on national television.
He was very charming and very sweet.
And then the next time I went to his concert,
I, of course, didn't go backstage,
but I was going into valet parking,
and they said, Sting wants to see you backstage.
And I was like, what?
So I went backstage, and he was so charming,
and he was so much fun.
And I said, oh, I'm so sorry.
He goes, no, no, no, that's okay.
The restraining order is over. It's all right all right oh he had a sense of humor about it he had a sense of humor about it oh no I was embarrassing that's nice I was like crazy
I was smelling him couldn't find smelling him no it doesn't sting have that weird oh the tantric
yoga oh that's oh no I told him I would, you know, because the movie Indecent Proposal was popular that night.
That time, during that time when I was on the show in 93.
And I told him, I said, after reading the Rolling Stone article, I'll give you two nights, you know.
So we were making jokes.
He was fine.
He was fine.
Because isn't that like, I always thought it was something like you had sex, but you
didn't come or something like that.
I don't know.
I think it's that you can prolong the sex.
Yeah, you can prolong.
Yeah, I think that's the premise.
I think the woman can have multiple orgasms and the guy's holding back or something.
And maybe you're doing it from across the room.
I don't know.
Because I've never been with him.
You liked going on The Tonight Show with Johnny too. Do you remember how
many times you were on with Johnny? It was great. I was on a bunch of times with him and a lot with
Jay because I know Jay a long time. And one time I was on The Tonight Show with Johnny and Brian
Regan ended up on and he ended up sitting down with us because Bob Hope was supposed to be on
the show and he couldn't make it because there was a bomb scare wherever he was giving a speech. So he was not on. So I got three segments, and Brian came on.
Nice.
He did a set, and then he sat down. And when I was trying to get pregnant with my second husband,
and so I told him that we had a little chart, and that we were making notations,
and that we were trying to figure out. And I said something about, you know what's funny?
I said to him, yeah, 15 times in February, a short month.
And he was like, 15 times?
I said, yeah, in February.
And he was like, I said, is that a lot?
He said, 15 times.
You know how Johnny always had that thing.
But that's nothing now.
I mean, my third and final husband, we have like five show weekends.
You know, we like.
Bless your heart.
We're like hot for each other
that's good to hear pf is pf yeah that's good to hear well i bring that up to the carson thing
because as a kid it takes us back to your childhood because as a kid you pretended to be
i was hosting a talk show and talking into a hairbrush like it was a microphone
can you can you do some of that for us now
are you guys married i went i'm just curious i'm married yes newly married how long are you Can you do some of that for us now?
Are you guys married?
I'm just curious.
I'm married, yes.
Newly married.
How long are you married?
Newly married.
Only five years.
Late in life.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, I didn't get married until my 50s.
Nice.
Oh, that's good.
It doesn't matter.
Marriage.
I said this to the, do you know my brother, my brother and me?
Do you know those guys?
They're friends of Lin-Manuel Miranda's.
They're so much fun. And they interviewed me on the red carpet and then I did their podcast. And I told them that my
family, that we have three theories of marriage. So I'll tell you. Oh yeah. I want to hear them.
First one is marriage is like making waffles. You throw the first one out, you know, but not in your
case, Frank, you don't have to worry about it because you got married so late. I hope. I definitely had a waffle.
Okay.
Second theory is marriage is finding that special certain someone you just know you'd
love to aggravate the rest of your life because it's like, and you want to like, like get
to them.
Right.
And the third one, Saint-Exupéry wrote it, but I added something to it.
And that is you'll have a happy marriage when you realize marriage
isn't two people gazing
longingly into each other's eyes,
but rather looking out over the
mountain in the same direction.
Oh, that's profound.
With their hands on each other's genitals.
That's the part
I added. Because what you want
is you want vision
and heat. Yes, You gotta have the heat.
You want vision and heat. If you don't
have both, it's not going to work.
It's not going to work. You gotta have both.
This is interesting stuff. One time I was
talking to Henny Youngman.
That's a segue. Who I'm sure
you probably have a crush on.
No.
A little before my time, but yeah.
He one time, this was years ago, and he said to me,
so, you married?
And I, at the time, I wasn't.
I said, no.
And he goes, what do you do for aggravation?
That's right, right.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, but that's what's so great about marriage is that you break down the barriers.
You know, you wouldn't even want to be with yourself as much as you are sometimes with your spouse.
So, of course, there are going to be issues.
And it's a 24-hour negotiation all the time.
You know, the temperature when you're sleeping, who's got the covers, what kind of bed you have, pillows, you know, just so many different things.
The quirks that we all have with one another.
It's hard, but it's worth it when it's great.
Well, third time seems like the charm for you.
Third time's the charm.
Good.
Glad to hear that.
Yeah, it's nice.
It's great.
We have a great story and everything.
He was my college roommate's boyfriend, so it's, you know, she's not talking to me,
but we got together 16 and a half years ago and went through a big health crisis for him,
and everything's good now.
Everything's great.
Well, here's a funny thing from the book, too.
You're talking about,
early in the book,
you're talking about heroes like Marilyn Monroe
and Streisand and Chita Rivera.
And one of those people was Shirley MacLaine.
Yeah, I got to work with her.
Who you got to work with.
Oh my gosh, she was amazing.
And all those movie stars that were in,
I mean, that was like the craziest experience,
Cannonball Run 2.
We shot it in the dead of summer. We had to get
together at two o'clock in the morning for hair and makeup because it was 117 degrees. And Dom
Deluise was in a nun's habit. So that was not a... Dom Deluise, he's sort of like your love interest
in the movie. It's very disturbing. You want to hear the story about that? This is so funny.
Very disturbing. So I work with Burt Reynolds on The Man Who Loved Women. And the first day we meet,
we have so much chemistry. We just adore one another. You know when you meet somebody and
you just know you love that person and there's no like awkwardness or anything. And Blake Edwards
was so great. He let us ad-lib and we just had this incredible chemistry. Well, that night he
called me. He said, I want you to come down to my dinner theater.
I want you to come down and I want you to do, they're playing our song.
