FROM THE VAULT: An Interview With Dom DeLuise (Patreon)

Conducted ~early 2003

One of the great joys about being an interviewer is actually going out and, when the wind is blowing right and the stars align, getting a chance to speak to your childhood idols.

Growing up on the heavy side, one of those idols was the late Dom DeLuise. Be it a Mel Brooks comedy, teamed with Burt Reynolds, or pointing Kermit the Frog in the direction of Hollywood while deep in a swamp, I couldn’t get enough of him. He was, and remains, one of my favorite screen comedians. Rare is the actor whose very screen presence lights up even the dullest of flicks, and many a piece of mediocre celluloid was redeemed by a little shot of Dom.

He played Caesar (“Wash this!”), a hypocritical public watchdog (“Texas has a whorehouse in it!”), an agent (“Alligator!”), a sidekick (“Captain Chaos!”), and even a crow named Jeremy… With over 50 years in the business, he did just about everything from Broadway to TV, nightclubs to movies… And back again.

I got a chance to have a conversation with Dom many years back, one which lasted many hours and touched on all aspects of his life and career. Like many a great storyteller, a conversation with Dom was rarely linear – you never know when an anecdote or a fascinating tangent would pop up, and I largely gave Dom the reins to recall and relate whatever he wanted to, when he wanted to… With many a gem uncovered in the process.

Unfortunately, the sheer magnitude of the piece meant that its transcription was often put off in favor of smaller, quicker pieces in the intervening years – much to my dismay, as this interview was something I’d desperately wanted to share. Finally, the piece was finished.

I would like to note that, since we spoke a few years back, some of the people we discussed in the interview have since passed away, including the much-missed Anne Bancroft, as well as Dom himself.

After we had finished the interview, Dom remembered our conversation about my Grandmother, who had grown up in the same neighborhood at the same time as him. Dom asked for her address and phone number. A few days later, my Grandmother called to tell me she had just received a phone call from Dom – and the two had reminisced for almost an hour. A few days after that, she received a signed copy of one of Dom’s cookbooks, as well as a signed 8×10 – two pieces of kindness, above and beyond the phone call, that sum up what a charming, big-hearted man he was.

My Grandmother, sadly, has also passed away. Here’s the inscription Dom wrote for her…

KEN PLUME: Am I correct in my understanding that you were born in Brooklyn?

DOM DeLUISE: Yes, I was born in Brooklyn, on August 1, 1933. And my mother was an Italian immigrant, as was my father. They spoke Italian and I learned English. As soon as I was born, I was heard to say, “Is it ready?” And it was pretty good. I had a brother who was 12 years older than me, and he was Nicholas. And my sister was 8 years older than me, and we’re still talking to each other after all this time. My father was quite amazing because he came to this country and he never spoke English and he was illiterate. And the lovely thing about him was that he ended up buying a gigantic house with four apartments in it, which my sister now owns. It was pretty wonderful because my family lived in one apartment and then all the other people were there… we would visit in the hallways, you know, so it was very communal. And there was a gigantic basement that we used to make wine in, and can tomatoes in. When I say can, I mean we would put them in bottles.

I was taken to the movies at about, I think… I don’t know… seven. I was pretty old. And I saw in the movies that first time, when Jimmy Cagney killed Humphrey Bogart. Cagney was going to the electric chair, and Pat O’Brien told him to fake that he was scared – “I want you to scream and yell when you go to the electric chair.” And Cagney said, “I’m not gonna do that.” But he did make believe he was scared for the sake of the dead end kids, so they would straighten out their lives and he wouldn’t be a hero. I think it was Angels With Dirty Faces. And I said, “Ah! That’s what I want to do!” I remember so clearly going to my first film and there was this gigantic picture, and I was so thrilled and I thought, “Oh, wow, I want to do that.” I just immediately knew. I was just able to talk and walk, and I thought, that really is beautiful.

PLUME: Had you shown any inclination towards being an outward person prior to that?

DeLUISE: I was pretty outward, yes, I was… first of all, I was the youngest. And because my mother had lost other children – that’s why my brother was older than me. The reason he was 12 years older was my mother lost three children in between. And then came my sister, and then they lost another child, and then I came… so my mother lost four and then she had the three: Nicholas, Ann, and then Dom. And because I was little, and survived, I have a feeling that they fed me carefully because of the history of my other brothers and sisters that didn’t make it.

