The Actor Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Actors

Shelley Berman

136 i Shelley Berman He would sit on a bar stool with an imaginary telephone in his hand and deliver his hilarious monologues. But ironically, the prop that catapulted him to fame in the late 1950s would be his undoing by the mid-1960s. It would take him two decades to make a full comeback. Today, in his eighties, Shelley Berman has steady work appearing in films: Meet the Fockers, and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and on television with reoccurring roles on Boston Legal and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I caught up with the busy actor to learn more about his career. ‘‘You attended the renowned Goodman School at the University of Chicago —a serious training school for actors. Yet, you became a comedian.’’ ‘‘The truth is that it was never my intention to be a comedian. Theater is all I ever wanted to do. I had been in some plays in high school and really liked doing that. So, after I got out of the navy, I enrolled at the Goodman School and began studying acting. I had the thickest Jewish accent you’ve ever heard. But I worked hard, learned how to speak, how to base my voice, studied movement and how to control my body. I even had dance classes. I did years of stock. I was damn good at Shakespeare and loved doing Shaw and Ibsen. I absolutely loved it. After graduating from the Goodman, I studied with Uta Hagan for three years. I knew that I was going to be a serious actor and work in the theater. That was it.’’ ‘‘So what happened?’’ ‘‘I’d go to auditions but wouldn’t get picked. I couldn’t find my way in. Oh boy, did I struggle with that. I met my wife Sarah in school, we married, and she ended up supporting me while I tried to break into professional theater. In the meantime, I got hired writing for Steve Allen’s Tonight Show. I never dreamed of becoming a writer, but they were buying my comedy sketches, and I was starting to make some good money. Then a call came in from Chicago—this new improvisational theater called the Compass Players that later would become known as Second City wanted me to become a member. The pay was fifty dollars a week, which didn’t cover living expenses. My Sarah said, ‘You’re an actor. You’ve got to go.’ All I really wanted to do was act, so I went. Ed Asner, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, [and] Barbara Harris were part of the original 138 The Actor Within group. Together, as young actors, we were honing our craft through improvisation , which is employing acting techniques spontaneously. Often our acted-out scenes were very funny but not always. It was during that time that I created my phone calls. The telephone was only a device for me as an actor, not a joke device or comedy trick. It was a way to play two characters from one. I found that I was good at it. I sat on a stool— because nobody talks on the phone standing up—and recited monologues that I had made up. These were lengthy improvised routines; they weren’t shtick, and people found them funny. In the late fifties, I took about a half a dozen of my phone calls and auditioned at a Chicago nightclub and got hired. I started becoming popular and then someone from a theatrical agency contacted me and said, ‘We’d like to represent you.’ I told them, ‘Hey, this is just a stopgap. I’m an actor and want to be in plays. ‘Oh, sure, sure,’ they said. Then a friend, Mort Sahl, gave me the idea to make a recording of my phone calls at Verve Records, and well, the rest is history. Inside Shelley Berman became a hit in 1960, and I received the first Grammy for Best Comedy Album. Other recordings followed, and from that point on, I was pushed into this category, ‘He’s a comic.’ I fought this label so hard, but I couldn’t change it.’’ ‘‘So the nightclub became a good venue for you to perform in.’’ ‘‘It was di≈cult at times because nightclub owners didn’t understand why I was so meticulous in the way I staged myself, and resisted satisfying my needs, although they were simple and few. All...