Because he knew I was on Broadway and sang and danced and stuff.
So I said, okay, done.
He said, and I'm doing a new movie called, it's Cannonball Run 2.
And I want you to play this girl that Dom and I rescue.
She's hiding out from her father.
play this girl that Dom and I rescue. She's hiding out from her father and it's in, she's in like a sanitarium and she ends up in the road with us. I was like, great. He said, but I need, I need a
rewrite of the script. Do you know any writers? And I went, oh my God, all the taxi guys, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, Harvey Miller. Did you know Harvey? Oh my God, yes. Terrific writer. So Harvey Miller. I did medicine. I did with him.
So he, I get Harvey the job.
And what does he do?
He writes another female character.
And then Shirley MacLaine, because she had just come off of Terms of Endearment,
she wanted to do something where she looked hot.
So she ends up taking the job.
And, of course, she has to end up with Bert, and I end up with Dom.
That was very odd.
Harvey Miller.
But it's okay, because I got to work with Bert five times.
He asked me to play his wife on Evening Shade.
I also did a remake of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that Bert directed, and I played opposite
Marty Sheen with Robbie Benson was in it and Parker Stevenson. And we shot that on September 23rd, 1985.
Anyway, Monday.
But so, yeah, so I got to work with Burt five times.
There's a guy that we would have loved to have on this show, Burt Reynolds.
And I can't believe he's gone.
I can't believe he's gone.
And especially his parents lived well into their 90s, both of them.
So you just thought he was going to live forever.
I mean, it's just, it's shocking to me because we'd talk a few times a year and we adored one another.
That's nice.
People always said, oh, did you have a thing with Bert?
And I go, no, that's probably why I got to work with him so many times because, you know, we were always, you know, we never got together.
He never got enough credit.
He never had the ugly breakup with him.
No, he never had to have the ugly breakup.
Or have the whatever current girlfriend or wife he had saying, oh, no, that's an ex-girlfriend.
You know, which is usually sometimes the case.
Often the case.
He made so many, you know, audience-pleasing films.
And this has been said before about him.
I'm not breaking news here.
That he wasn't taken seriously enough as a dramatic actor.
If you see him
in a movie called
Breaking In.
In Deliverance.
Oh my gosh.
What's one?
He's unbelievable
in Deliverance.
Deliverance or Boogie Nights
later in his career.
Boogie Nights.
A movie called Breaking In
where he plays a safe cracker.
Really, really terrific range.
I mean, he could do a lot.
He could do anything.
And the nicest person.
I mean, just so generous.
So crazy.
Oh, and comedian. Yeah. Really good comedian. But the nicest person. I mean, you're just so generous. So crazy.
Oh, and comedian.
Yeah, really good comedian. But it's a wonderful director.
I mean, he put such a team together for Evening Shade,
and we just all, it was a real family,
and it was such a great experience to go from that,
from Taxi, which was five years,
take a little break,
and then go into Evening Shade,
which was four years.
You know, it was just very special.
It never got its due, though.
That was a real problem.
There were a lot of dramas with network and whatever.
It's nice to have two shows like that, though, in one career.
I know.
Now I want my third.
Now that's my, tell the universe I want my third.
Now you've gotten greedy.
I'm going to do that.
Well, we talk, we love character actors on this show, Mary Lou, if you've listened to
it.
We've had a bunch in here.
We've had, you know, Bruce Dern was here, Griffin Dunn. Oh, Griffin. Oh, my gosh. I love him so much. Yes, I know you've worked to it we've had a bunch in here we've had you know Bruce Dern was here Griffin Dunn
lots of
Griffin
oh my gosh
I love him so much
yes I know you've worked with him
oh my gosh
have you watched him
on This Is Us
I have
you see how incredible
he is as an actor
but so damn funny
so seriously
Griffin Dunn
and Ian McShane
believe it or not
Deadwood
Mr. Deadwood himself
hilarious
and I think I know
what actor you're gonna mention mention. I'm going to
mention an actor she was in Evening Shade
with. Who would that actor be?
Now, would it be Elijah Cook Jr.?
No, he was in something else. Oh, that was in
Hammett. That was in Hammett. I did Hammett with Elijah Cook.
Charles Durning, I was going to mention. Charles Durning!
He was terrific.
Let me tell you something. At my wedding,
I danced more with him than I did my husband
or anybody else from the dancing school or any of my buddies.
He was a phenomenal dancer.
Such a great actor.
I heard.
So simple.
He had such a weird life.
Well, World War II hero.
Yes.
World War II.
Like Normandy or something.
He has a scar.
But he didn't talk about it.
And at one point, he was a dance instructor.
A dance instructor.
After the fucking, after being, fighting the Nazis.
I know.
At 17 or whatever.
He's a dance instructor.
And so brilliant.
He made it look effortless.
He and having Charlie Durning and Hal Holbrook, who played my dad.
Wow.
He was unbelievable. And Ossie Davis. All of them. All of them who played my dad. Wow. He was unbelievable.
And Ossie Davis, all of them.
All of them.
They were all just genius.
Michael Jeter.
Michael Jeter, my neighbor.
Liz Ashley.
Just show up and work with those people every day.
What a gift.
Oh, my gosh.
Well, everybody had a different way of working.
You know, everybody had, I mean, Taxi, most of the people were like, you know, theater
actors, so everybody had sort of that kind of theater actor
thing and we were shaping it all week. With Evening Shade, everybody had a different style,
you know, film and television and a stage. It was great. It was great. And some people learned
their lines immediately. Some people didn't want to know them till the end. And everybody had a
different way. It was like going to a master class every day. I first met Charlie when I was auditioning for Tootsie.
Because I auditioned for it.
At the time, the script was one female rather than two females.
And I was on Taxi and they brought me in.
And I spent the day with Dustin Hoffman.
And we were watching movies, film of his makeup test.
And did he look like a woman enough, et cetera, et cetera.
And Charlie Durning came in, and he was doing makeup test things too.
And we met and instantly became, like, friendly.
And then I didn't get the part because I think Dustin Hoffman's mother got sick.
They changed.
