“I don’t get no respect,” said Rodney Dangerfield, thousands of times. It was one of the great taglines in show-business history. It was the basis of his act—the denial of respect. Whatever his protestations, Rodney was one of the most beloved entertainers of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
There is now a biography, Nothin’ Comes Easy, by Michael Seth Starr. Mr. Starr has written many biographies of entertainers, and several of comedians such as Dangerfield. His other subjects include Joey Bishop, Redd Foxx, and Don Rickles.
You may prefer to read a long magazine piece about Dangerfield. You may prefer to watch a few video clips of his act on YouTube. But if you’re up for a deep dive—this book is for you.
Often, comedy arises from personal pain, as everyone knows. Rodney Dangerfield had a terrible, terrible upbringing. Therefore, he had a lot of material. Would he have traded the material for a better upbringing, and a different career? I would like to ask him.
Rodney once said, “I’m not a happy guy. Comedy is a camouflage for depression. Comics turn to jokes because they don’t want to face themselves. Actually, I’m not a happy guy.”
I grew up with Rodney’s jokes, so to speak. They were very funny—but tinged with pain. He was always talking about how ugly he was. (He was not.) “My kids are good-looking. Good thing my wife cheats on me.”
There were two jokes he reliably told about his birth. (1) “When I was born, the doctor said to my mother, ‘We did everything we could, but he pulled through anyway.’” (2) “When I was born, I was so ugly, the doctor slapped my mother.” Funny, yes, but…
He was born Jacob Cohen in 1921 and he grew up in Queens, N.Y. His father was a vaudeville performer—”Phil Roy,” he called himself. His mother was Dorothy, or “Dotty.”
There have been worse parents. But not many.
The father was simply absent. Rodney (or Jacob, as he was then) saw him once or twice a year, for an hour or two. Later, Rodney would quip, “Dad had no time for kids. He was always out trying to make new kids.” His mother was very, very cold—also needy, which makes for a brutal combination. According to Rodney, she never gave him a compliment, a kiss, or a birthday present. Not even a card.
When he was a boy, Rodney was molested, repeatedly, by a neighborhood man. In school, he was the target of anti-Semitism, not just from students but also from teachers. But Rodney had a goal in life, which was life-saving, as I see it. He had a purpose. He wanted to become a comedian.
“I went into show business to get love,” he later said. “I think nine-tenths of the people in this racket have an identical need … “
He strove and struggled to break into the business, appearing under the name “Jack Roy.” He earned a living, sort of, and gained some attention. But not enough to keep going, as he saw it. So he quit.
“I was the only one who knew I had quit,” he would say, with his trademark self-deprecation.
In an interim period—wilderness years—he sold aluminum siding and paint. He was fairly good at it. But in his heart, and in his head, he was a comedian. He never stopped writing jokes—for himself and for other comedians.
“I had to tell jokes,” Rodney would say. “I had to write them and tell them. It was like a fix, like I had the habit, you know?” In his biography, Starr quotes Joseph Merhi, a producer, who said about Rodney, “Every waking moment, he was thinking about stand-up. He always had a pad and a pen and was writing down jokes.”
Having had his fill of aluminum siding and paint, Jacob Cohen, or Jack Roy, decided to give comedy one more go. And, as Rodney Dangerfield, he made it big. His breakthrough moment came on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. He was an overnight success—at 45 years old, having worked his tail off for years.
There was more to come—more than nightclubs and TV shows. There were movies, beginning with Caddyshack in 1980, through Back to School in 1986, to something not exactly funny: Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers in 1994. The guy who got no respect became a living legend and national treasure.
I think I can make the claim “national treasure” because Rodney’s signature white shirt and red tie were installed in the Smithsonian.
Throughout his life, Dangerfield suffered from depression—black, awful depression. He would joke, of course. “I told my psychiatrist, ‘I have suicidal thoughts.’ He said, ‘From now on, you pay in advance.’”
There was solace, though—marijuana. He smoked it from young adulthood to the day he died. “It allows me to cope with life,” he explained. Would he have been even sharper, in his comedy onstage, without the daily influence of pot? Many people—I have known some—think they are knockin’ ’em dead when under the influence. Rodney was aware of this.
In his autobiography—It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me (2004)—he wrote, “I did coke for a while. What a mistake that was. When you’re on coke, things can be going bad and you think you’re doing great.” Marijuana, he never abandoned, nor, from his perspective, did it abandon him.
Louis Armstrong was another performer, and living legend, and national treasure, who swore by marijuana. Reading a line in Starr’s biography, I thought of him.
An actress, Candice Azzara, said of Rodney, “Even though he made a lot of jokes, he seemed like the saddest man I knew.” Once, the actor Ossie Davis glimpsed Armstrong in an unguarded moment. Armstrong did not know anyone was observing. He wore, said Davis, “the saddest, most heartbreaking expression” he had ever seen.
As time went on, Rodney developed a relationship of sorts with his father. “Even though he had walked out on me,” he said, “there was a part of me that liked him.” And, “knowing my mother, what were his alternatives?” Rodney attended his father’s funeral. He was the only person there (seriously).
I caught Rodney’s act in 2001, when he was marking his 80th birthday. (For the piece I wrote about that evening, go here.) The performance was in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York. The last words Rodney spoke were, “My old man was in vaudeville, and he said, ‘You can always count on a New York audience.’”
Rodney died in 2004. By that time, he had his own website, which featured a joke of the day. The joke the day he died—by sheer coincidence—was this: “I tell ya, I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, ‘There goes the neighborhood.’” This line was, in fact, inscribed on Rodney’s gravestone (at a cemetery in Los Angeles). The epitaph reads, “There goes the neighborhood.”
Rodney Dangerfield was “an adornment to society,” to borrow a phrase from Paul Johnson, the late British historian. I will borrow another from him: Rodney “added to the gaiety of life.” Yes, but at what cost to him.
Nothin’ Comes Easy: The Life of Rodney Dangerfield
by Michael Seth Starr
Citadel, 240 pp., $29
Jay Nordlinger writes at Onward and Upward on Substack and is the music critic of the New Criterion.
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