Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks

Dreams, Let Up on Us!

Will Shakespeare told us, in that line always misquoted with the word of—even by Bogey in The Maltese Falcon—that we are such stuff as dreams are made on. If they’re in fact what we’re made on, it’s a mixed blessing.

We know that much of Freud’s work has been repudiated and disparaged by the psychiatric world. Particularly his dream symbolism. But I’ve seen dream analysis work. When in treatment—that lovely euphemism for getting your head shrunk—with the brilliant Dr. Willard Gaylin, I would come in with a mishmash of a dream and, feature by crazy feature, he would elucidate it. It was—and can we now retire this word for at least a decade, young people?—awesome.

Some people claim they never dream. There are times when I wish I were one of them.

There are two types of dream that rate, for me at least, the word nightmare. The buggers are the Actor’s Dream and the Exam Dream. If you’ve never endured either of these, count yourself lucky. Maybe I’m getting your share.

The question I can never find an answer to is the one that makes dreams so mysterious. When you watch a movie or read a story you don’t know what’s coming next. You’re surprised by what happens as it unfolds. You know that someone wrote the book or made the movie.

But who in hell is the author of the dream? How can it be anyone but you? But how can it be you if it’s all new to you, if you don’t know what’s coming? Do you write the dream, then hide it from yourself, forget it, and then sit out front and watch it? Everything in it is a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant. And, unlike a book or film, you can’t fast-forward to see how it comes out. So where does it come from? And who wrote it?

(I apologize if I’ve led you to think I have the answers.)

What shows you the dream and at the same time blinds you to its source? The mechanism has to be ingeniously complex to pull this stunt off. But it seems that the complexity of the human brain is too, well, complex for that same brain to understand.

A nice puzzle.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t had the Exam Dream. (Do people who haven’t been to school get this dream, or are they immune to the torture?)

There you are in the classroom, trying desperately to get a peek at someone else’s paper, but they’ve just turned the page as you writhe in the realization that you forgot to study.

Why, this far from one’s education, does one (or at least I) still get the damned dream?

Once I awoke in a sweat from it, walked around a little to shake it off, calmed down, and went back to sleep, only to be blindsided that same night by the Actor’s Dream.

Every actor gets it, even people who have only been in the school play. You’re backstage, about to go on, and desperately trying to find a copy of the play to get at least your first line or two, but no one has a script. How did you get to opening night and fail to learn a single line?

You’re plagued with How did I do this to myself? and Am I even wearing the right costume? and Do I go out there and try to ad-lib a part I don’t know, maybe getting a few lines right by chance? and In a moment I’ll step out there and make an ass of myself, let down and embarrass my fellow actors, and probably be fired on the spot as they give people’s money back. It goes on and on and won’t let up on you.

The merciful release at the much-too-late-in-coming realization Oh, thank God, it’s a dream! leaves you limp.

Freud, the Viennese quack (Nabokov), is said to have pointed out that the mental agony of an excruciating dream is always far worse than the real situation would be.

It’s true.

Logic tells you that in waking real life you probably wouldn’t get into the situation you lie there suffering and blaming yourself for. The rich variety of hateful anxiety dreams can be about anything: not having studied; having lost your passport in an unfamiliar land; getting hopelessly lost in the woods; being late for and unable to find your own wedding; having let your pet get lost; and the myriad other sleeping torture plots the mind is heir to.

The psychic pain is acute. And even if these things did happen, awful as they would be, why must the psychic pain be ten times more excruciating in the dream than it would be in real life?

Who does this to us? Who or what is the sadistic force operating on us here? It’s hard to admit, but doesn’t it have to be ourselves?

Then why are we doing it to ourselves? What did we do to deserve it? And does it all stand for something about us that’s so awful it has to be disguised as something else in the dream?

Please have your answers to these questions on my desk by Friday. Neatness and clarity of presentation will count, and five points will be taken off for spelling.

Time for a laugh here. I just remembered that the great Robert Benchley wrote, somewhere, a piece about that aspect of dreams that’s common to most of them—that nothing is quite itself as you know it. It’s my house but it’s not my house. It’s my gray suit but it has wheels on it.

Should you deem this subject worthy of a return visit, I’ll expose the specific anxiety dreams I collected for a time from some famous people: Laurence Olivier, Rudolf Nureyev, others. (Or you can just tell me to shut up about it.)

