PLUME: How difficult was it to find professional work after high school?

DeLUISE: Ha ha ha! Sure, it was hard.

PLUME: Was it something…

DeLUISE: I used to make the rounds. I made the rounds for almost five years. The rounds where you get pictures of yourself and then you proceed to go into an office and talk to a man and he, you know, says, “Give me a picture and thanks a lot, I’ll call you,” but he never calls you. And then I went to one office one time, that did live theater on television, and they would do plays. Playhouse 90. It was 90 minutes.

PLUME: Which was all live television, right?

DeLUISE: Yeah, live television. And I was in there and the man was very nice to me and he said, “We need film on you.” And I said, “You know what? Everybody asks me for film. I want to start in this business. How am I gonna get a job if the only way you can get in is to be on film? And if I don’t have film then I’m not gonna get a job. I’m just confused. I mean, I can’t bring you a chicken. I have to lay an egg first,” or whatever the hell I said. And I really started to cry. And he said, “Just listen, listen. You just have to…” he was very patient. Because I was looking for a job for a long, long, long time. And I was ushering in a theater. As I was going to high school I would usher at night, and I would get three dollars a night. And I would check coats at Guys and Dolls… Milton Berle. I would get a quarter when I returned a coat. And I would also sell orange and Hershey bars, and stuff like that. Milton Berle gave me a dollar.

Now later on, I ended up playing cards with him, and I went to his memorial. It was the first time I ever met him. Mind you, I had seen him on television. That’s all you watched on television, was wrestling and Milton Berle. And he came in to see the show. And he gave me a dollar! In his pocket was a script that was about eight pages long. And of course we read it. We copied it! As he watched Guys and Dolls we copied every joke that was in there. It was, you know, his style of humor. And we gave it back to him, of course. A little wrinkled, but… and then he gave me a dollar. And I said, “He gave me a dollar!” Everybody was talking about it. Thrilling. And I even told him after we became friends, and I met him many, many, many times after that. Once I played cards, and I dealt him four aces. And uh, I remember that that was quite a thrill. I have to tell you that part of what goes on is that you get to meet people that you grew up seeing on a screen. So you see somebody, and then you’re working with Dean Martin. And I used to work with Dean Martin a lot. And I used to cut high school, the High School of Performing Arts, to go see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. It was very exciting to meet him. In fact, I couldn’t talk in his presence when I was supposed to be… “oh my goodness, I’m supposed to talk to him.” And I was blessed because he was very sweet and he liked me and he came over and kissed my ass and gave me a kiss and… we did the sketch together. I was able to talk without my mouth being too dry.

PLUME: When you first saw them, this would be the late 40s, early 50s?

DeLUISE: Right, absolutely, absolutely.

PLUME: At the height of their popularity.

DeLUISE: His popularity was after… well, the height of his popularity was probably when he was with Jerry Lewis. As far as I’m concerned. And then he became an actor and a television personality when I joined him again. 12 years I worked with him.

PLUME: That was on the Dean Martin Show, right?

DeLUISE: Yes. Right out of high school, I went to the Cain Park Theater in Cleveland, and then went back another year as an apprentice, and I had many, many, many shows that I was involved in. It was amazing to do a different show every week in the summertime…

PLUME: This would be during the early 50’s…

DeLUISE: Right.

PLUME: So it was right after high school?

DeLUISE: Right after high school. I went to the Cain Park Theater, and then I went to the Cleveland Playhouse – which was really great for me, because I worked two years solidly on plays and moving furniture and painting scenery and paying parts. It was quite an amazing learning place for me.

PLUME: Was it just a score of different types of plays?

DeLUISE: Yes… I did the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, I did one of the gangsters in Kiss Me Kate… And it was quite an amazing chance to do work in Shakespeare… in Hamlet I played one of the players. So it was a thrilling, thrilling experience.

PLUME: Something, you think, that helped to make you more well-rounded as a performer?

DeLUISE: Oh sure, sure. It was just wonderful, you know? Also, I had a chance to be the stage manager… and (laughing) I made a couple of mistakes. I pulled the curtain too hard one time, during a show called And Night Must Fall, and the curtain came down… it kept coming down…and then the curtain came down into the laps of the people in the first row… and then there was a bar… and then they saw the actors being uncovered from the tip of their heads down to their feet.

PLUME: How ironic it happening during the show And Night Must Fall…

DeLUISE: And I did that when she said, to the insane bellhop, “What are you gonna do with that pillow, Danny?” And then, as he approached her, the curtain came down…

PLUME: So she really should have been asking, “What are you going to do with that curtain?”…

DeLUISE: That’s right! But then the next day, I went there and there was a big sign that pointed up, and another sign that pointed down – just to clarify it for me.