They went away for a while, and they took the script and changed it,
and then they made it two women.
And I didn't even go back for it
because of my taxi schedule
but
and the two women
who did it
were ridiculous
they were both
so brilliant
but I did get to work
with Charlie Durning
in a live production
of Mr. Roberts
that they did
on NBC
and it was
Robert Hayes
and Howard Hesselman
and Charlie
and me
and Kevin Bacon
who was playing
Ensign Pulver fresh off of Footloose.
Wow. I gotta find that.
It was live. 37 guys
and me. I had so much fun. I remember
I did see that. I wonder if that's
available. Holy shit. It probably is.
It was a live thing. Yeah. Did you
interact with Dean and Sammy much
on this? Because you have a scene with them. Okay.
Alright. Here's the thing them in Cannonball Run 2.
Here we are at the Arizona Inn in Tucson.
And as I told you, we're in hair and makeup at 2 o'clock in the morning because it was so damn hot.
They had to pull the plug at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
So what were we going to do?
So everybody hung out at the pool.
Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin.
And Shirley MacLaine, you have to understand, she's like bringing a bright child to a wedding
because she like runs around and jumps on everybody.
And it's so much fun to be with her
and watch her interact with these guys.
And I was like a little kid in Chicago
watching these people in movies.
Of course.
I'm like hanging out with these movie stars.
And everybody is so nice and so friendly and so special,
especially because Shirley, they adore her.
She is their girl, you know.
And so I was just like along for the ride and everybody was so nice.
So now Frank comes and he comes on a day, Frank Sinatra comes on a day when there's 32 wag, imagine, 32 trailers in the desert.
Everybody's got their own trailer.
It looked like a wagon train.
It was crazy.
He was actually there
only one day,
but Dean and Sammy
hanging out with Shirley,
that was like a whole week.
It's got to be surreal.
Listen to this.
It was surreal.
It was surreal.
They don't seem like real people.
I know.
I know.
They seem like guys
from posters
and Vegas movies and things.
I mean,
it was just,
it was mind-boggling to me.
I'll tell you a funny Frank Sinatra story.
Okay, so I am on Broadway, my very first Broadway show.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm so excited.
I'm working with the Andrews sisters.
Oh, and over here.
Oh, man.
And over here.
Right.
And Anne Reinking.
Treat Williams.
And Treat Williams plays my boyfriend,
and the two of us never stop kissing
because our characters are madly in love with each other,
and we're always kissing on stage.
And Johnny Travolta, he's playing this little misfit-type character. We're going to do a number for the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
And the soundstage is at, you know how they always have the big stage with all the people at phones?
Oh, yeah, the phone banks.
And the performers come in.
Right, the phone banks.
Okay.
So now we're all there, and we're doing our number of rehearsing because we have to do it in between shows on
saturday and we're gonna film our bit so i have to go to the bathroom and i say oh can i go can
somebody they say okay we'll go up this elevator but be very careful you know blah blah blah so i
go up the elevator i find the bathroom i come down press a button, I open the doors and it's, there's nobody there. It's the entire set.
And there is not one human being there. And I'm saying, hello, hello, hello. And I'm thinking
like, what happened? Everybody just disappears like Brigadoon or something. It's like crazy.
They're gone. All of a sudden this guy comes up to me, he says, oh, you're not supposed to be here.
And I said, I was just here.
What happened?
He goes, no, no, no.
This is a duplicate set on a different floor for when Frank Sinatra comes.
Oh, my God.
He has his own complete setup for when he performs.
The entire set is on another floor from where we were.
Isn't that crazy?
That's insane.
Wow.
That was my intro to him.
But you know,
that cast,
it's like a fever dream.
Don Knotts,
Sid Caesar,
Ricardo Montalban,
Dub Taylor,
Jamie Farr,
we had him here.
Tony Danza.
Tony Danza had to work
with the orangutans.
The orangutans.
And how about the guys,
how about all the guys
from the Godfather?
Oh, they brought in
Abe Vigoda, Alex Rocco.
Yeah, all of them.
Michael Vigazzo, Frankie Five Angels.
Yeah, all of them.
Now, that's the one I think Alex Rocco is Charles Nelson Reilly.
Yeah, he's in it too.
Well, he's in it too.
Yes, I remember that.
Artie Johnson.
There's a scene with Alex Rocco and Charles Nelson Reilly.
That's who Burt was.
He was able to just galvanize people.
He got them all on board.
Everybody loved him and wanted to do whatever he asked them to do.
You know, the movie wasn't good, but we had a blast.
Even just, I mean, just to see a cast assembled like that.
I know.
You don't even see that anymore.
Well, it's like those old time movies. Yeah, like it's a Mad, Mad World kind of thing. Exactly. You don't even see that anymore. Well, it's like those old time
music videos that we saw as kids.
Yeah, like it's a Mad, Mad World
kind of thing.
Exactly.
You couldn't afford anybody now.
Everybody would have points
and, you know, whatever.
You just touched on some...
I'm sorry to interrupt, Mary Lou.
Go ahead.
Oh, go ahead.
You started to touch
on something interesting.
You were saying the movie
wasn't very good,
but we had a great time.
And that's something that recurred.
That's almost a recurring theme
in your interviews that you keep saying, I had a wonderful time. And that's something that recur, that's almost a recurring theme in your interviews
that you keep saying,
I had a wonderful time on this movie,
didn't turn out to be a good movie.
And you almost,
you almost made a connection
between those two things.
The better,
the better the time you had,
the more,
like Johnny Dangerously.
Johnny Dangerously.
Oh my gosh.
That was,
what's funny is that's like
a cult classic now.
Yeah, people love it.
We shot it twice.
We shot it, then they wanted to tweak it,
so then we shot a lot of scenes and changed the ending and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, Amy Heckerling, I am a huge fan of hers.
I've worked with her more than once, and she's just remarkable.
Yeah, I worked with her.
You worked with him? Look who's talking, too.
Yeah, we had Amy here.
She's so great.
Yeah, Amy's terrific.
She's great.
So she created for Johnny Dangerously this, like, playground for the actors.