PLUME: Lavished more attention on you?

DeLUISE: A lot of attention was lavished on me, right. And then I know that I was fed carefully. And that influenced me… That’s the reason I’ve always been roundish, you know. And I went to school and I was a fairly good student. I was a little dyslex… dyslex… I can’t say it. I have it, but I can’t say it.

PLUME: Dyslexic.

DeLUISE: There, you said it. I had problems learning to spell, and my sister didn’t. She was very, very good about that. And to this day, I will call her long distance – she’s in Long Island and I’m in California – and I’ll call her up and she’ll spell something for me. I mean it’s… I mean, I write books and I have written two cookbooks and I’ve written 9 children’s books, but I still call her up and ask her for some help with the position of letters and words. But a lot of famous people who have accomplished a great deal are also dyslexic, so it’s all right.

PLUME: Do you think it’s a sense of over-accomplishing to compensate?

DeLUISE: I’m not sure why it happened, but I know that there was a man named John Kennedy who had it. And a lot of people can… like, my son has it, and has trouble reading the words. His eyes don’t go along the line, and they pop around, and so he has trouble reading. But he performs all the time. And he’s very skilled about looking at a script that’s two or three pages long and then he memorizes it very quickly and will often perform it very well, since he has the skill of pronouncing a lot of words. So he’s very smart about it. I didn’t hit it. I didn’t know what was wrong. You don’t have it, right? You don’t have that…

PLUME: No.

DeLUISE: Because you have a script and you… it’s not what I do. Not a skill that I have. Especially when you were young, and as an actor you want to read scripts cold and you were hoping to read them well, and that was not a skill that I had. But after I listened to it once to get the gist of it, I had to go over and study what I could read. When I went to school, I had just a block to walk to school, but I remember clearly being a mama’s boy. I was home and my mother left me at school, and I was very, very upset that my mother was going to leave me in this room. I remember saying, “You’re gonna leave???” That was very vivid to me. That day of my life is very vivid. I had an opportunity to go to a high school called the High School of Performing Arts, which was in New York. It meant that I had to leave my house and go about seven blocks, put a nickel in, go down in the subway, travel for about an hour, and go to the High School of Performing Arts.

After I got out of the subway, 46th Street and Broadway, I went to 46th Street and 6th Avenue, which is a block and a half, and there was this wonderful school where I could have voice, diction, and dance, and acting and stage craft. It was a thrilling experience to be focusing on how to perform. And when I was in my junior high school, which is what you go to before you go to high school, I was in a show called The Christmas Carol, and I played Ebenezer Scrooge the first time. A bumbling man who was very sweet, and Scrooge learns how to be a better person by looking at him. And then the next year they did the same play over and I played Ebenezer Scrooge, and I still have the script. It’s a huge part, you know. And I was a young big kid, and I played Scrooge and I also made my own tombstone! It said Ebenezer Scrooge, and I had to make this. And I said, “What name is on there? Ebenezer Scrooge! Oh no! Are these the things that will happen, or the things that might happen? Tell me!” The ghost was played by Anita Calaio – she was underneath that black cloth – and I said, “Oh, please!” And then at the end, we all bowed and they closed the curtain and I came outside, and the whole school screamed with approval, and I was so aware of how nice it was to work really hard and have them cheer for me. It was wonderful.

I had to audition for the High School of Performing Arts because they wanted to see if you could, in fact, carry on and, you know, act a little. So my brother, who was older than me and not as wise as I thought, said the thing that I should learn was Shakespeare. So here I was talking, just barely talking when I was a young person, and my brother said you should learn “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely. They have their entrances and their exits and in their lives they play many parts. The mewing puking child…” And so here I tried to do… can you imagine, a Shakespeare thing? Then they said, “Now we’re going to improvise. Find that book on the table and there’s a piece of paper in it, and just ad lib.” So I looked at the book and looked around and I said, “Oh, a letter!” And I took the piece of paper and I said, “If you don’t pass your…” I was reading the letter. “If you don’t pass your audition, you’ll never get into the High School of Performing Arts.” And you know that I got into it.