APRIL 30, 2010

The Windows of the Soul Need Cleaning

I’m bowled almost over by how many readers replied so intelligently, and revealingly, on this subject: the mystery of dreams and dreaming.

I asked a learnèd friend about this: Dr. Jay Meltzer, the legendary physician to whom I went for medicine until he retired and to whom I still go for his culinary gifts and for education and tutoring on tough subjects.

He said that this whole area—the workings of the brain—is the next great frontier of discovery, following upon such achieved milestones as the genome, molecular biology, Darwin and evolution, etc. (Some, not fully grasping the subject, might add to the milestone list the microchip, video games, and Viagra.)

Meltzer talked about the super-miraculous validation of the fact that the myriad separate circuits of the brain talk to one another. And without our being in on the conversation. Probably just as well that we can’t hear what they say about us.

This plays into my question last time to which so many readers responded, about how a dream can be, so to speak, written and produced and played before us without our being in on its creation. If we’re just the viewer, who is the dream’s author?

Meltzer tied in with this the fascinating distinction between the thing that makes us human creatures unique—consciousness—and simple awareness. A dog is not conscious. He is aware, but only we are conscious. (You’re tempted to say some are more conscious than others, but let that pass.)

Hearing an intellectual shtarker like Meltzer talk about such stuff makes me want to go back to school. He’s greatly interesting about how we all have two brains: the rational brain and the irrational brain. Not to get sidetracked from dreams here, but for an oversimplified example: the rational brain knows not to smoke.

Philosophy’s heavy hitters have also addressed this subject, calling attention to the nature of dreaming and its kinship with madness. I’ve been haunted since college by Baudelaire’s—wasn’t it?—I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me. Insanity and dreams share many things, among them disordered thought and, of course, hallucination. As Artie Schopenhauer (so I’m a name-dropper) had it, A dream is a short-lasting psychosis, and a psychosis is a long-lasting dream. Could Soupy Sales have put it better?

Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream? In Freud’s native tongue, probably something like Schlafschutzentraum.

In my day, Yale still had the torture of the 8:00 a.m. class. At that age everything in you is opposed to early wake-up, and I would either be late for class or miss it completely—by dreaming I was there. Nice of the dream mechanism, letting you sleep, except for the consequences. The complex mechanism is so proficient and intricate in its work that that specific dream can even defy rigorous testing. In the dream itself, and even in class, I would ask myself if this were the dream—or the class.

Once, I knew full well I was in class, but tested it anyway. There’s Cecil Lang, the professor. (One said Mr. Lang at Yale.) Here’s Chris Porterfield at my right elbow, there’s Dave Greenway in the back, and this is my desk. I gripped it solidly and it passed the test. I felt silly. And sillier a moment later. When I woke up. In bed.

This shook me. (Is there any chance I’m dreaming I’m typing this now?)

A number of readers reported that awful thing where you’re trying to escape something, physically, and you can’t get going. The muscles have turned to jelly and your nerves are shot. Tell me ASAP, what is this dream protecting?

And does each profession have its own style of anxiety dream? Does the trial lawyer in court, embarking on cross-examination, look down to find that instead of his notes he has brought a book of Sudoku? Does the brain surgeon find in midoperation that instead of his scalpel he is holding a limp stick of Bonomo’s Turkish Chewing Taffy? (Phallic symbolism?) Feel free to submit examples from your own particular trade.

Lest I forget, I teased you last time by promising a couple of specimens of celeb anxiety dreams I’ve heard. (I know you can’t slander the dead, but do I dishonor them by revealing their dreams? Let’s say no.)

Laurence Olivier’s punisher was particularly cruel:

"It’s not, dear boy, that I don’t know my lines. It’s far worse than that. I’m standing backstage, waiting for my cue. I hear it and open the door to make my entrance.

"But the door doesn’t lead to the set. It leads instead to a room full of tools. And two more doors. I open one. It leads to another pair of doors.

"I frantically fling one open. Good God! It leads to a whole row of doors. I am soaked in sweat.

"As I keep flinging open one damned door after the other, I can hear my fellow actors out onstage, desperately ad-libbing and wondering where the hell I am.

My wife says I wake up screaming.

Olivier’s story may have been, as they say, in conversation. (Even if not, what fun it is to say that.) Rudolf Nureyev’s nightmare was told either on my show or over his nightly after-show steak tartare in the formerly great Russian Tea Room.

