What sort of person could a witty, Jewish kid growing up in Queens in the 1930s possibly mature into? Answer: Don Rickles.
Now 82, and as feisty as ever, Rickles will be appearing at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills this Saturday.
Age hasn’t mellowed Rickles’ legendary in-your-face style of humor. So be warned, if you plan on being in the audience and are sporting a bad hairpiece, are a little on the chubby side, or looking the slightest bit ethnic, Rickles will be waiting for you. Sensitive souls hoping to dodge the comedian’s verbal jabs should probably seek refuge in the back row.
Rickles, who in real life has a reputation as one of the nicest guys in show biz, is quick to point out that his shows are more than just some grumpy, old guy prowling the stage spinning yarns.
“I don’t do jokes,” Rickles said from his home in Malibu. “My shows are a theatrical performance. They’re not mean-spirited, just a form of exaggerating everything about people and life itself.”
Adopting his father’s humor and encouraged by his mother, young Rickles overcame early shyness and soon began to make people laugh.
“My mother was a big influence,” said Rickles, whose father died before his son became famous. “She loved show business and really lived it through me. She lived long enough to see me become successful.”
Rickles traces his first break to an evening in 1957, during a Hollywood nightclub performance, when he advised audience member Frank Sinatra to go “hit somebody.” Fortunately, the often-moody Sinatra laughed, and the famed crooner became entranced by Rickles’ style of humor.
Years later, numerous appearances on the Dean Martin and Johnny Carson shows assured Rickles of comic legend status. In fact, it was “Tonight Show” host Carson who sarcastically christened the frequent visitor to the NBC studios as “Mr. Warmth,” a title borrowed by director John Landis for last year’s HBO documentary about Rickles.
The film, which was released on DVD earlier this year, wove clips from a live Las Vegas show with backstage footage, along with comments from friends and fellow comedians, into a compelling story about the comedian’s life and career.
Longtime friend and fellow comedian Bob Newhart delights in recounting his first encounter with Rickles in the late 1960s in Las Vegas. The two comedians and their wives met in a cafeteria and Rickles, the perfect gentleman, invited the Newharts to see his show.
“Don steps out onstage and the first thing out of his mouth is ‘the stammering idiot from Chicago is in the audience today, along with his hooker wife from New Jersey,'” Newhart recalled from his Bel-Air home.
But the two families became fast friends and would eventually travel the world together.
“People in foreign countries don’t know what to make of Don,” Newhart said. “They wonder why he is ranting and raving, and ask ‘What’s wrong with him?’ He kind of reinforces the idea of the ugly American tourist. I’ve just learned to ignore it when we’re traveling.”
“Bob and I are like apples and oranges in terms of our comedy,” Rickles said. “But we share the same family values, make each other laugh and enjoy each other tremendously. He’s brilliant at what he does, and I think I’m pretty good at what I do.”
It would seem audiences agree. Rickles can still pack a theater and this year is crisscrossing North America, cranking out the insults during some 70 shows.
“In the early days, you would work at one place such as Vegas or Atlantic City for weeks at a time doing two shows a night,” Rickles said. “Now, with all the Indian casinos across the country, you’re always traveling and doing just one or two shows at each place. These new casinos give performers a lot of comfort, they make the job interesting and some even provide private planes, but traveling can still be tough.”
Fortunately for Rickles, he can retreat from the frequent road trips with wife Barbara to their ocean-view Point Dume home. The couple has maintained a residence here since the 1970s, having exchanged their Malibu Colony house for a home on the promontory three years ago.
Rickles isn’t the only veteran entertainer to feel the strain of traveling. After nearly a half century of touring, fellow comedian Phyllis Diller agrees it doesn’t get easier with age.
“Doing a show was just the tip of the iceberg,” said Diller, now 91, by phone from her home in Brentwood. “The travel, the rehearsals-I just didn’t have the energy to do it any more.”
Diller, who retired in 2002, was often the recipient of Rickles’ good-natured putdowns as the pair exchanged verbal potshots during the popular Dean Martin TV Celebrity Roasts three decades ago. “He has always made me laugh,” Diller said.
Newhart was also a guest on the roasts. “They weren’t really suited to my style, but they were great for Don,” Newhart said. “Sometimes he would be working or be out of town when the show was recorded, so they had to tape his segment in an empty studio and edit it in later. He would start attacking the guests-Dean, Ronald Reagan, Orson Wells, it didn’t matter to Don-just like they were really there.”
Rickles also remembers the Martin roasts with fondness and agrees they were a perfect outlet for his style of comedy. “Some guys had writers, but I did everything off the top of my head,” he said. “Nobody had any idea what I was going to say.”
Today, Rickles continues in the same vein, as he walks into each new spotlight with a lifetime of wisecracks stored in his head, ready to unleash on an audience. While his nightclub act can be somewhat bawdy compared to the tamer old TV roasts, Rickles said his comments are never malicious and he takes great pride in his art.
“When you’re an entertainer, you’re like a salesman who has something to sell -yourself,” he said. “You can’t please everybody, but most people who come to see me know what to expect. I’m proud of being the originator of this style of comedy.”