Now, three years of my life was spent at the High School of Performing Arts, and it was a wonderful experience. Every day getting on the train. Every day going to school. And every day having some lesson in voice and diction. So I was saying ‘earl’. I mean, I was saying “cup of ‘earl’.” And they said, “Oil.” “Oil? Really?” And then they said, “It’s correct to say ‘bahth’.” And I was saying ‘baath’. And I said ‘bahth’. “I’m going to take ‘bahth’.” So for a long time I said, “I’m gonna take a ‘bahth’, and if you don’t want me to take a ‘baath’, I won’t.” I was learning to speak eastern standard speech. Oh, it was difficult. It was new to me, you know?

PLUME: What was your favorite aspect of performing? Was it acting or voice or singing?

DeLUISE: Assuming the other characters was thrilling to me. It was so exciting to not be me. You have to be other people. We had an exercise at school where we had to be an old person. I only knew people who were old and had an accent. So when I started to do an old person, other people got up and they spoke correct English. English correctly. And when I spoke as an old person, I got on the telephone and I said, “Make-a sure you come-a home, and don’t-a be afraid in-a New York, and take care and goodbye and God blessh.” And so I spoke with an Italian accent, and they said, “Why did you speak in an Italian accent?” And I said, “I don’t know!” And it was because, of course, everybody I knew… my mother was-a talked-a like this, “Dom-a, please,” you know? My father said, “Dom-a, come over here.” Everybody had an accent.

PLUME: It was your frame of reference.

DeLUISE: I had no idea that an old person could speak without an accent. And it was so odd because I remember clearly it’s one of the things I did and then I figured it out. I said, “Wait a minute! Everybody I know who’s old does that!” I mean, it wasn’t apparent. And I met some wonderful people who I still am friends with. There’s a guy named Bob Ellison, who became the writer/producer of Cheers, Taxi… he’s just amazing. We didn’t see each other for a while. In fact, he became friends with me when I was young. We were all young. And damn you for asking me to tell you my life story.

PLUME: How can I make it up to you?

DeLUISE: Are you recording this?

PLUME: Yeah.

DeLUISE: Oh, I’m so glad. Maybe you could play it back to me and I can find out what I left out. I would sit with him – and I’m jumping ahead – I needed some scripts, and we wrote eight pages of sketches where I did a character called Dominick the Great, a magician that speaks with an Italian accent. What a surprise. And then I did interviews and I interviewed a werewolf. I paid him $200 for each sketch, and he now is a producer for television.

PLUME: Is this the character you would perform on the Gary Moore Show?

DeLUISE: Exactly, exactly. And that… the strange thing is I was doing that when I was 18 years old. And later, when I performed for Reagan at the Ford Theater where Lincoln was shot, I performed the same jokes I had written when I was 18, and I was older, and the people from the White House were laughing. They said it… you know, I mean it was an amazing thing to think that I made up a joke… I held up a ball and I said “I’m gonna make-a this ball disappear. I’m gonna say tree, and the ball is gonna be gone. One two tree. Ladies and gent…” and I let go of the ball, and it was on an elastic, and as I let go of it, it went over to my left and popped over my right shoulder, and then it would recoil and then pop again on my left side, and then it would pop again… so you’d see the ball go bong, bing, boom, boom, and then it was hanging in back of me. So that’s the same thing I did at the White House, and they laughed. I said, “They’re laughing at my 18 year old creation of a, you know, joke.”

And anyway, so what happened was, I also noticed that there was a man named Dan Melnick. And he was a guy who had a low voice and was very good, and he became the president of MGM. And then I went to school with another girl named Suzanne Pleshette, who became the wife of Bob Newhart, and we’re still friends, and we went to high school together. And uh… it goes on. Joseph Wishy, who became an impresario, and would bring Russian dance companies to this country… Have touring companies. So it was very sweet to see people that I went to school with becoming accomplished. When you’re young and you go backstage, and you say, “May I see Danny Thomas?” or some person and they say, “Stand over there at the moment. Keep the door clear.” And now, I say, “Can I see Anne Bancroft?” – who’s one of my best friends… or Mel Brooks or Carl Reiner, or anyone who does a show, they say, “Come in, come in. Get out of the way. Make room for Mr. DeLuise.” And it’s so wonderful to have the ability to go backstage and have somebody say, you know, “come in,” because you know the star of the show. All because of the fact I knew a lot of people who were interested in the theater.

PLUME: Did the high school prepare you for life after high school?

DeLUISE: Ha ha! I’m not sure about life so much as um… as just the idea that you wanted to be in a theatrical… you know, my interest was theatrical.

PLUME: How difficult was it to find professional work after high school?

