The comedian1 and the man
1-6-79
He was 43 years old when the big break came. Jack2 Roy, a paint salesman from Queens who did comedy in his spare time, stood before the cameras of the Ed Sullivan Show and delivered a routine that soon had the audience helpless with laughter. Whether they realized they were witnessing the birth of one of comedy's brightest stars is uncertain. But for Jack Roy — better known as Rodney Dangerfield — the long wait was over.
His unique brand of humor caught on immediately. Within a year he was able to quit the paint business — "it was a colorless job" — and give his full time to comedy. After 10 appearances with Sullivan he went on The Tonight Show, and established such a smooth rapport3 with Johnny Carson that he has so far been invited back about 60 times. With Carson acting4 as "straight man," Dangerfield tosses off a string of outrageous5 anecdotes6 that are in keeping with his image as a man who seems to have the whole world against him.
The afternoon I meet Rodney Dangerfield at his spacious8 modern East Side apartment is like a day straight out of his monologue9. Coming to the door dressed in a polka dot robe and looking quite exhausted10, he apologizes by saying that he has been up since 8 in the morning — early for someone who is accustomed to working past 4 a.m. As we sit down to talk, he answers most of my questions with an unexpected seriousness. Still, the humor creeps in around the edges.
"I have an image to feed. Most comedians11 don't," he says with a yawn, sprawled12 out on the sofa like a bear prematurely13 woken from hibernation14. "If I see something or read something that starts me thinking, I try to turn it around, and ask myself: How can it go wrong for me now? What can happen here? For example, you're watching something on television. You see Lindbergh on the screen. Your mind is on that TV. … You get no respect at all. You see the paper flying all over the place. You say, I get no respect at all. I got arrested for littering at a ticker tape parade.
"Rickles has an image. Steve Martin has an image. But most don't. A lot of comedians buy their material. Others take someone else's material and steal it. We don't go into that, though."
Being a professional funny man, says Rodney, "is a completely total sacrifice. It's like dope: you have to do it. … The curse is to be a perfectionist."
He writes at least 90 percent of his act. Whenever an original joke flashes into his mind, he drops whatever he's doing and jots15 it down. ("I get no respect. On my wedding night I got arrested for having a girl in my room.") Before a new gag can be thought worthy16 of The Tonight Show, it must be tested and retested before a live audience. This is no problem, for Rodney is constantly in demand all over the North American continent, not only as a nightclub performer but also as a lecturer at colleges. Last June he was invited to give the commencement address at Harvard. "It's a strange thing," he remarks. "Kids are into me."
One probable reason for his appeal with the young is that Rodney has two children of his own, an 18-year-old son in college and a 14-year-old daughter who lives at home. It was mainly to lighten his travel schedule and enable him to spend more time with his children that Rodney opened his own nightclub nine years ago. Known simply as Dangerfield's, it is located on First Avenue between 61st and 62nd Streets. Dangerfield's is especially popular with out-of-town visitors. Among the celebrities17 who have been spotted18 there: Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Joe Namath, Telly Savalas and Led Zeppelin. The entertainment usually consists of both music and comedy — Jackie Mason, singers Gene19 Barry and Carmen MacRae, and America's foremost political impressionist, David Frye.
But the biggest attraction, of course, is Rodney himself. He will be playing the club from January 5 until February 4, seven nights a week. There is an $8 cover charge and a $7 minimum on food and/or drink.
Rodney has lived on the East Side since 1969. Born as Jacob Cohen 57 years ago in Babylon, Long Island, he spent most of his boyhood and his early career in Queens. After graduating from Richmond Hill High School, he changed his legal name to Jack Roy "because my father used 'Roy' in vaudeville20." For years he worked small nightclubs for little or no pay. Then at 28 he married. "My wife was a singer. So we decided21 to both quit show business and lead a normal life. That doesn't always work out."
The first "no respect" joke he ever wrote, says Rodney, was: "I played hide and seek. They wouldn't even look for me." The same basic gag has since reappeared in a thousand variations. ("My twin brother forgot my birthday.")
Rodney now earns a substantial part of his income by making
commercials, the best known of which are for Mobil and Miller22 Lite beer.
He has cut two comedy albums and written a pair of books, I Don't Get
No Respect and I Couldn't Stand My Wife's Cooking So I Opened a
Restaurant.
For the moment, Rodney has no plans for other books or albums.
"Perhaps I'm not ambitious enough to pursue different things the way I
should," he confesses."I'd rather spend my free time at the health club.