And when the guys were—I always say this.
You know you had a great time shooting a movie when the wrap party is 24 hours long and the director shows up wearing a dog collar.
is 24 hours long and the director shows up
wearing a dog collar.
You know,
it was like,
he was so wild
and so punk and funny
and just created
this environment.
The guys wore more makeup
than we did.
We all loved one another.
We spent a lot of time
getting ready
because there was
a certain look to the show.
But people love that movie now.
Yes,
it's got a following.
And it didn't do well
when it came out.
But I've heard
other actors
and directors say that,
that the more fun they had doing something, the worse it came out.
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, there are some movies I've done that weren't fun and didn't come out well.
Other movies that, you know, it was fun.
Well, it was fun to work with, and I think it's a great movie.
Maybe some other people weren't as good as they could have been.
L.A. Story. Oh, yeah. I love Steve Martin so much. Very good. And I love it's a great movie. Maybe some other people weren't as good as they could have been. L.A. Story.
Oh, yeah.
I love Steve Martin so much.
Very good.
And I love that movie.
And that movie holds up because you watch it and it really, you know.
That's one that turned out well.
I remember you guys shooting people on the freeway.
Oh, yeah.
It's an open season on the freeway.
You're loading the gun.
Yeah.
Like, I don't think you could do that now.
It's sort of crossed the line.
But I heard you say there are a couple of movies you said it about
johnny dangerously you also said it about rustler's rhapsody yes had a great time so of course the
movie didn't work out oh my gosh no you know what that it was a western like a takeoff on spaghetti
westerns and it was with tom baron yeah c la war andy griffith of all people yeah gw bailey so many
great people and we were in Spain, in Almeria,
and in Madrid shooting.
And three-hour lunches
where everybody,
not me,
but some of the people
are getting drunk.
The afternoon,
it went from being a,
you know,
fast-paced comedy
to being like an homage.
You know what I mean?
It's just everything
got slowed down
from the perno
and the sangria
and the red wine and a lot of drinking on that set.
Interesting.
What about Noises Off, another legendary cast?
Oh, my gosh.
Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, John Ritter, Christopher Reeve.
The great Dan O'Melliot.
Dan O'Melliot.
Yeah, all of them.
Well, we rehearsed that as a play first, and we learned it as a play,
and then we shot it as a movie because it was just like, you know,
it was like the game Mousetrap or something.
It was like a Swiss watch because it just fits together so well.
That was a blast.
And, you know, you better have loved your costume
because you were in it through the entire thing.
One costume.
Nobody is in anything but the one costume.
Do you like doing farce like that?
Again, I watched it.
I do.
I watched it last week.
And there's a million things.
Oh, look at you.
A lot of physical actors, too.
Marklin Baker, a very, very physical actor.
Great.
But you know what?
John Ritter.
Also, I don't want to leave him out.
But, you know, somebody's getting their leg bitten as they're running up a ladder.
And you're hitting Christopher Reeve in the head with a vase.
Oh.
It looks like fun
to make.
It was so much fun.
It was so much fun.
Yeah.
It was really,
it was intense.
It was a very intense production
and there were some
behind-the-scenes things
that I shouldn't talk about
because they didn't involve me.
But yeah,
it was fun.
Both you and Gilbert
got to work for Bogdanovich.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I got to work with... What did you oh yes yeah i got to work with what
did you do with him oh oh god one one thing he doesn't like talking about uh-oh what was it we
he directed uh the last movie that um richard pryor and gene Wilder did. It was called Another You.
And I was in it.
And somewhere in the middle of this production,
Peter Bogdanovich was fired.
Oh.
And then they told me they're removing me
and some other people from the movie,
scraping old previously shot footage.
What?
And then they got a new director,
and it was a dismal failure.
So it never came out.
Did it come out?
It came out.
But without you.
Yeah.
Mate, you're better off.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, it was horrible.
Richard Pryor.
Peter became a friend.
What?
And he's a talker. You could get him here. Who's that? Peter Bogdanovich. Oh, we had him. Oh, we did. Oh Pryor. Peter became a friend. What? He's a talker.
You could get him here.
Who's that?
Peter Bogdanovich.
Oh, we had him.
Oh, we did.
We did.
We did a great episode with him.
Oh, my gosh.
We could do five episodes with him.
He's a character.
Oh, easily.
He's a character.
Yeah.
He's a character.
I love him, though.
We really became friends from that.
Yeah.
You work with some great directors.
You work with some significant directors.
Robert Mulligan. Robert Mulligan. He was fantastic to work with. And Blake. You work with some significant directors. And Robert Mulligan.
Robert Mulligan, he was fantastic to work with.
And Blake.
And Blake Edwards.
Blake was like my fave.
I mean, unbelievable.
Yeah, and Joan Micklin Silver, the first thing I ever did.
Yes, Between the Lines.
A film called Between the Lines.
I don't know if you guys ever saw it.
Yes.
Talk about another cast.
It was everybody from, you know, Jeff Goldblum and Lindsey Krauss and John Hurd
and Steve Collins and Gwen Wells and Bruno Kirby.
You know, a lot of the people who were like these young talents at the time.
Louis J. Stadlin and then all of a sudden some of them were gone.
Some of them are gone for other reasons.
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Goldblum.
And now I just so I don't leave it out.
I worked with John Ritter in two movies,
Problem Child and Problem Child 2.
He was amazing.
He was really nice.
Oh, so nice, so nice, so talented, so talented.
I was shocked when he passed away.
I mean, that was just—
Everyone.
You just couldn't believe it.
You just couldn't believe it because he was so vital and so, you know.
I mean, his comedy timing.
I mean, if you ever watch Noises Off again, watch how he falls down the stairs.
It's great.
That was not a stunt double.
He actually fell down the stairs and gets up and, you know.
Oh, he was a great physical comic.
Yeah.
He's good in that Edwards movie, Skin Deep.
Yes.
He's good in everything.
I mean, he's just so good.
And he worked with Peter Bogdanovich a bunch as well.
They all laughed.
They all laughed.
I like.
What are your memories of George C. Scott when you made the Titanic?
