In a City Full of Beautiful People, Dangerfield Could Stop Traffic

Over the years, the world has seen more than a few comedians who’ve built their acts around being abused, put-upon and world-weary -- just like the average Joe.

It’s been a comic tradition forever to kvetch (even if you’re not Jewish) and moan about steadily getting the short end of the stick. After all, who hasn’t had a lifetime of bad breaks, insults heaped on injuries and absurdities to complain about? You know the drill. There’s the proverbial fat and/or frigid wife; the insulting, unappreciative boss; the meddling mother-in-law; dumb hubby and the army of rude, condescending kids, clerks, cranks, jerks and other aggravating extras in the tragicomic passion play of life.

Getting us to laugh at it all to keep from crying has been a humorist’s well-worn path for decades, but one guy did it better than anybody.

To me, Rodney Dangerfield was the greatest stand-up comic, joke writer and master of timing who ever lived. What’s more, he took care of people (including a generation of younger comics). He never sold out in any way just to get his picture taken on a red carpet somewhere. He shook people’s hands in the street and tried to make them laugh, always.

He also had the best pot. “It’s tough to make it straight, kid,” he would say. He had the funniest man in the world, Joe Ancis, living with him until he died, because Joe was too psychologically damaged to be able to live in a germ-infested world on his own. His housekeeper was almost too old to clean the apartment in New York, but she was with him until the end. His sensitivity for people sometimes translated into long bouts of depression.

Some people can make up jokes all day long that make people laugh, and it seems easy. But it’s not. A joke is like a song or a novel; it has to be crafted. Very few people can make you feel that you are being lifted while you laugh. To do it, you need to show your personal sensitivity, expose your underbelly, and stand there in all your naked glory, allowing people to see you as The Fool. Lucy could do it better than anyone else on TV, and Chaplin could do it better than anyone else in film.

But Rodney could do it alone on a stage, with no props, no cameras, no crews, no writers, no synthesizers, beatboxes nor anything else. Rodney could do it with just his eyes. When you looked into those two spooky things, you were hooked, and there was no way out. You knew you were going to hear the truth now, the truth from a guy who looked goofier than you looked and still made it big.

“I don’t get no respect.” Every time he said that, he got cheers. I first got close to Rodney while we were both staying at the Pritikin Weight Loss Center, back in 1988. We would sneak out together at night to eat clams and drink and smoke, and then head over to the Comedy Store, where Rodney would try out some of his new jokes. We “younger” comics would stand there slack-jawed and in awe, how in less than a second he would own the audience. To watch Rodney work was to be reassured that you weren’t the only one who felt you were getting screwed, set up and knocked down and made to feel small just about everywhere you turned. Rodney took the experience of getting your butt solidly kicked down the road of life and turned it into an exercise in empathy and perseverance and compassion. Jack Benny once told Rodney, “My act is about being 39 and cheap, but your image speaks to everyone’s soul.”

Rodney didn’t just look like the heart-attack-waiting-to-happen that he portrayed onstage. He had loads of serious health issues as he aged. He knew about the fragile nature and impermanence of life. Onstage and sometimes off, Rodney’s eyes would dart back and forth as if he were just waiting for the unexpected to pounce at any second, and from out of nowhere. He told doctors, when he was about to go into surgery: “Don’t worry too much, Doc; if I don’t make it, I’ll never know it!”

My favorite Rodney story is the time we went walking in Venice, and he didn’t want to walk all the way to the crosswalk, so he just darted out into the middle of a very, very busy street. I said, “We’re gonna get killed!” and he said, “No, we’re not, kid, I’m a draw.” Then, like Moses, he walked on and the traffic parted. People honked at first, but then they caught a glimpse of old Rodney, waving and smiling, and they started to honk and yell, “We love you, Rodney!” There isn’t much that can stop traffic in Los Angeles at lunchtime. “OK, I love you too,” he was yelling back.

Rodney died surrounded by close friends, his children and Joan -- a wife who loved him. With Jerry Springer playing on the TV above his head, I got a smile from him a week before he died, and I will have that grateful memory for the rest of my life. But my heart aches when I think how much we will miss that voice now, just when we -- Jane and Joe Average -- are more voiceless, more disposable and more powerless than we maybe have ever been before. We have no one now to respect us quite like he did.