DeLUISE: Ha ha ha! Sure, it was hard.

PLUME: Was it something…

DeLUISE: I used to make the rounds. I made the rounds for almost five years. The rounds where you get pictures of yourself and then you proceed to go into an office and talk to a man and he, you know, says, “Give me a picture and thanks a lot, I’ll call you,” but he never calls you. And then I went to one office one time, that did live theater on television, and they would do plays. Playhouse 90. It was 90 minutes.

PLUME: Which was all live television, right?

DeLUISE: Yeah, live television. And I was in there and the man was very nice to me and he said, “We need film on you.” And I said, “You know what? Everybody asks me for film. I want to start in this business. How am I gonna get a job if the only way you can get in is to be on film? And if I don’t have film then I’m not gonna get a job. I’m just confused. I mean, I can’t bring you a chicken. I have to lay an egg first,” or whatever the hell I said. And I really started to cry. And he said, “Just listen, listen. You just have to…” he was very patient. Because I was looking for a job for a long, long, long time. And I was ushering in a theater. As I was going to high school I would usher at night, and I would get three dollars a night. And I would check coats at Guys and Dolls… Milton Berle. I would get a quarter when I returned a coat. And I would also sell orange and Hershey bars, and stuff like that. Milton Berle gave me a dollar.

Now later on, I ended up playing cards with him, and I went to his memorial. It was the first time I ever met him. Mind you, I had seen him on television. That’s all you watched on television, was wrestling and Milton Berle. And he came in to see the show. And he gave me a dollar! In his pocket was a script that was about eight pages long. And of course we read it. We copied it! As he watched Guys and Dolls we copied every joke that was in there. It was, you know, his style of humor. And we gave it back to him, of course. A little wrinkled, but… and then he gave me a dollar. And I said, “He gave me a dollar!” Everybody was talking about it. Thrilling. And I even told him after we became friends, and I met him many, many, many times after that. Once I played cards, and I dealt him four aces. And uh, I remember that that was quite a thrill. I have to tell you that part of what goes on is that you get to meet people that you grew up seeing on a screen. So you see somebody, and then you’re working with Dean Martin. And I used to work with Dean Martin a lot. And I used to cut high school, the High School of Performing Arts, to go see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. It was very exciting to meet him. In fact, I couldn’t talk in his presence when I was supposed to be… “oh my goodness, I’m supposed to talk to him.” And I was blessed because he was very sweet and he liked me and he came over and kissed my ass and gave me a kiss and… we did the sketch together. I was able to talk without my mouth being too dry.

PLUME: When you first saw them, this would be the late 40s, early 50s?

DeLUISE: Right, absolutely, absolutely.

PLUME: At the height of their popularity.

DeLUISE: His popularity was after… well, the height of his popularity was probably when he was with Jerry Lewis. As far as I’m concerned. And then he became an actor and a television personality when I joined him again. 12 years I worked with him.

PLUME: That was on the Dean Martin Show, right?

DeLUISE: Yes. Right out of high school, I went to the Cain Park Theater in Cleveland, and then went back another year as an apprentice, and I had many, many, many shows that I was involved in. It was amazing to do a different show every week in the summertime…

PLUME: This would be during the early 50’s…

DeLUISE: Right.

PLUME: So it was right after high school?

DeLUISE: Right after high school. I went to the Cain Park Theater, and then I went to the Cleveland Playhouse – which was really great for me, because I worked two years solidly on plays and moving furniture and painting scenery and paying parts. It was quite an amazing learning place for me.

PLUME: Was it just a score of different types of plays?

DeLUISE: Yes… I did the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, I did one of the gangsters in Kiss Me Kate… And it was quite an amazing chance to do work in Shakespeare… in Hamlet I played one of the players. So it was a thrilling, thrilling experience.

PLUME: Something, you think, that helped to make you more well-rounded as a performer?

DeLUISE: Oh sure, sure. It was just wonderful, you know? Also, I had a chance to be the stage manager… and (laughing) I made a couple of mistakes. I pulled the curtain too hard one time, during a show called And Night Must Fall, and the curtain came down… it kept coming down…and then the curtain came down into the laps of the people in the first row… and then there was a bar… and then they saw the actors being uncovered from the tip of their heads down to their feet.

