More About Moms With Kids In Showbiz<\/p>\n
Me in the entertainment industry?\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 <\/span>I can\u2019t sing.\u00a0 <\/span>I can\u2019t dance.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t tell jokes.\u00a0 <\/span>I acted in one play in my life in the fourth grade, the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and I only got that part because I knew how to play three notes on the recorder versus my casting rival Tommy Pikarski who played trumpet and you simply can\u2019t have the Pied Paper playing a trumpet.\u00a0 <\/span>Wait a minute.\u00a0 <\/span>I was in another play.\u00a0 <\/span>This one was when I was in college.\u00a0 <\/span>I was Managing Editor of our school newspaper and it was my job to decide what stories needed to be covered and what reporters were going to cover them.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought I was being fair in my story allotment, student government, sports, academics, until I received a nasty note from the head of our Drama Department complaining that the student newspaper hadn\u2019t even included a blurb about their upcoming production of Arthur Kopit\u2019s \u201cOh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma\u2019s Hung You in the Closet and I\u2019m Feelin\u2019 So Sad.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>To make amends, I showed up at the campus theatre pen and pad in hand to cover the story myself.\u00a0 <\/span>After interviewing the director and actors I said my goodbyes, only to be stopped at the door.\u00a0 <\/span>The director had an idea.\u00a0 <\/span>Wouldn\u2019t the article be better if the reporter was actually in the play itself?\u00a0 <\/span>Despite my protestations about having no acting experience the director claimed none was needed.\u00a0 <\/span>There was one role in the play that would be perfect for me.\u00a0<\/span>Dad.\u00a0 <\/span>Dead Dad.\u00a0 <\/span>Hanging in the closet.\u00a0 <\/span>Until, on cue, the closet door opens, and the corpse flops out onto the stage, shocking the stunned audience.\u00a0 <\/span>No singing.\u00a0 <\/span>No dancing.\u00a0 <\/span>Just flop.\u00a0 <\/span>Dead body.\u00a0 <\/span>Bravo.\u00a0 <\/span>Not much of a resume to end up in the entertainment industry.\u00a0 <\/span>However, as I learned quickly in the real world, actors need dialogue to recite on stage, and instructions about which door to enter and which to exit, and plots, and beginnings, and middles, and ends and, lo and behold, my natural-born writing talents seemed quite adequate to provide all of the above.\u00a0 Now a professional scriptwriter,<\/span>\u00a0I found myself working on TV shows and stage plays with television stars, movie stars, Broadway stars, all studying scripts I\u2019d written, memorizing lines I\u2019d written, exiting through doors I\u2019d written.\u00a0 <\/span>My life was now engulfed by actors, singers, dancers, famous, soon-to-be-famous, at studios, at parties, phone calls, lunches, until one day I realized just how entrenched in the entertainment industry I\u2019d become.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cMy god,\u201d I said to myself, \u201cMy friends, my co-workers, are people other people pay to see.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>When the abnormal becomes normal, years go by without ever noticing that working with celebrities was simply part of the job, show after show, same routine, write script, table reading, first rewrite, rehearsal, next rewrite, more rehearsal, camera blocking, tape night, live audience, wrap, start writing next week\u2019s show.\u00a0 <\/span>Then one day you\u2019re snapped out of your complacency when someone walks onto the set that you just can\u2019t believe you\u2019re seeing live and in person.\u00a0 <\/span>In my case it was this.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019d been hired to write for a television comedy with a cast of famous actors including glamorous Jayne Meadows, a movie star of the forties and fifties and an icon to people of my mother\u2019s generation.\u00a0 <\/span>However, for me, the main attraction of working with Jayne Meadows was meeting her husband, one of my childhood heroes, original host of The Tonight Show, the brilliant, inventive, hilariously funny Steve Allen.\u00a0 <\/span>Every time he visited our set to view a taping, I was amazed when Steve Allen would walk over to me, offer compliments on a script that had my name on it, treat me as if we were equals in the world of comedy, which, of course, I wasn\u2019t. After that show was cancelled, I never saw Steve Allen again, until one day I was invited with my two writing partners on a different show, to appear on his radio program in New York City.\u00a0<\/span>There we were in a booth, talking about comedy writing, the three of us and our host, Steve Allen.\u00a0 <\/span>Dissolve several more years.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m now living a quiet life in the country when my mother calls from Florida very excited.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cGuess who\u2019s coming to Sarasota?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>My mother pauses dramatically before spilling, \u201cYour old friend Jayne Meadows.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019s touring her one-woman show and my friends and I have orchestra seats.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I tried to convince my mother that not only wasn\u2019t I friends with Jayne Meadows, but that she probably wouldn\u2019t remember my name.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cNonsense,\u201d my mother insisted, \u201cAnybody who ever worked with you would remember.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>On her way to the theatre, the other women in the car seemed to agree with me, \u201cYou claim your son worked with everyone in Hollywood.\u00a0 <\/span>If you\u2019re so confident that Jayne Meadows knows your son, why don\u2019t you ask her during the Q&A?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>And that\u2019s precisely what my mother did, with a packed house filled with elderly but loyal fans of Jayne Meadows, my mother raised her hand and said, \u201cMy son once worked with you on a television show.\u00a0 <\/span>He was a writer.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Jayne Meadows tried not to roll her eyes, having had a history with people claiming some sort of connection.\u00a0 P<\/span>olitely but suspiciously, Ms. Meadows inquired, \u201cAnd what\u2019s your son\u2019s name?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>To which my mother belted out, \u201cGary Kott.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>To which Jayne Meadows belted back in front of a thousand awed audience members, \u201cGary Kott!\u00a0 <\/span>I loved working with Gary Kott!\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>My mother stole a second to bask in her glory, preening before her dumb-struck friends, dumb-struck even more when Jayne Meadows added, \u201cNow you tell Gary that when I get back to Los Angeles, Steve and I want him to come over to the house for dinner.\u00a0 <\/span>Oh, Steve will be very excited.\u00a0 <\/span>Don\u2019t forget.\u00a0 <\/span>Tell Gary to call us.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Possibly the crowning moment of my mother\u2019s life; Jayne Meadows, in front of a theatre filled to capacity, inviting Gary Kott to the Steve Allen house for dinner.\u00a0 <\/span>Unfortunately, my mother took that invitation so strongly to her heart, she never let me forget it.\u00a0 <\/span>Every phone call we had thereafter, no matter what we\u2019d talked about, ended with, \u201cDid you call Jayne and Steve?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cNo\u201d \u00a0\u201cThey really want you to come over for dinner.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>A year later.\u00a0 <\/span>Five years later, \u201cDid you call Jayne and Steve?” \u00a0Finally, after battling cancer, my mother was on her death bed.\u00a0 <\/span>She was too sick to talk.\u00a0 <\/span>But her dying eyes beseeched me, \u201cGary, son,\u201d she spoke wordlessly, \u201cDid you call Jayne and –”\u00a0\u00a0B<\/span>efore she could finish her sentence, my mother was gone.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]