Making a Crack, Taking a Dig, and Hurling a Barb

Former talk-show host Dick Cavett blogs for the New York Times, and he recently mused on witty insults. One that stuck with Cavett over the years was a disagreement between two comedy writers that ended with one firing off, “Your parents owe the world a retraction.”

Cavett also includes a comment by Clement Freud, who was apparently not a Frank Sinatra enthusiast. Upon learning that Sinatra had been punched by a fan, Freud said, “That’s the first time the fan hit the s***.”

Blog commenters chimed in by the score; among their contributions is an apocryphal Frank Zappa story:

Joe Pine was one of the first TV hosts to specialize in haranguing and humiliating his guests and audience. Some attributed his nasty behavior to an outlook on life soured by having lost a leg and needing to wear a prosthesis.

Pine made the mistake of having Frank Zappa on his show and greeting him by saying, “Well, I guess that long hair makes you a girl.”

Zappa replied, “I guess that wooden leg makes you a table.”

Strangely, there’s another amputee anecdote: In London, stage comedienne Coral Brown saw “a theatre critic who had panned one of her performances. The woman, who had an amputated leg, was sitting at a table surrounded by an adoring coterie.

Coral strode to the table and in a voice no one could ignore, exclaimed: ‘How wonderful to see you with all of London at your foot!’”

Ooh, two more: Billy Wilder putdown another person's musical ability thusly: “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”

And when George Kaufman had a feud with producer Jed Harris, he said, “When I die, I want to be cremated, and have my ashes thrown in Jed Harris’ face.”

Your Philanthropist Crushed My Austin Martin

Philanthropist/actor Paul Newman (1925-2008) loved practical jokes (e.g., director Robert Altman found 200 live chickens in his trailer courtesy of Newman). The actor also had a passion for cars. As recounted by Eric Lax in Paul Newman: A Biography, he liked to combine the two:

[Newman's cars] became a joke with friends such as Robert Redford, who once gave Newman a Porsche as a present. The car, however, was a wreck — dented from an accident and missing its engine. Redford paid a dump truck driver to deposit the car in Newman’s driveway with a note attached: “Happy birthday.”

Newman had the car compressed, then placed in a wooden box at the Redford estate... He conceded that Redford won the gag by never acknowledging the box.

In his New York Times blog, Dick Cavett wrote of a similar incident in which Newman had Redford's Austin Martin sportscar towed away at night, compacted, and then returned to Redford's driveway.

The following morning the [crushed car] was gone from the Redford lawn. Dawn revealed it: it had suddenly and mysteriously found its way to the Newman residence, where it could be plainly seen . . . on the roof.

What I like about this is that Robert Redford left an apparently authentic blog comment in Cavett's column: “Paul replaced my Austin with an identical one of showroom quality”!