After a Fall, He Had the Last Laugh

In 1992, not long after I had opened the Pasta Place, a small deli in a Studio City mini-mall, a man started coming in every morning. He appeared to be in his late 60s. No matter how hot it was, he wore the same fleecy overcoat, which was filthy and frayed, as were the rest of his clothes, and he smelled awful. He had a salt-and-pepper beard, and his hair, mostly white, was longish and scruffy. His eyes were deep-set, intelligent; his fingers were slim and, except for the cigarette stains, delicate-looking. Every morning he would pull out a few crumpled-up bills and order chicken salad and coffee. After the first week, we started chatting--small talk--but he never mentioned what was obvious from his look and smell: He was homeless.

There was something about the man that I liked, so I told my staff to give him food and coffee on the house, every day, and make sure that he was gone before lunch.

One night, Denny--a drummer who played at the bar next door--came in. He told me that he’d heard I was giving food away to a homeless guy. Was that true? I nodded.

“Do you know who he is?”

“Should I?”

“That’s Sandy Baron.”

“Sandy Baron? The comic?”

Denny nodded. “ ‘Broadway Danny Rose,’ ‘Hey, Landlord,’ lots of stuff.”

Denny warned me: He knew Sandy, and, well, it probably wasn’t a good idea to give him things. Clearly, Denny was talking from personal experience.

*

That night I rented “Broadway Danny Rose.” Though the movie had been made fewer than 10 years earlier, the Sandy Baron in the movie looked 30 years younger than the man who came into my place every day. Still, he had the same deep eyes and the same face. The same New York accent, the same cadence, the same hand gestures. No doubt about it: It was the same person. The man I thought was nearly 70 was actually in his mid-50s.

This, then, was the dark side of the show-biz dream. After having worked in movies, on Broadway, on television, Sandy Baron was now a homeless street person, hustling chicken salad and coffee from a sympathetic deli owner.

The next day I told Sandy that I knew who he was. He shrugged, not looking up from his food. I didn’t ask him to explain his condition, but he did anyway. He had made money, he said, but he blew it all on drugs, booze and divorces. He had no family to help him and couldn’t go back again to those who had supported him in the past.

I told Sandy that I too had worked in television, as a writer. This triggered a reaction. He started pitching ideas to me. Not specific comedy bits--his mind was not rational enough for that--but the possibility of our working together on something. I was amazed at his manic optimism: “If I could just get some acting work. . . .” Despite his situation, he believed that there were still more acts in his personal drama. I told him that he should be realistic and accept the likely possibility that he would never work in show business again. Sandy insisted that I didn’t understand. A movie director was looking for him, and so were the people from “Seinfeld.” Even if it were true, which I doubted, I didn’t think there was any chance that this grimy, foul-smelling, less-than-lucid homeless guy could ever carry out the requirements of an acting job.

*

Sandy said that what he needed was to clean himself up. He asked if he could stay at my house--for a few days--until things got going again for him. Yes, I understood that he was imposing on me as he had imposed on others. But I thought: Why not? Why not do something for him? I was certain he wouldn’t get his acting career back, but at least I could give him a safe haven. A shower, clean clothes, and he’d be a new man. And I also thought this: Maybe, just maybe, this was the real reason for my having opened the deli; it was part of a cosmic plan whose ultimate purpose was to help Sandy Baron get his life back.

I shared that thought with my wife, who felt that Sandy’s insanity had infected me.

Then, two things happened.

One night, Denny came in with an intense woman who chastised me for helping Sandy, who, she said, was a “dry alcoholic” and was using me to avoid dealing with his problems. She strongly urged me to stop giving him food and make sure he started going to AA meetings again. “And for heaven’s sake,” she said, “don’t even consider letting him stay at your house.”

The other thing was that I was diagnosed with throat cancer. Sandy, when I told him, was full of compassion. Then he quickly shifted gears and pleaded again: Could he stay at my house? Given my new situation, I imagined what that would be like: his smell, his needs, his chain-smoking. No, it was out of the question. Not in my condition. Several days later, Denny told me that he had tried to get Sandy to go to a halfway house. Sandy had refused, then had disappeared. Denny asked me to call him the next time Sandy came in so he could try again. Seeing that I had difficulty carrying out this kind of betrayal, Denny assured me that it was in Sandy’s best interest. OK, I agreed finally, OK.