PLUME: How ironic it happening during the show And Night Must Fall…

DeLUISE: And I did that when she said, to the insane bellhop, “What are you gonna do with that pillow, Danny?” And then, as he approached her, the curtain came down…

PLUME: So she really should have been asking, “What are you going to do with that curtain?”…

DeLUISE: That’s right! But then the next day, I went there and there was a big sign that pointed up, and another sign that pointed down – just to clarify it for me.

PLUME: How helpful was it for you to work on the other side, and learn the technical aspects?

DeLUISE: Oh, it was very helpful. It was really wonderful. First off, I didn’t mind it at all. The only thing is, from time to time, I would screw up – but it was wonderful to be in charge. I did everything pretty right… Except I pulled the curtain down.

PLUME: Was there any point when you were stumping for jobs in that 5 years after high school where you were borderline, “This just isn’t going to happen – I’ve got to find something else to do…” ?

DeLUISE: Oh, sure. I went back to college and I was there to become a biology teacher.

PLUME: What led to that decision?

DeLUISE: I really liked biology a lot. So I thought that would be very appropriate for me. And I took the Italian. My family spoke Italian but they didn’t want me to speak Italian, they wanted me to speak English, so…

PLUME: Was that because of the immigrant mentality…

DeLUISE: They didn’t see the value of my speaking Italian. They should have taught me Italian when I was young. But as a result of hearing them speak it and taking classes, I now speak Italian. And Spanish, because I live in California and you have no choice.

PLUME: Of course the languages are very similar anyway, right?

DeLUISE: Yeah, they’re similar but yo habla espanol, and I speak Italian, yo parlo… it is different. There are very similar words. Any word that ends with “ion”… nation is the same. “Nation.” It’s the same thing in both languages. Conversation. Nation. And “tion” is the same word in all three languages. But you don’t think like that. You just respond… do you speak either or both languages?

PLUME: No. I tried French, but I’m a complete klutz when it comes to languages.

DeLUISE: Oh, no kidding. Well, I enjoy it. I enjoy, you know… I enjoy talking in Italian. And in Spanish, because I have help in the house. I say (speaks Spanish), “you clean the table.” Whatever. So I’m not as fluent as they think I should be, but I can thank them profusely.

PLUME: Well, you’re more fluent than I’ll ever be.

DeLUISE: Ha ha ha! So, I was in New York and I was doing little shows…

PLUME: How close were you to being a biology teacher? How far did you get?

DeLUISE: Oh, I took biology, and I took biology one and two. But then I got a job, see, in a show called Little Mary Sunshine. And I did that for a year, because it was an off-Broadway show that was running with Eileen Brennan, who’s now a character actress. She was a young girl then. And I played corporal Billy Jester. It was great. I was so… now when I think about it, I wonder how did I get that part? But I was praised and it was good.

PLUME: Was it just an audition that you went on?

DeLUISE: Yeah, I went on an audition and John McMartin, who is all over the place now as a character man, played the original role. And then I replaced him and I did it for a year. It’s a long time to do an off-Broadway show. My salary was $37.50 a week. And my rent was $40 a month. I lived in a four flight walk up that you had to go through the first building… there was one building in the front, one building in the back. You walked through this hallway that was as long as a whole house, and you went down three steps and into a garden, then up three steps and then up four flights to my apartment. Which was a cold water flat. This is when I was 18 years old and I left home, and proceeded to live this freezing apartment. I made a baked potato every day, whether I wanted it or not, because if I didn’t light the oven I would have no heat at all. It was just a cold water flat, and the windows were so loose that the wind would come in… I used to get cardboard and stuff it between the windows.

PLUME: So it was a cold air flat, too.

DeLUISE: Oh it was amazing. And then I would melt the wax to seal the windows to try to get as much of the cold stay out, then I bought sheets of plastic that I got from the dry cleaner and rolled cardboard in there and tacked it up to keep out the cold. And then I put drapes up. And it looked pretty, but believe me, even with the wax and the cardboard, the wind was blowing. I had a bathroom… I had a shower and a toilet in the corner. And then to take a bath, there was a bathtub right next to the sink… And there was a big piece of wood over the bathtub that you cooked on. There wasn’t a table, and it was where you did the dishes and such. Then I had a stove and a table. There was a little couch in that room, and then there was a bedroom. There was no closet, so I built something that was a box with a door that I could keep my clothes in. But I’m telling you, it was a very, very nice apartment. I was very happy to have it. My mother came a couple of times and she says, “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” It was a lot of stairs… You were high up.