Oh, so sweet.
Oh, my gosh.
He was good to you?
Well, that was directed by my then husband.
Robert Lieberman.
I just had my son Joey like six months before or a few months before.
And he was so – I was so excited to work with him and with Eva Marie Saints.
Eva Marie Saints in it too, yeah.
Oh my gosh.
She was fantastic.
And we were just talking about all the stories about Brando and everything else.
And he was so, I had auditioned for him, but I was too young for the part when he did Death of a Salesman at Circle in the Square.
And so remember the woman that he's cheating with and stuff?
Well, he was like 22.
I saw that.
You did?
I saw that.
Wow.
Yes.
But he was great.
Yeah, I saw it too.
He was unbelievable.
And you just know you feel bad if you do any overacting.
And, you know, I've got such a big personality, and I move so much.
And I always feel like when I calm it all down, I sometimes be look just like I'm constipated on film because I look like I'm
trying to contain myself or something I sometimes have to it takes me a while to adjust to film work
again because I love the stage and I love being big I worked on Broadway last year in another
musical and I just love that feeling and so but with but with George C. Scott, he's so intimate and so just looks at you that you,
he really makes you better than you are by far.
He's great.
He was great.
What people you've worked with?
I know.
I'm lucky.
Well, yeah, I've been in the business a long time, and I'm, you know, still working.
So it's like nice to like, and it's fun to reminisce about people.
Even the Andrews sisters, as we mentioned.
Yes.
We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.
We have a question from your friend and our friend, Emily, Penn Jillette's wife.
Oh, I love her so much.
This was handed to me by Dara.
Ask Mary Lou about the sign in getting the band back together.
In getting the band back together.
First of all, Emily came to see the show twice.
Wait, is this on live?
No.
No, how does she know?
Oh, you just, okay.
She just handed this to me from the booth.
Okay.
So, Emily, there's a for sale sign in front of our house.
Our house is being foreclosed.
My son, who is a rocker who lost his job on Wall Street, an ex-rocker in high school,
comes back to live with me in New Jersey.
I used to be a groupie and hang out with all these guys, but I'm a piano teacher now.
And so our house is being foreclosed.
And in order to avoid foreclosure, he and his arch rival from high school
have to do a battle of the bands.
So I'm like all excited.
My big number is called,
what would Joe Perry do?
Because Joe was like a big lover of mine
and stuff like that as the character.
Anyway, so our foreclosure sign,
it's up there and it's like,
you know, for sale and everything else.
So Emily saw the show.
She said, they are missing a joke.
You should have call 867-5309. You know, like that. Oh joke. You should have, call 867-5309.
You know, like that.
Oh, Tommy Two-Tone.
867-5309.
So they put it on there and people always laughed.
So when the show broke down, I got the sign and I sent it to Emily.
So she's now got it in her rec room or something.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Emily got her shout out.
I'm holding up the...
Oh, I love her. Emily Gillette. She and I Emily got her shout out. I'm holding up the.
Oh, I love her. Emily Gillette. She and I really bonded while I was doing Celebrity Apprentice because Hurricane Sandy was going on when we were doing it. And so everybody was, we had to stop
production for a few days and all the people who came in to visit their spouses or whatever,
they came in town and then they had to stick around for the whole week. Mary Lou, were you the Ponderosa Steakhouse girl?
I was.
I can still sing it.
It's Tuesday, it's family night at Ponderosa.
Every Tuesday night at Ponderosa,
bring the whole family for a ribeye steak,
baked potato, tasty salad.
So come and get square meal, square deal.
Square meal, square deal.
At Ponderosa.
Do you know how much money I made for that commercial?
Because I was the girl who like hit the cash register.
Oh, you know what?
I'm doing my club act.
I do a club act.
I'm doing it at 54 Below on March the 4th of 2020.
And I do this whole thing about how I did 72 commercials when I lived in New York.
Like two and a half years. And one of the things I did 72 commercials when I lived in New York, like two and a half
years. And one of the things I did is I was a body parts model. So I did four Playtex bra commercials.
It's got sash here and seamless support, two Playtex panties, super look sheer, super look
sheer, where all you saw was my butt and my crotch, walking my dog, walking around Lincoln Center,
crotch, walking my dog, walking around Lincoln Center, getting on a bus, bowling.
And I was also the Fruit of the Loom pantyhose girl inside of a giant apple with just my legs sticking out.
I called my mother and said, Mom, I just spent 18 hours on my back inside of a giant apple.
She said, oh, Mary, please tell me you're still in show business.
Hilarious.
Do you know Beverly D'Angelo?
Yes, I do.
She was, I think, the Ponderosa Steakhouse girl.
Oh, she did it too?
I think you have that in common.
We have that in common.
So you're a vegetarian working for the Ponderosas.
I gave up dairy on August 15th, 1979.
And what else were you doing that day?
Oh, you know what I was doing?
I thought, okay.
I remember what I was doing.
I thought I better go to the health food store.
So I went to Air One, which was on Beverly at the time.
It's still on Beverly, but further down.
And I ran into Jeff Goldblum, whom I knew from Between the Lines.
There you go.
And he was already into health food.
And he walked me around and just showed me
how to buy bulk flour and healthy foods.
I love it.
You know, yeah, so that was the day.
Were you also the Samsonite luggage girl?
Samsonite luggage.
I love saving in the springtime.
Samsonite savings time for me.
I love saving.
You're making me do my club act,
and I do this head-to-toe salute to your body,
starting with wash that man right out of my hair and ending with footloose.
And then I do like a little recap of all of them.
We have to come see you at 54 Below.
Oh, it's great.
Yeah, I'm going to do it here too,
but I definitely have the 54 Below.
I can't find the date.
I'm not sure what dates I'm doing it here yet.
Well, footloose.
So much fun.
I have to hear footloose now. Oh, no.
No, what I do is I go through, you know, Wash That Man
Right Out and, like, do little snippets of
22 songs. And then I go,
everybody,
you know... Got Footloose.
Yeah, Footloose. Yeah. And so
I go, everybody talk. Now, let's review.