Sandy showed up, and I called Denny, who was there in minutes. We talked. We pleaded. We cajoled. Finally, Sandy agreed to go--on one condition: that I promise to let him stay at my house after he got out of the halfway house. I nodded, though I knew I never intended to fulfill that promise.

When I visited Sandy, he was horribly depressed. “Look at these guys,” he said, waving at the other residents of the halfway house. “Look at them. Scum of the earth. Junkies. Ex-cons. How can a guy like me stay here with them? You know what I’ve done? You know what I’ve been in?”

So long as Sandy had been an anonymous homeless guy wandering around Studio City, he had maintained some dignity. But here, the people who ran the place, and even some of the residents, had seen him on TV. He was confronted constantly with the contrast between where he had been and where he now was. It was unbearable. He begged me to take him home--to my home. He cried, pleading for help. I cried too. I told him OK, all right, I’ll think it over--knowing that I was lying again.

During the final stage of my radiation treatment--all I could do was lie in bed all day--my wife called from the deli. Sandy had left the halfway house and had shown up. He was desperate. He claimed he had a movie deal and “Seinfeld” wanted him, but he had to clean up first. He needed $150. My wife didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t have the energy to argue or to say no. Just give him the money, I told her. Just give it to him.

A couple of months later, when I was back at work, Denny came in. He had heard from Sandy, who was in New York, working on a movie. I assumed that, if true, he was playing the part of a crazy homeless person. Denny’s tone was unmistakable: Given Sandy’s history, it was unlikely that I would ever hear from him again.

Denny was right. I never did hear from Sandy again. He never called, never came around. I don’t know what I expected. Gratitude, I suppose.

A few months later I saw him on “Seinfeld.” Sandy really was working! And he did a good, professional job. Watching him act, I felt a flood of emotions: anger at the way he had used me, resentment that he had never acknowledged my help. And relief as well, that I no longer had to deal with his needs. Guilt too, because I hadn’t believed in him or let him stay at my house. Then I thought: Maybe I played a part in this. What I had given him, had it made a difference? What I felt most of all, though, was amazement. He had pulled it off. Astonishing.

In the mid-1990s, Sandy continued acting occasionally: a couple of low-budget movies and the recurring role on “Seinfeld.” Sandy’s agent and guardian angel, Michele Keeler, said that he was generally able to take care of himself, living in a clean hotel room in Sherman Oaks. Of course, there were periods when he would sink and call Michele for help, sometimes in the middle of the night. And there were moments when the darkness inside him would take over.

For the most part, however, Sandy was sane and self-sufficient, and he worked--when work was offered--at what he loved. In spite of everything, he never gave up the idea that he was a performer who would act again.

When Sandy was diagnosed with emphysema in the late 1990s, Michele moved him into a nursing home. Tom Cherones, who directed him in “Seinfeld” episodes, saw Sandy for the last time at that show’s wrap party in 1998. Sandy was using an oxygen tank. “Obviously, he was very ill,” Tom said, “but he was rational, and he was very friendly with the people from the show.” Yes, certainly. They were the ones who had given him a chance to be, once again, what he had once been. They had provided him with one more act to his drama.

Sandy died this year on Jan. 21. It was not homelessness or booze or madness--or lack of dreams--that killed him, but tobacco.

Now, when I see Sandy on reruns, my reaction is very different from what it was seven years ago: What I feel is--gratitude. Thanks, Sandy. You were right. Absolutely right. You knew that you had it in you to act again. You knew what I didn’t know then: that nothing--not homelessness, filth, illness, age or the well-meaning advice of those who care for us--necessarily requires us to give up our dreams.

This lesson cost me $150 and several bucketfuls of chicken salad. I’d say that was a very low price to pay.

*

Roberto Loiederman is co-author of “The Eagle Mutiny,” to be published in June. He is cancer-free and looks forward to several more acts in his drama.