Right when I started in show… Milton Berle was my first idol. When I was a kid, I went to see Milton at Lowe’s State, and I never laughed so much, and I said, ‘That’s who I want to be; that’s what I want to be.’
My wife is a very attractive woman, and she’s always worried about her diet. But she doesn’t pay attention to me, and I don’t pay attention to her. She’s a vegetarian, and it drives me crazy.
The ability to absorb a book and make someone else’s words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.
Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.
My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn’t know we were poor until I started giving interviews.
My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn’t let him cut my nails.
Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn’t know fluffy. Everything sank.
Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore’s program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.