I wash my hair out of my head, head of brain,
read my mind, take my eyes, cheek to cheek, lips
of wine, heaven heaven knows happy face
redneck gal
shoulder high
in my arms
you're so vain
slow hand
gold finger
gotta have heart
tits and ass
yummy tummy
baby got back
she's got legs
swan knee
how I love you
how I love you
loose
foot loose
everybody cut
everybody cut
so I do this whole thing
it stops the show
so much fun
so I do comedy
I tell stories
about my family
about my three husbands,
about being on Dancing with the Stars. This sounds great. It's really fun. This sounds great. We'll
have to come. We'll have to make a pilgrimage when you're here. You'll have to come. Yeah,
for sure. Before we let you get out of here and get away from us, Richard Kind,
who was a friend of this show. I love him. Oh my God, I have to tell a great Richard Kind story.
Go ahead. I wrote to him and great Richard Kind story. Go ahead.
I wrote to him and I said, Mary Lou's coming.
And he said, he wrote me back.
He said, she's a wonderful soul, funny, kind, and observant.
And best part is I got to kiss her for five months.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He slobbered all over me.
Believe me.
I know.
He's a great kisser.
We had so much fun.
But let me tell you a funny Richard Kind story.
So it was Tale of the Allergist's Wife.
We're doing it on Broadway.
Rhea Perlman plays this woman who's going through a big depression.
She's married to Richard Kind.
He's an allergist.
She finds, like, oh, my analyst died, and she's going through this whole thing.
But it's a comedy.
And into their life walks this character, my character, that used to know the wife.
And I'm sort of like the cat in the hat comes back.
I come into their lives and I just wreak havoc on their relationship and everything else.
We end up having a three-way.
I mean, it's really funny.
But his first entrance, he's supposed to come in jogging and on the phone.
He's been jogging around and he walks and he comes in and his wife is lying on the sofa
and she's depressed. And he's like, oh, he opens the windows and tries to get her aroused a bit.
Anyway, all of a sudden I'm in my dressing room and I'm hearing the cue for Richard to come in
and he's not in and he's not in. And Rhea Perlman and the other character, they are just ad-libbing up a storm.
All of a sudden, I hear running down the stairs, Richard, right?
He has scooped up all of his props, and he walks on stage and says,
can you believe I was mugged not two blocks from here?
Because he has nothing on that he's supposed to have on.
So it's like he got mugged, and people took his clothes,
and they took his fanny pack.
Oh my God.
It was so crazy.
Nobody,
you know,
we couldn't like,
it was like the craziest thing.
Oh,
that's a great story.
And you know what else?
He's a great charades player.
My family is obsessed with games.
We do a big game night
every Christmas
and we've sent somebody
to the emergency room
because we got so vicious
and that's why we never do
Boys Against the Girls anymore.
No, seriously.
On Christmas night years ago, it was Boys Against Girls.
One sister is pointing her finger in the other sister's boyfriend's face.
He grabs her hand and twists it back.
Her husband jumps on him.
The two of them start beating each other up.
And people are still guessing. I'm not kidding you. They were going like raging bull. You know, they start beating each other up. Oh, my God. And people are still guessing.
I'm not kidding you.
They were going like, raging bull.
You know, they're naming off all the...
Oh, my God.
We got to hang out with her.
Somebody up there likes me.
So that was crazy.
But Richard is the greatest charades player of all times.
We invited him to game night one summer, and he was fantastic.
We adore the guy, and he's become a friend of this show.
Yeah.
And helps us book the show, and he's been an angel.
Oh, I'll help you, too, because I love you guys.
You're very sweet. Before you run away, give us your impressions. We promise the audience.
Give us your impressions of Andy, your memories.
Oh, well, I've told a lot of these memories, but one of the things people, I did not like
Man on the Moon. I didn't think Jim, having seen the documentary,
and Jim's a great guy and a great actor,
but I thought, this isn't the Andy I knew.
But I thought maybe he's pandering to a certain audience, whatever.
And I knew, having seen the Jim and Andy documentary so many years later,
I realized it was fascinating.
And especially then I thought, oh, that's where that character came from.
You know what I mean? Because it didn't seem like it was Andy. It especially then I thought, oh, that's where that character came from. You know what I mean?
Because it didn't seem like it was Andy.
It seems like Jim was working out.
They captured the manic aspects of him, but not the sweetness?
Yeah, not the sweetness at all.
I mean, he was so sweet.
Andy was so sweet.
He could sit and have a normal conversation with you
and then go up and do the craziest things that you could possibly imagine.
You know, he fancied himself a song and dance man,
so we were always, like, dancing and singing.
He was fascinated by the Andrews sisters,
which is why the guys ended up for one of the shows that we did.
Oh, yeah.
Do a costume party thing.
And he and Tony and Judd dressed like the Andrews sisters,
so I taught them, like, a little number to go with it.
And, you know, he was so—he was dear.
Andy was dear. And then he was
nuts. You know, the whole thing, I, you know, I've said this before, Judd and I were in New York
doing publicity, our first Thanksgiving break on taxi. And we went down to the public theater
to see a show. And all of a sudden we walk out and, you know, in the middle of the night,
practically. And I said, is that Andy panhandling?
Here he is in the Bowery, which was not safe then, panhandling because he wanted the experience.
You know, he worked at Jerry's Famous Deli.
I remember that.
He had bus tables, yeah.
Yeah, he bussed tables because he wanted to get out there among the people.
He was such a performance artist way ahead of his time.
I mean, Andy died in 1984.
That's a long time ago.
That's 35 years ago, you know?
And my boys, who are 23 and 25, 24 and 25 now,
Joey just turned 24, they know him.
They know his work because of YouTube, because of Taxi, of course.
But, you know, there's a young generation that really studies him,
and he's like the But, you know, this whole, there's a young generation that really studies him. And he's like the original, you know.
And yet he was this, like, sweet guy from Great Neck who could, like, sit and have a conversation with you and be dear.
You know, he was, he was, I miss him.
I really miss him.
He and I, he wanted to get really healthy toward the end of his life.