PLUME: Did they at any point try and get you to move back home?

DeLUISE: Not really. I did get a television show called The Entertainers, with Carol Burnett, and my father was aware that I was working. He was very happy for me. And then after the show was over he said, “If you want to come home…” just because, you know, I was making $300 a week, which was enormous… “If you want to come home, your room here,” he said. I was very touched. But I didn’t go back. I got another apartment just up the same block, 134 W. 55th Street, and it was on the 9th floor and the rent was $175. And it was a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a little dining room. My wife and I moved into that when we got married – it was that apartment. I could have bought it for $7,000 and owned it, and now it’s worth… I don’t know… probably $300,000. The space became condominiums.

PLUME: At that time you were also doing TV work in addition to Broadway, right?

DeLUISE: Right. What I was doing was… I had a lot of acting classes, and one of my teachers was Sid Lumet, who’s the big famous director, and he was one of the teachers at the high school. I did a show called Green Grow the Lilacs, which is what Oklahoma was based on, and I played a Greek peddler, who was very famous in Oklahoma. I learned some Greek, and I’ll say it to you now – because he was selling bobby pins and facial powder – and the line was (speaks Greek), which is “I have bobby pins for your hair and powder for your face.” So I said it twice in the play, and I had an accent, of course, that sounded I’m sure Italian, and I played the Greek peddler. The wonderful thing about going to the High School of Performing Arts was that it made you think that you could do a part, any part. When someone says, “Can you play a mad killer?” I said, “Oh, yeah, sure, of course.” Every time I did something, people laughed. If I did Hamlet, they would laugh at me. “Oh, you were so funny…” In the part where he tries to kill his mother, I got a lot of laughs – no matter what I did, you know?

PLUME: Was that discouraging or were you happy…

DeLUISE: No. Even Sid Lumet, who I’m still friends with, said, “You’re going to be very good in musicals. You’re going to be very good in light drama.” And that’s what I did. I did that. And there was a performer on television named Sherri Lewis and a little… a little…

PLUME: Lambchop.

DeLUISE: Lambchop. And I was there in an off-Broadway show called Halfpast Wednesday, and I played a king. (sings) What’s the fun of being king if the king is poor? It really is a switch if the king isn’t rich.” I was the king, and it was the story of Rumpelstiltskin. And I said, “Wouldn’t it be good if I woke up and did a gag like Chaplin for this song.” And so this song started with me in bed. And I was lying in bed and then I started to sing, and I took my sheet – my big blanket – there was a hole in the middle, and I brought it up, and put it over my head, and it became my robe, and I put on a big tie to hold my waist together. Then I reached over and the crown was on one of the posts of the bed, and then I went to the bottom of the bed and lifted it, and the whole bed went up and stood up like a Murphy Bed, and it became my throne. The king was not doing very well. But it was really, really wonderful. And I got reviews from the New York Times, and it said I was a comic genius. I said, “Wow! A comic genius!” You know, and I was still living in that apartment where I had to walk up four flights. I mean, “comic genius” was very, very… that was thrilling to me. And the New York Times.

So agents started to call me. And they said, “Would you like to have lunch?” So I had lunch with about 8 different men. And then I went with one guy named Jack Hutto, who became my agent, and I did another show called All In Love. It was a period comedy, and I played Bob Acres – implying that he was a farmer who didn’t have any money. And I came on with my wig and my little bag, you know, and I was all in this huge costume. I was late for a duel, you know, and I came out and I put my wig on and then I bit an apple, and people started to get hysterical. And in that, I ended up singing a song. “It was ever my endeavor to be so very clever, to flex my expletives when I converse,” and I was doing that song all about if I was upset about a person who was late. I would curse appropriately to whatever the thing I was upset about. So I would curse, and then it would be about pants, because my pants ripped. And then I came out with another robe, a big robe, not unlike the king’s robe, and I was supposed to take a bath, and I got into this bathtub – there was no water, but I got in, and I was… “A-huh! A-huh!”… and my foot went in and then… “a-huh, a-huh,a-huh, a-huh-huh-huh”… and I was slowly lowering myself into the tub. And as I came to my genitalia, I went “a-huh, a-huh, A-HUH, A-HUH!” Well, the audience went hysterical. Every night I would take a bath and they would cheer as I entered this tub. And then the New York Times said “comic genius.” I went, “GASP! Oh, that’s twice they called me a comic genius!” And I was thrilled.