PLUME: How helpful was it for you to work on the other side, and learn the technical aspects?

DeLUISE: Oh, it was very helpful. It was really wonderful. First off, I didn’t mind it at all. The only thing is, from time to time, I would screw up – but it was wonderful to be in charge. I did everything pretty right… Except I pulled the curtain down.

PLUME: Was there any point when you were stumping for jobs in that 5 years after high school where you were borderline, “This just isn’t going to happen – I’ve got to find something else to do…” ?

DeLUISE: Oh, sure. I went back to college and I was there to become a biology teacher.

PLUME: What led to that decision?

DeLUISE: I really liked biology a lot. So I thought that would be very appropriate for me. And I took the Italian. My family spoke Italian but they didn’t want me to speak Italian, they wanted me to speak English, so…

PLUME: Was that because of the immigrant mentality…

DeLUISE: They didn’t see the value of my speaking Italian. They should have taught me Italian when I was young. But as a result of hearing them speak it and taking classes, I now speak Italian. And Spanish, because I live in California and you have no choice.

PLUME: Of course the languages are very similar anyway, right?

DeLUISE: Yeah, they’re similar but yo habla espanol, and I speak Italian, yo parlo… it is different. There are very similar words. Any word that ends with “ion”… nation is the same. “Nation.” It’s the same thing in both languages. Conversation. Nation. And “tion” is the same word in all three languages. But you don’t think like that. You just respond… do you speak either or both languages?

PLUME: No. I tried French, but I’m a complete klutz when it comes to languages.

DeLUISE: Oh, no kidding. Well, I enjoy it. I enjoy, you know… I enjoy talking in Italian. And in Spanish, because I have help in the house. I say (speaks Spanish), “you clean the table.” Whatever. So I’m not as fluent as they think I should be, but I can thank them profusely.

PLUME: Well, you’re more fluent than I’ll ever be.

DeLUISE: Ha ha ha! So, I was in New York and I was doing little shows…

PLUME: How close were you to being a biology teacher? How far did you get?

DeLUISE: Oh, I took biology, and I took biology one and two. But then I got a job, see, in a show called Little Mary Sunshine. And I did that for a year, because it was an off-Broadway show that was running with Eileen Brennan, who’s now a character actress. She was a young girl then. And I played corporal Billy Jester. It was great. I was so… now when I think about it, I wonder how did I get that part? But I was praised and it was good.

PLUME: Was it just an audition that you went on?

DeLUISE: Yeah, I went on an audition and John McMartin, who is all over the place now as a character man, played the original role. And then I replaced him and I did it for a year. It’s a long time to do an off-Broadway show. My salary was $37.50 a week. And my rent was $40 a month. I lived in a four flight walk up that you had to go through the first building… there was one building in the front, one building in the back. You walked through this hallway that was as long as a whole house, and you went down three steps and into a garden, then up three steps and then up four flights to my apartment. Which was a cold water flat. This is when I was 18 years old and I left home, and proceeded to live this freezing apartment. I made a baked potato every day, whether I wanted it or not, because if I didn’t light the oven I would have no heat at all. It was just a cold water flat, and the windows were so loose that the wind would come in… I used to get cardboard and stuff it between the windows.

PLUME: So it was a cold air flat, too.

DeLUISE: Oh it was amazing. And then I would melt the wax to seal the windows to try to get as much of the cold stay out, then I bought sheets of plastic that I got from the dry cleaner and rolled cardboard in there and tacked it up to keep out the cold. And then I put drapes up. And it looked pretty, but believe me, even with the wax and the cardboard, the wind was blowing. I had a bathroom… I had a shower and a toilet in the corner. And then to take a bath, there was a bathtub right next to the sink… And there was a big piece of wood over the bathtub that you cooked on. There wasn’t a table, and it was where you did the dishes and such. Then I had a stove and a table. There was a little couch in that room, and then there was a bedroom. There was no closet, so I built something that was a box with a door that I could keep my clothes in. But I’m telling you, it was a very, very nice apartment. I was very happy to have it. My mother came a couple of times and she says, “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” It was a lot of stairs… You were high up.

PLUME: Did they at any point try and get you to move back home?

DeLUISE: Not really. I did get a television show called The Entertainers, with Carol Burnett, and my father was aware that I was working. He was very happy for me. And then after the show was over he said, “If you want to come home…” just because, you know, I was making $300 a week, which was enormous… “If you want to come home, your room here,” he said. I was very touched. But I didn’t go back. I got another apartment just up the same block, 134 W. 55th Street, and it was on the 9th floor and the rent was $175. And it was a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a little dining room. My wife and I moved into that when we got married – it was that apartment. I could have bought it for $7,000 and owned it, and now it’s worth… I don’t know… probably $300,000. The space became condominiums.