The idea in life is not to see how much money you can die with."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Pr ess.
WESTSIDER JAN DE RUTH
Partner of nudes23 and Time covers
9-24-77
In 1955, when Jan De Ruth's painting reached the point where he could support himself entirely25 by his brush and palette, he used to take singing lessons at 8 o'clock in the morning to make himself get up early. Today he gets up strictly26 to paint, and does so with such skill and efficiency that he maintains a reputation as one of America's foremost painters of nudes, while still managing to turn out five or six commissioned portraits a month.
At 55 and in the zenith of his career, De Ruth is a mellow27, dignified28 Westsider whose lively eyes reflect the deep intellect within. His achievements in the past two decades are enormous. His works have graced nearly 70 one-man shows. His portraits of former First Lady Pat Nixon and other celebrity29 wives have appeared on the cover of Time magazine. He has written two widely popular books — Portrait Painting and Painting the Nude24. As we relax in the workroom of his West 67th Street apartment, I begin by asking how he came to specialize in nudes.
"I always knew I would paint women," he says in a soft voice shaded with tones of his native Czechoslovakia. "In 1948, when I came to the United States, I started to paint nudes."
Is his choice of subject matter motivated by something other than art's sake?" "The only person I think who may have these thoughts in mind is myself," he answers, smiling frankly30, "because I always ask myself whether these reasons are purely31 artistic32 or do they come from the gut33? I don't think there can be art unless it comes from the gut."
De Ruth's painting used to occupy him eight to 15 hours a day. Now he is down to about seven hours. He works very rapidly, with intense concentration. "I don't paint after the afternoon," he explains, "except sometimes sketching34 at night. You exhaust your juices by the time evening comes along."
One person he used to sketch35 after hours was actress Karen Black, who lived in West 68th Street just across from his apartment. Says De Ruth: "she would sit in the in the windowsill in her bra and slip. Then one day I called over to her, 'Would you like to get paid for this?' She rushed inside to get her glasses, and looked over at me, very surprised. She became my model for some time."
For a woman to be an ideal nude model, said De Ruth, "she should be gentle, as intelligent as possible, considerate, and somebody in the arts, or with the sensitivity of an artist. And she must be physically36 attractive."
How do the women who pose fully37 dressed for commissioned portraits compare to the professional nude models? "They work better than my models usually," says the artist, who has painted Ethel Kennedy, Eleanor McGovern, and the late Martha Mitchell for Time. "They're much more concerned to participate. I don't think it's necessarily something to do with vanity. It's much more curiosity. Because we never really know until the day we die what we look like. Because we vary so much from one time to another."
Ironically, Martha Mitchell — wife of President Nixon's infamous38 attorney general, John Mitchell — posed for De Ruth inside the Watergate Building during the height of her fame. "She had a certain peasant charm — a charm of her own," he recalls.
A man who craves39 variety, De Ruth has for many years spent his summers at a studio in Massachusetts. This past summer he began to teach painting in New Mexico — something he has wanted to try for a long time. A passionate40 skier41, he travels to Austria each winter to pursue the sport that he learned as a child, then gave up until his mid-40s.
His other after-work activities? "I love to be in the company of women," says the artist with a radiant smile, adding that he prefers their company when he's not painting them.
The East Side, according to the artist, is "a city in itself. There's a sterility42 over there, at least for me. I just can't see myself without this mixture that the West Side is." De Ruth has been going to the same Chinese laundry for 28 years — Jack's on Columbus Avenue. Another business he has patronized all that time is Schneider's Art Supplies at 75th Street and Columbus.
As the interview comes to a close, I ask De Ruth what advice he would give to an aspiring43 young artist. "Never be discouraged by anyone or anything," he says. Then, to balance his remarks, he relates an anecdote7 about an art student who asked Degas what he could do to help the world of art. Replied Degas: "Stop painting."
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1
comedian
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| n.喜剧演员；滑稽演员 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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rapport
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| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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comedians
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| n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 ) | |
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sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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hibernation
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| n.冬眠 | |
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jots
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| v.匆忙记下( jot的第三人称单数 )；草草记下，匆匆记下 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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gene
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| n.遗传因子，基因 | |
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vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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nudes
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| （绘画、照片或雕塑）裸体( nude的名词复数 ) | |
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nude
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| adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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craves
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| 渴望，热望( crave的第三人称单数 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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skier
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| n.滑雪运动员 | |
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sterility
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| n.不生育，不结果，贫瘠，消毒，无菌 | |
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aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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