Then the Sherri Lewis show called me to be on the show… I wasn’t on television a lot, but it was thrilling to be on with a woman named Margaret Hamilton. She was the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, and I played a detective called Ken E. Ketcham. Can he catch ’em. And Sherri Lewis and I were friends for her whole life, and when she passed away, I was in Canada doing the part of Cookie, the man who was a cook, with the puppets, and I was still working. At her memorial I said, “My first job was with Sherri Lewis, and I was currently, when Sherri passed away, working for Sherri Lewis. You can see where my career went nowhere.” They laughed quite a bit and I did a very… I must admit, I was sensational with her, because we danced and carried on. And the show was constructed in such a way that she did, like, 20 shows and then I had a part in each one, and when I went to Canada they just did my part. She was very organized, and I was…you know, wherever I was gonna be, I would be there and then she’d wear the appropriate costume and I would do my part for 20 shows, and then she’d move on and then she’d do the song with Lambchop, or whatever. And I would work with the puppets. And then she passed away.

PLUME: This was Charlie Horse’s Music Pizza?…

DeLUISE: This was Charlie Horse’s Music Pizza, was the last thing she did. That’s when she died. So we were always friendly, but the lovely thing about her was that she was Jewish, and at Christmas time she had a show where me, Cookie – who was not Jewish – was asking all about Hanukkah and what it meant, and all the significance of it. And we had a show that they now show to children to explain to them… the show was an hour special, about the holiday, Hanukkah. I was very pleased.

PLUME: What’s it like having a legacy like that?

DeLUISE: For me or for children?

PLUME: For you. Being involved in something like that, that children will watch for years…

DeLUISE: Well, you know, it’s a thrill. First of all, I’m… you know, with The Dean Martin Show, they sell them on television now, and I see myself quite young, sitting next to Jack Benny, Orson Welles, Don Rickles, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Burt Reynolds… it’s very nice to think that you belong in a business. Because that was the one thing, that I never felt I was part of show business. I just felt I was just… lucky to get some work. And people say, “Oh my god, my grandmother loves you! My grandfather loves you! My father loves you! And I actually know who you are!” Now the interesting thing is, and I tell folks that I’ve written Eat This, It’ll Make You Feel Better, and then 18 years later I wrote another book called Eat This Too, It’ll Also Make You Feel Better, and then I wrote “Charlie and the Caterpillar, Goldilocks… my version of Goldilocks… King Bob’s New Clothes, Hansel and Gretel, The Nightingale… I’m thrilled to have this big selection of books. The Pouch Potato‘s all about a lost kangaroo who ends up in his mother’s pouch. There’s a big organization called The Festival of Books, so I go there and I sell books along with many, many authors, and 100,000 people show up Saturday and Sunday at the University…

PLUME: UCLA…

DeLUISE: UCLA. And my line had four year old kids. I looked at them and I said, “Look at my line!” This is when I was doing Cookie with Sherri Lewis and Charlie Horse Music Pizza. My line was all four year olds, and I said, “Here I am, this old guy, and all these kids!” And they said, “Hello Cookie!” And I said, “Oh, this is…” it’s thrilling. It is thrilling to have somebody in a wheelchair say, “I love you so much. You make me laugh!” I mean an old person in a wheelchair. And then a four year old saying, “Mommy, look, it’s Cookie!” Well, it’s great to entertain people. The first time I got a compliment, somebody said to me, “Mr. DeLuise, can I talk to you for a minute?” at an airport. And I was happy to talk to them. I always take time. I never said, “I can’t talk to you.” And this woman said, “My father loved you,” and she got all choked up and she said, “When he was dying, we showed him your movies, and he would laugh. Thank you so much for making my father laugh when he was so sick.” Now, I didn’t know how to take it. I didn’t want the responsibility of that. And I said, “Oh, thank you,” but I wasn’t sure, you know, where to put that information. And then, I heard it a lot. I heard people saying that, “You really made my father laugh,” “you really made my grandmother laugh.” And I was very complimentary. I said, “Oh, thanks.” Because it was a real compliment. I was thrilled to hear that, that they were so moved. Sometimes somebody comes up to you with tears in their eyes and then suddenly you’re responsible for that, you know, phenomenon.

