Farewell to Jerry Stiller (and Anne Meara)

5/12/2020

NOT TO BE MISSED: Thomas Beller's loving depiction of Jerry Stiller as Hasidic elder, from the West Side, one neighbor writing about another.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/a-few-words-about-jerry-stiller
* * *
(From me:) As a New Yorker who has never lived in an apartment, I am fascinated by friends’ buildings.

Friends were said to live in the same West Side building as a singer I love. Whenever we would visit for a Seder, I would imagine getting on the elevator with the singer. Never happened.

Another friend lived in the same Village building as a noted writer and doctor. My wife had some questions for him, if we ever got on the same elevator. Never happened.

However, two friends of ours did live in the same building as Stiller and Meara. One summer in the 80’s, our friends, sisters, threw a Sunday 5 PM cocktail party on the penthouse patio – classic New York. Noted rabbi. Noted historian, female, who wanted to talk about Pete Rose (before Pete had been found out.)

And Stiller and Meara, one of the gang, chatting with everyone. She was gorgeous, and friendly. He, not so gorgeous but equally friendly.

I could not resist. I told them how much I admired their work, which, to me, consisted of their ultra-droll commercials for Blue Nun, a semi-sweet wine formerly known as Liebfraumilch.

Never do this. But I did. I told them my favorite Blue Nun commercial was about a radio-detective type sitting in his office when a mysterious redhead appears.

I am ashamed, but I wasn’t then, to semi-imitate their voices, as I recalled the dialogue:

He: “From the moment she walked into my office, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had legs that went from here to there – and back again.”
She: “You’ll have to excuse me for not sitting down, but I’ve got legs that go from here to there and back again.”

(Anne Meara was indeed way taller than Stiller, surely part of the attraction. Somehow a detective and long legs led to a pitch for Blue Nun wine.)

They both gave me deadpan looks, shook their heads.
Sorry, each said, I just don’t remember that one. (The point being, there were so many.) Then they asked me about the Yankee game I had just attended. They fit right in. West Side neighbors.

I never met Anne Meara again but I used to bump into Jerry Stiller at The Garden. This was before his Seinfeld renaissance, and he was just another West Sider, saying hello at halftime.
I reveled in the success of their daughter and son, plus his success on Seinfeld, grouchy and loud, at the next table in a deli. (We all remember that bustling ambience, don’t we.)

Anne passed in 2015. Jerry passed the other day, at 92.
The NYT ran a lovely obituary – of the two of them, really – with classic Seinfeldian sub-plots about a fitting obituary, and a killer last line by Peter Keepnews.
Better you should read it for yourself. Meantime, farewell to that classic West Side couple, Stiller and Meara:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/arts/television/jerry-stiller-seinfeld-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2

Altenir Silva

5/12/2020 10:24:33 am

Dear George,

I get happy to discover that you liked this guy. I think Mr. Stiller in the Seinfeld show as Constanza’s dad was a perfect role, like Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca. It’s impossible to imagine other actors doing these roles.
RIP Jerry Stiller.

Altenir

bruce

5/13/2020 01:18:17 pm

altenir,

you mentioned something that i've thought about a number of times....what actor (actress usage seems to have disappeared) fits most perfectly in any movie role you've ever seen?

impossible to say since the chosen actor was, well, chosen.

after saying the above, if i had to choose one actor that i cannot imagine--ever--anybody else playing it'd be alastair sim in the 1951 version of 'a christmas carol'.

perfection....especially the scene near the end when he goes to his nephew's house to ask his forgiveness for his behaviour.

bruce

Altenir Silva

5/13/2020 02:50:56 pm

Dear Bruce,

I didn’t see this version of A Christmas Carol (1951). You’re right, when an actor lodges in a role, it gets perfect. John Huston said something like that that the success of a movie is the choice of the casting.

Be well and safe.

Altenir

Altenir Silva

5/12/2020 11:17:24 am

Errata: The correct is Costanza's dad.

bruce

5/13/2020 02:59:28 pm

altenir,

for your consideration.

black&white, but they also colourized it.

blasphemous.

cheers,

bruce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMzzX8VuBg&list=PLFNR40-P3wxQ6a5h709B8o4MyitvxtFm3

Altenir Silva

5/14/2020 06:19:04 am

Dear Bruce,
Thanks for the link.
I saved to look forward this movie.
Be well/Altenir

bruce

5/14/2020 09:18:50 am

altenir,

you're welcome.

hope you enjoy it.

bruce

Alan Rubin link

5/13/2020 09:21:06 am

There were too many great Jerry Stiller scenes on Seinfeld to remember them all. I'm sure each viewer had their favorites.

The NT Yankee ones were great, but the one in the Korean nail spa was classic Jerry. The owner remembers his smelly feet.

Stiller and Meara were customers in mt West Side appliance store at 83rd Street and Broadway. One day they came in all excited about their first comedy album that had just been released.

As they gained in fame, Jerry always remained the same friendly guy. Anne was more affected and became a bit aloof.

We were used to having celebrities from all walks of life as customers. We respected their privacy other than an occasional question about whether they were working on something new or to comment on a recent performance.

My first day before Christmas in the store was on a snowy Saturday. A sign of things to come was seeing Marty Balsam holding a big Christmas tree in the middle of the store talking with Harry Belafonte.

George, you never knew who you night meet in a NYC elevator or an apartment visit.

bruce

5/13/2020 01:26:42 pm

george,

i'm sure many of us first heard of stiller and meara during their many appearances on the sullivan show.

when i look back at it, i'm surprised how attractive she was. not sure why i missed it first time around.

i enjoyed seinfeld tho i never thought his stand up routine was outstanding.

i thought the show a bit unusual since the star, a comedian, was normally the straight man.

it was also a surprise to find out how relatively few shows jerry stiller actually appeared in.

i thought the costanza clan was the most enjoyable aspect of the series.

bruce

KL Bob

5/17/2020 06:47:46 am

Thanks for this piece, George, another piece that makes me homesick. I grew up on Imus, when he was at WNBC, and I think it was there that the Stiller and Meara ads got burned into memory. Or, I should say, the words "Stiller and Meara" got burned, because I couldn't for the life of me remember Blue Nun. The only wine I could remember was Rufino Orvietto, but I think that was a later, West Coast memory.

Now I also think I recall Imus somehow making irreverent comments about the Blue Nun, which nobody really took too seriously back in the day...

Stay well!

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Farewell to Jerry Stiller (and Anne Meara)

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