And when we went off, when we went off the air and I saw him a couple of months later,
I could not believe him.
I could not believe what he looked like.
He was skin and bones.
And I mean, he was just so sick looking.
And people think like,
oh, was it a joke that he's going to come back someday?
He's going to do this.
It's Tony Clifton and everything else.
But you knew he was sick.
I mean, he was definitely sick. I saw him a month before he died. to do this. It's Tony Clifton and everything else. But you knew he was sick. I mean,
he was definitely sick. I saw him a month before he died. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, he was
like a comet, you know, one of those talents that just sort of, he streaks across the sky and then
he's gone. The first time I saw him, I was at the comedy store in New York and I was doing the
Broadway show Grease. This is way before Taxi. And we're at the comedy store and New York, and I was doing the Broadway show Grease. This is way before Taxi.
And we're at the comedy store,
and this guy gets up, you know,
with the little suit and the foreign man accent
and starts reading from The Great Gatsby.
So, of course, you're like, ha, ha, ha, this is funny.
And by the time he gets to the second chapter,
everybody's like throwing dinner rolls and straws
and making airplanes out of napkins,
and it's like, boo, boo, getting off.
And he was just, you know, he kept going and going and the crowd was getting hostile. And then all
of a sudden he started crying and you were like, like, you couldn't believe you have a man crying
on stage. And it was like, oh my God, this like sweet foreign guy, he's crying. And then he turns
up stage and in one swoop yanks off tape that's on the side of his pants revealing studs and flips his hair like Elvis and turns around and does the greatest Elvis impression ever.
And the audience goes crazy.
Wow.
It was a great Elvis impression.
It was a great Elvis.
And in fact, the taxi auditions were interesting.
My mom, as you know, she was dying in the hospital,
and she had this sense that I would get the job.
And two weeks after she passed, I did get the job.
But my last audition, they paired us up with people.
And Andy wasn't there, but they told me that he was in one of the groups
that they were pairing up.
And I thought, this guy's going to get the job.
He's got to get it.
Because nobody else that I had seen that day could come close to what I had seen at the comedy store.
You saw him at the clubs, didn't you, Gil?
Did you ever see him?
Yeah, yeah.
He used to come into the Improv and Catch in New York.
And I also would go out to LA.
I said the comedy store.
I meant the Improv.
The one that was in Midtown.
Yeah, Improv.
I remember watching him, and similar story.
He started singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall.
Right, right, right.
At first, you laugh because you go, oh, well, he's not going to sing the whole thing.
That's the joke.
And he sings the entire 100 bottles of beer on the wall.
And the audience is screaming at him to get off. It was so funny.
I know. He was amazing. You know who else was really amazing that I ended up doing the Letterman
show with? And I had never seen anything like him in my life. And we, people, you know, watch me on
the show and they'd say,
oh yeah, you were good, fine. But this guy, and it was Sam Kinison. Oh my gosh. Did you know his work at all? Oh yeah. Yeah. Wow. He was something that scream and stuff. I mean, it's, you know,
it takes so long for somebody to really create a persona and be that comedian. I know that's,
I think being a comedian is the hardest part of any job that we do in show business.
It's just so intimidating.
And so, you know, it's awe-inspiring to create that.
So you're even more attracted to Gilbert now.
Yes, I am.
I'm a comedian.
Jewish comedians.
No, I'm sorry.
Tell Larry David he's still number one in my books.
He's still my road not taken.
Mary Lou, what's happening now?
You're on the Chuck Lorre show.
Yeah.
You did a guest book.
Also, I'm doing like, I do a whole series on Hallmark, which I love doing.
It's so much fun.
It's called the Aurora Tea Garden Mystery Series.
And it's with Candace Cameron Bure, who's just fabulous.
I play her mom.
And the two of us get along so well.
And we go up to Canada.
Just fabulous.
I play her mom, and the two of us get along so well.
And we go up to Canada, and we're shooting four more episodes,
not episodes, movies, 13, 14, 15, and 16.
We're doing at least five more, which is so much fun.
So I'm busy with that.
I'm doing my club act all over the country.
I'm writing another book.
What's the name of the club act?
Which is always great.
The club act is A Memorable Evening with Mary Lou Henner.
Perfect.
People shout dates.
It's really fun. You guys have to come and see it. We will come and see you when you're at 54 with Mary Lou Henner. Perfect. People shout dates. It's really fun.
You guys have to come and see it. We will come and see you when you're at 54 Below.
And another book.
Yeah.
And another book.
I'm not allowed to talk about the book yet, but it'll be my 11th, and I'm very excited about this one.
So I'm doing that.
And I go all over the country speaking about memory, about cancer, because my husband's a cancer survivor,
and we have quite a story because we got together 16 years 16 and a
half years ago and he was diagnosed two months into our relationship and I said failure is not
an option you're the love of my life and he put two cancers two primary site cancers in remission
no chemo no radiation didn't have to have surgery on his bladder or anything so we had a whole story
too so yeah it's like a busy time and I'm helping my brother with his two little kids.
And my boys are around.
And my family's coming for the holidays.
So, it's a good life.
It's a full life.
Yeah.
We could talk to you for hours and hours.
Oh, thank you.
Hours and hours.
I have cards I didn't even get to.
I talk a little faster than Treat.
Yeah.
She thought Treat didn't talk fast.
Oh, did you think?
Oh, my gosh.
Did I say something?
No, you thought.
I have to tease him about that.
You'll tease him.
Well, he gets, you know, he gets, like, very intense.
And he tells a story, like, you know,
and it's like, okay, I'm putting you up to one and a half.
Yeah.
But I probably talk too fast because it's big family stuff.
And before we totally wrap up, let me remind you one more time that I'm a Jew.
Okay.
Not just a Jew, a neurotic self-obsessed Jew.
A neurotic Jew. Yes.
Smart.
Yes.
Funny.
Yes.
Yes.
I know.
Keep talking.
Okay.
Short.
Isn't that one thing? Yes. Good laugh. Okay. Short. Isn't that one thing?
Yes.
Good laugh.
Okay.