Poor Rudolf’s dream (Traum, appropriately, in German) contained the standard ingredients of the devilish one in which one is poorly prepared and horribly confused. In his case, he is on the great stage, dancing, and suddenly realizes he’s lost and doesn’t know the rest of the choreography.

He desperately tries to recall rehearsal but can’t. Was I even at rehearsal?

He is fumbling the steps. Panicked, he begins to sweat, and hears laughter from the audience. The performance grinds to a stop and his fellow dancers —and George Balanchine!—are glaring at me.

Then comes the punch line:

Pouring out sweat, I look down. I am wearing my street shoes!

MAY 14, 2010

Art Did the Darndest Things … to Your Jokes

The voice of the editor wondered if, instead of the column I would have handed in this time, I might want to do a short, quick appreciation of Art Linkletter. My only reluctance in accepting the mission is that what I have to offer may not be everyone’s idea of an appreciation.

I wrote for Linkletter for a week for the same reason that I wrote for a lot of famous people for a week or two only. My boss-to-be, Johnny Carson, was canny enough not to replace my then former boss Jack Paar immediately upon Jack’s exit from The Tonight Show in 1962. There may have also been a contract obligation elsewhere that kept him from doing so. Even if so, the wise thing for Carson was not to appear to jump into Jack’s chair while people were still lamenting Jack’s departure.

My guess is that the gap between the two stars was bigger than most anyone remembers. Following Jack came a kind of summer stock season for Tonight. Entertainers of all kinds, shapes, and degrees of talent hosted the show. I recall Robert Cummings, Donald O’Connor, Mort Sahl, Merv Griffin (a newcomer), possibly a Gabor, Steve & Eydie, Jack E. Leonard, Jack Carter, Sam Levenson (smashing), Jerry Lewis, and two memorable weeks of Groucho.

For some reason, and partly because Jack had established it, each felt the need to do The Monologue.

The results were mixed.

Linkletter was a man of great accomplishment and performing skill, a shrewd, shrewd businessman. His was a great American success story, complete with humble beginning. He provided the world, especially when he was working with those kids, with a million healthy laughs. Among his list of performing gifts, monology was absent.

The Tonight Show writing staff included, besides me, veteran writers for Bob Hope, Jack Paar, and other biggies. We had a bad week of it.

The great David Lloyd would drop on Linkletter’s desk his usual gems, only to have them rejected. And, invariably, if he picks one, he picks one of my feebs, Dave would lament. (Feeb: Lloydese for a weak joke, thrown in, admittedly, to fill the page a bit.)

One night at dinner at Dave’s house in Beverly Hills, years later when his résumé had gone on from Art Linkletter to The Mary Tyler Moore Show (including his Emmy-winning Chuckles Bites the Dust episode), Frasier, Cheers, Taxi, and more, he reduced the table to hysterics by recalling a specific example of what he called how to Linkletterize a joke. So that no living being of whatever dimness could be left behind in getting it.

Ready? All that you youngies need to know is that there was once a popular comic named Jack E. Leonard, a man physically rotund enough to be appropriately, and affectionately, called Fat Jack.

Here is the one line Art selected from that day’s Dave Lloyd submissions: On tonight’s show we’re going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Jack E. Leonard.…

That’s how Dave wrote it.

Here’s what Art—democratically ensuring that no one hearing it should be left in the dark—did to it. All emphases are his:

"On tonight’s show we’re going to talk about comedy teams. You know, comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis … and big fat Jack E. Leonard … who’s so fat, he’s a one-man comedy team … all by himself!"

The audience reaction? If someone had dropped a pin, it would have been deafening.

That did it. Rather than for us to go on strike for the remaining days of that week, I suggested a plan. I went downstairs in the RCA building to the bookstore, bought a Bennett Cerf joke book, and we each copied jokes out and handed them in. None of us could bear to find out what fate they met.

Someone, I guarantee, will react to this with the prerecorded How can you speak disrespectfully of the dead? Truth is, I have always found it remarkably easy. Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue, and above reproach escapes me. And the minor crime of smothering jokes hardly puts Art Linkletter in the pantheon of history’s malefactors.

He was a pleasant and cordial man to be around, and inspiringly professional.

I don’t know how well he knew his Shakespeare, but he paid three times the grievous penalty expressed in Old Montague’s "O thou untaught! What manners is in this? To press before thy father to a