PLUME: At that time you were also doing TV work in addition to Broadway, right?

DeLUISE: Right. What I was doing was… I had a lot of acting classes, and one of my teachers was Sid Lumet, who’s the big famous director, and he was one of the teachers at the high school. I did a show called Green Grow the Lilacs, which is what Oklahoma was based on, and I played a Greek peddler, who was very famous in Oklahoma. I learned some Greek, and I’ll say it to you now – because he was selling bobby pins and facial powder – and the line was (speaks Greek), which is “I have bobby pins for your hair and powder for your face.” So I said it twice in the play, and I had an accent, of course, that sounded I’m sure Italian, and I played the Greek peddler. The wonderful thing about going to the High School of Performing Arts was that it made you think that you could do a part, any part. When someone says, “Can you play a mad killer?” I said, “Oh, yeah, sure, of course.” Every time I did something, people laughed. If I did Hamlet, they would laugh at me. “Oh, you were so funny…” In the part where he tries to kill his mother, I got a lot of laughs – no matter what I did, you know?

PLUME: Was that discouraging or were you happy…

DeLUISE: No. Even Sid Lumet, who I’m still friends with, said, “You’re going to be very good in musicals. You’re going to be very good in light drama.” And that’s what I did. I did that. And there was a performer on television named Sherri Lewis and a little… a little…

PLUME: Lambchop.

DeLUISE: Lambchop. And I was there in an off-Broadway show called Halfpast Wednesday, and I played a king. (sings) What’s the fun of being king if the king is poor? It really is a switch if the king isn’t rich.” I was the king, and it was the story of Rumpelstiltskin. And I said, “Wouldn’t it be good if I woke up and did a gag like Chaplin for this song.” And so this song started with me in bed. And I was lying in bed and then I started to sing, and I took my sheet – my big blanket – there was a hole in the middle, and I brought it up, and put it over my head, and it became my robe, and I put on a big tie to hold my waist together. Then I reached over and the crown was on one of the posts of the bed, and then I went to the bottom of the bed and lifted it, and the whole bed went up and stood up like a Murphy Bed, and it became my throne. The king was not doing very well. But it was really, really wonderful. And I got reviews from the New York Times, and it said I was a comic genius. I said, “Wow! A comic genius!” You know, and I was still living in that apartment where I had to walk up four flights. I mean, “comic genius” was very, very… that was thrilling to me. And the New York Times.

So agents started to call me. And they said, “Would you like to have lunch?” So I had lunch with about 8 different men. And then I went with one guy named Jack Hutto, who became my agent, and I did another show called All In Love. It was a period comedy, and I played Bob Acres – implying that he was a farmer who didn’t have any money. And I came on with my wig and my little bag, you know, and I was all in this huge costume. I was late for a duel, you know, and I came out and I put my wig on and then I bit an apple, and people started to get hysterical. And in that, I ended up singing a song. “It was ever my endeavor to be so very clever, to flex my expletives when I converse,” and I was doing that song all about if I was upset about a person who was late. I would curse appropriately to whatever the thing I was upset about. So I would curse, and then it would be about pants, because my pants ripped. And then I came out with another robe, a big robe, not unlike the king’s robe, and I was supposed to take a bath, and I got into this bathtub – there was no water, but I got in, and I was… “A-huh! A-huh!”… and my foot went in and then… “a-huh, a-huh,a-huh, a-huh-huh-huh”… and I was slowly lowering myself into the tub. And as I came to my genitalia, I went “a-huh, a-huh, A-HUH, A-HUH!” Well, the audience went hysterical. Every night I would take a bath and they would cheer as I entered this tub. And then the New York Times said “comic genius.” I went, “GASP! Oh, that’s twice they called me a comic genius!” And I was thrilled.

Then the Sherri Lewis show called me to be on the show… I wasn’t on television a lot, but it was thrilling to be on with a woman named Margaret Hamilton. She was the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, and I played a detective called Ken E. Ketcham. Can he catch ’em. And Sherri Lewis and I were friends for her whole life, and when she passed away, I was in Canada doing the part of Cookie, the man who was a cook, with the puppets, and I was still working. At her memorial I said, “My first job was with Sherri Lewis, and I was currently, when Sherri passed away, working for Sherri Lewis. You can see where my career went nowhere.” They laughed quite a bit and I did a very… I must admit, I was sensational with her, because we danced and carried on. And the show was constructed in such a way that she did, like, 20 shows and then I had a part in each one, and when I went to Canada they just did my part. She was very organized, and I was…you know, wherever I was gonna be, I would be there and then she’d wear the appropriate costume and I would do my part for 20 shows, and then she’d move on and then she’d do the song with Lambchop, or whatever. And I would work with the puppets. And then she passed away.