May 1st, 1971 is my wife's birthday.
Oh, that's your wife's birthday?
Yes.
That's when her birthday is?
Yes, Genevieve.
May 1st.
It was a Saturday.
Damn it.
Amazing.
I know what I was doing.
Yes.
You know what you were doing on top of it. I always remember everything. I remember all what I was doing. Yes. You know what you were doing on top of it.
I always remember everything.
I remember all that I was doing.
What happens is that I see the year and it like goes,
and it just like focuses on the day and what day of the week it falls on.
Dara, what's your anniversary?
She's on a mic.
What's your anniversary?
She's on a mic.
Oh, that was a Saturday.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Oh, well, you said marriage.
Well, you know, when I went to lunch with Leslie Stahl and her producer,
because she was like, I'm not doing this story.
Mary Lou's got the same memory.
Her producer, Sherry Finkelstein, she was talking to me.
She was like, well, when did you meet Leslie?
Well, when did this?
I'm giving him dates.
And then Sherry tells me, oh, yeah, I got married June 15th, 1998.
And I said, oh, really?
That's so odd.
Why did you get married on a Monday?
She said, oh, my God, she has it.
It's a great parlor trick in addition to being a gift. It's not a parlor trick.
People always say, the questions people always ask me are,
is it a blessing or a curse?
And I always say it's a blessing for me, a curse for my husband,
because it bugs him because I'm always correcting him.
And, you know, that's why I'm on my third and final, we hope.
And then people always ask me about the bad memories.
And I always say, I remember the bad memories just like you do
because memory is tied to adrenaline.
But I can bring back all those little sweet
Our Town memories in the middle.
So it's a gift.
It's impressive.
Thank you.
You know, I think you're our first guest
who brings her own research to the interview.
Yeah, he just read my damn first book.
Excuse me.
That's 25 years ago.
Another kid and another husband later. Well, my wife has the other books,
but they're about health and diet.
That's not our...
That's not your jam. It's not our motif.
You don't have to study up on you.
You just go,
July 9th, and you'll start
talking. Give me a year. July 9th, avoid year.
I don't know when I've been more entertained by a guest, Mary Luke.
Oh, really?
That's so nice.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
You guys are great.
I was so excited listening to both Phil and Treat and other people.
So it's like I couldn't wait to come here.
And, you know, I came here a month ago.
They gave me the wrong date.
They said, you know, it doesn't matter.
But then I said,
nobody is here in this studio.
You came all the way there and nobody was there?
Saturday. I came on a Saturday. I don't know how that happened.
We apologize. I knew where to find you guys.
And this is cool because
does your audience know that we're looking at each
other on Skype? Because you guys laugh more
I think when the person's in the room maybe.
I don't know. But we've certainly laughed a lot. Well, I'll tell you, I'll say this for you. I
mean, most of the Skype episodes are a little harder to create intimacy, but not this one.
Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's nice. So it is like you leap through the screen.
Oh, thank you. Well, look how cute Gilbert and I are. We both took our glasses off to look more attractive.
Am I right?
Absolutely.
We'll see.
You caught me.
I did.
So you did it, so then I did it.
We'll see you at 54 Below.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot.
You don't take your glasses off.
I got it. I can't see if I take them off.
If I take them off, you'd be Marsha Mason.
So tonight I'll call up Larry David and tell him.
Tell him.
Yes, he definitely fucked up that date.
Oh, no.
Tell him I still have his letter.
Tell him I still have his letter.
It was so cute.
Oh, he was darling.
I mean, that was really my road not taken, unfortunately.
Because he and I would have really gotten along.
I know that.
So, yeah.
Well, we look forward
to meeting you in 2020.
Wait, excuse me.
Larry David creates
this Broadway show
that he's in
and he writes this character
and then he doesn't
cast me in it.
She's got this amazing memory
and he casts somebody else.
So, fuck him.
Oh, Jesus.
So, fuck him then.
So, fuck him.
And this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast
with my co-host, Frank Santopadre,
and the guest who gets truly annoying with her memories.
See?
We didn't even have to get married for you to feel the same way as my husband.
We just know each other for an hour, and I'm already sick of you.
And we didn't even talk about some things.
But that's okay.
But she is a Jew groupie.
From way back, way back.
Yeah, yeah.
Only John didn't have the beard, you know.
The apostle.
The very lovely Mary Lou Hanna.
Thank you, Mary Lou.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks for doing all the research.
This is one for the ages.
On one book.
Of course, it was a pleasure.
Okay.
We'll see you in, see you at 54 Below.
March 4th.
You got it.
The only imperative command in the entire calendar. March 4th. You got it. The only imperative command in the entire calendar.
March 4th.
That's correct.
That's how you'll remember.
Why were you doing March 4th, 1979?
March 4th, 1979 was a Sunday.
Oh, I know what I was doing.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
I was...
You can look it up.
We believe you. Someone can fact check all these. You're so good. You can look it up. We believe you.
Someone can fact check all these.
You're so good.
I checked them before I gave them to you.
So I know you're...
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
Oh, you did.
Yeah.
March 4th, 1979.
Incredible.
Sunday.
Yeah.
Thanks, Mary Lou.
Thanks.
I had Thai food.
Okay.
Oh, my undies trimmed in lace
I'll slip on my black silk disgrace
Cut so low they'll raid the place
I want to dress dangerously
I need to be reckless, I need to be daring
I need to take chances and tempt my fate
I need to be foolish, need to be crazy before it's too late and I'm out of date.
I'll feed you sizzling steak and bootleg gin and chocolate cake till it's a sin.
We'll work it off
and keep you thin.
I wanna eat
dangerously.
Sizzling.
Cheers.
I wanna eat dangerously
I need to be reckless
I need to be daring
I need to take chances
And tempt my fate
I need to be foolish
Need to be crazy
Before it's too late
And I'm out of date
I'm just of days.
I'm just a slave to my desire. And not afraid to play with fire.
I'll set it off, man, and get it high.
I want to live dangerously.
I want to eat dangerously.
I want to eat. Dangerously, I want to love.
Dangerously.