With the passing of comedy legend Carl Reiner, tributes have been received from around the world. Bernadette Peters spoke to Variety on his memories of growing up watching Reiner on television on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, and then working with him on the 1979 seminal comedy “The Jerk” directed by Reiner .
We would see Sid Caesar every Sunday night. Still, there is nothing better than that kind of comedy that was so raw. And it was live television! It was Sid, Imogene Coca and then Carl Reiner. I remember Carl’s presence. He was tall, he had authority. And apparently he became a writer during that show. He was an actor, but he became a writer because he had always had ideas.
In “The Jerk,” he and Steve Martin would rewrite the scene on the way to set every day in the car. So it was all very spontaneous, because that’s what you want on the screen. I was just telling Steve to do things without telling me, like when Steve came in to kiss me and Carl told him to go lick my face. And that’s the shot they used! Is that what you want. You want to capture surprise. You want to capture spontaneity on the screen. I remember Steve improvising on Carl’s idea: the scene where Navin tells Marie that it looks like they’ve been together for two years even though two weeks have passed, because the first day was so wonderful that it seemed like three days and the second day was like three months and the third day like a year and so on. And that was all from Steve’s mind, but it was Carl’s idea and Steve just ran with it.
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I just knew that listening to them was a privilege, seeing two comedy geniuses fighting back and forth with ideas, and I was aware of it. I just kept quiet like a mouse. I knew something special was happening right now.
In recent years, I really enjoyed reading your Twitter. That would be there every day and I would say ‘Wow, look how it goes on.’ I just enjoyed being there on Twitter every day at 98. I hoped he was there continuously.
If I could tell you something now, it would be thanks a lot for all that you have given us. All the joy, all the compassion. I would say thank you for that and for your talent. It seemed that he had come to a charming place at the end of his life. He sounded very pleased, pleased, and grateful. And I hope we can all be grateful in the end.
As told to Joe Otterson