PLUME: This was Charlie Horse’s Music Pizza?…

DeLUISE: This was Charlie Horse’s Music Pizza, was the last thing she did. That’s when she died. So we were always friendly, but the lovely thing about her was that she was Jewish, and at Christmas time she had a show where me, Cookie – who was not Jewish – was asking all about Hanukkah and what it meant, and all the significance of it. And we had a show that they now show to children to explain to them… the show was an hour special, about the holiday, Hanukkah. I was very pleased.

PLUME: What’s it like having a legacy like that?

DeLUISE: For me or for children?

PLUME: For you. Being involved in something like that, that children will watch for years…

DeLUISE: Well, you know, it’s a thrill. First of all, I’m… you know, with The Dean Martin Show, they sell them on television now, and I see myself quite young, sitting next to Jack Benny, Orson Welles, Don Rickles, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Burt Reynolds… it’s very nice to think that you belong in a business. Because that was the one thing, that I never felt I was part of show business. I just felt I was just… lucky to get some work. And people say, “Oh my god, my grandmother loves you! My grandfather loves you! My father loves you! And I actually know who you are!” Now the interesting thing is, and I tell folks that I’ve written Eat This, It’ll Make You Feel Better, and then 18 years later I wrote another book called Eat This Too, It’ll Also Make You Feel Better, and then I wrote “Charlie and the Caterpillar, Goldilocks… my version of Goldilocks… King Bob’s New Clothes, Hansel and Gretel, The Nightingale… I’m thrilled to have this big selection of books. The Pouch Potato‘s all about a lost kangaroo who ends up in his mother’s pouch. There’s a big organization called The Festival of Books, so I go there and I sell books along with many, many authors, and 100,000 people show up Saturday and Sunday at the University…

PLUME: UCLA…

DeLUISE: UCLA. And my line had four year old kids. I looked at them and I said, “Look at my line!” This is when I was doing Cookie with Sherri Lewis and Charlie Horse Music Pizza. My line was all four year olds, and I said, “Here I am, this old guy, and all these kids!” And they said, “Hello Cookie!” And I said, “Oh, this is…” it’s thrilling. It is thrilling to have somebody in a wheelchair say, “I love you so much. You make me laugh!” I mean an old person in a wheelchair. And then a four year old saying, “Mommy, look, it’s Cookie!” Well, it’s great to entertain people. The first time I got a compliment, somebody said to me, “Mr. DeLuise, can I talk to you for a minute?” at an airport. And I was happy to talk to them. I always take time. I never said, “I can’t talk to you.” And this woman said, “My father loved you,” and she got all choked up and she said, “When he was dying, we showed him your movies, and he would laugh. Thank you so much for making my father laugh when he was so sick.” Now, I didn’t know how to take it. I didn’t want the responsibility of that. And I said, “Oh, thank you,” but I wasn’t sure, you know, where to put that information. And then, I heard it a lot. I heard people saying that, “You really made my father laugh,” “you really made my grandmother laugh.” And I was very complimentary. I said, “Oh, thanks.” Because it was a real compliment. I was thrilled to hear that, that they were so moved. Sometimes somebody comes up to you with tears in their eyes and then suddenly you’re responsible for that, you know, phenomenon.

PLUME: That emotion…

DeLUISE: Someone they know that has died liked me. It’s an odd compliment, and you have to put it… you used the word legacy… So that is something that I’ve accepted, and it’s pretty nice to be able to hear those words. Once in a while somebody says… and, you know, you’re in the grocery shop, you’ll hear somebody say this: “You’re shopping for cantaloupe? How’d you get here?” I said, “I drove.” “Gasp! You drive yourself and you’re picking your own cantaloupe?” I said, “Yes, yes.” This was when I was at the peak of my Dean Martin days. And now somebody says to me, while they’re wheeling a carriage or they’re being wheeled, “I grew up on you.” And I say, “Did you?” And here this old person says, “You made me laugh when I was young…” – and they’re old! And then they say, “You were great! My mother used to let me stay up late to watch you on the Johnny Carson show.” And I thought, this is great. This is an old person. Missing some teeth. Wearing very thick eyeglasses, or has a cane, saying, “I grew up on you.” I said, “Well, I’ve been around…” I must have been around a long time if these old people had fond memories of me when they were children. So it is… it’s very sweet to be around and have… some of the compliments I hear now really touch my heart.

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