Married to Laughter by JERRY STILLER

Author:JERRY STILLER
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published: 2000-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“I’ll call Bob Weiner,” Anne said. Bob was a friend of ours and also something of a hypochondriac. He knew all the best doctors. Bob gave Anne the name and address of his doctor on 55th Street. She jotted it down for me on a piece of paper.

I jumped in a cab and got out in front of a house on East 55th Street that looked like a slum. The hallway was marked with graffiti. My breath was now coming in shorter bursts, and I was beginning to panic. I looked at the address on the paper. I had misread it. It was West 55th, not East. I flagged down another cab, jumped in, and told the driver I was having a heart attack. He sped off and got me to the building on West 55th Street in record time. He probably didn’t want me dying in his cab.

I ran to the receptionist and said, “I’m a friend of Bob Weiner’s and I’m having a heart attack. I can’t breathe. I’ve got to see the doctor.”

“There are people ahead of you,” the receptionist said, pointing to the many elderly and infirm people sitting and watching with indignation as I tried to buck the line. I couldn’t care less if any of these people were ahead of me. I started to speak louder. “You don’t understand. Shortness of breath. I’m dying.”

That got her. She ran inside. I looked around the waiting room. Angry faces seemed to say, “You’re young, you should be ashamed.” I ignored the deadly looks. I could see myself on the Titanic, the Captain shouting, “Women and children first!” Jerry Stiller exclaiming, “ Me first!” as he jumped into a lifeboat.

The doctor came out, escorted me inside, and asked what was going on.

“I’ve got shortness of breath, I can’t breathe,” I said.

“Take off your shirt.”

I did, and he listened with his stethoscope.

“Anything?” I said, waiting to hear the bad news.

“Nothing,” he said. “Give him an EKG,” he said to the nurse. They hooked me up to wires and read the results. The results were normal.

“Well, it’s not a heart attack,” the doctor said. “What’s going on in your life?”

“I’m about to have a baby, this is my first day of rehearsal, and we just moved.”

“Stress,” the doctor said. “There’s nothing physically wrong.”

“Thanks,” I said, running out of the office past the angry waiting room. I was no longer out of breath.

“Give Bob a hug for me,” I shouted to the receptionist as, a moment later, I hopped a cab to the rehearsal of On the Town.

Not long after this, in August, 1961, I was performing in Owings Mills, Maryland, outside Baltimore when Kay Falk called to tell me Professor Falk had died. He’d been with students in a theater in Paris and collapsed. He died on August 31 at age 61. Kay asked if I could get up to Syracuse to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

When I arrived at Hendricks Chapel, I was told that the professor had left instructions that I be his first pallbearer.

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