PLUME: That emotion…

DeLUISE: Someone they know that has died liked me. It’s an odd compliment, and you have to put it… you used the word legacy… So that is something that I’ve accepted, and it’s pretty nice to be able to hear those words. Once in a while somebody says… and, you know, you’re in the grocery shop, you’ll hear somebody say this: “You’re shopping for cantaloupe? How’d you get here?” I said, “I drove.” “Gasp! You drive yourself and you’re picking your own cantaloupe?” I said, “Yes, yes.” This was when I was at the peak of my Dean Martin days. And now somebody says to me, while they’re wheeling a carriage or they’re being wheeled, “I grew up on you.” And I say, “Did you?” And here this old person says, “You made me laugh when I was young…” – and they’re old! And then they say, “You were great! My mother used to let me stay up late to watch you on the Johnny Carson show.” And I thought, this is great. This is an old person. Missing some teeth. Wearing very thick eyeglasses, or has a cane, saying, “I grew up on you.” I said, “Well, I’ve been around…” I must have been around a long time if these old people had fond memories of me when they were children. So it is… it’s very sweet to be around and have… some of the compliments I hear now really touch my heart.

PLUME: You were an integral part of my childhood, watching The Muppet Movie…

DeLUISE: Oh, no kidding? There I was in The Muppet Movie, and I said, “What about a gold tooth?” and they said, “Okay.” So I went to my dentist and he compiled a tooth that snapped over my little eyetooth – which I still have in my little case here. Jeez, it’s amazing… what a privilege it was to work with Jim Henson. He was in a barrel, and the barrel was pulled down underwater – because it had a hook on the bottom of it – and he was underwater, and his arm came up through a… ’cause I was in a boat in real water… through an artificial log, and then he would proceed to stay there all day with his right arm up in this little green frog, and talk to you. And I said, “I don’t think people understand this.” He’s in a barrel way down underneath the water, and you see this frog, and… it must have been so claustrophobic to be underwater in a barrel with a little television set, so he could see where the hell I was so he could… you know what I mean? You never even knew that that was… you never pictured that, did you?

PLUME: Oh, when I was watching the movie? Not in the least.

DeLUISE: No, you just look at the character.

PLUME: That was Kermit on a log, talking to you.

DeLUISE: Right, it was Kermit talking to me, and I was his agent or something, and he wanted to get a job, and I started the movie. It was very exciting.

PLUME: It’s got to be wonderful to get to that level in the movies…

DeLUISE: I remember I got a call, and Doris Day said, “We’d like you to be in our movie called The Glass Bottom Boat,” and I said, “Oh, how wonderful.” She said, “We’ll send you a script and maybe you can do it if you like.” I said, “Thank you Miss Day. You’re wonderful.” I hung up and I screamed! I screamed. I said, “OH MY GOD DORIS DAY!” It was so exciting. And I bought a car and drove it across the country. That’s how I came to California. I don’t know why I drove to California. And then when I got here, I went to the Valley by mistake and they said, go over here – so I drove and drove and drove, and then they told me to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My god! I moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel and I said, “What are the rooms?”, and it was $35.00 a night. And I said, “Oh my god, this is… I can’t afford to stay here!”

PLUME: “I had a wonderful apartment with windows that rattled for less than that!”

DeLUISE: (laughing) Yes, but now… now it’s $500 a night. So I quickly moved to a place called the Sunset Marquis, and my rent was, I don’t know, $200 a month. Now the Sunset Marquis is like this faaaaamous, famous building. But it was very new then.

PLUME: When you came out, did your wife come along with you?

DeLUISE: No, I wasn’t married. I wasn’t married. It was Doris Day who told me, you know – I said, “I met this girl in summer stock.” Jerry Herman was my piano player. And I did a nightclub act with Dick Cole, and it was called Dick and Dom. And we paid $35 to have an arrangement of our song, you know, “Climb upon my knee, Danny Boy. Hello to you both from the city. Hello to you both from the farm. My name is Dick… and my name is Dom.” So you know, we got this piano player to sit down, and I said, “Here’s our music…” ad he said, “I don’t read music.” I said, “You don’t read music? You’re charging us $40 to do three shows…” and he said, “Well, just do your act.” So I did the whole act with all the comedy and everything and my magic act was in there. And then he said, “Now let’s do it again.” And he played full, wonderful, amazing…ahh! How great. You know, “Here’s your $40.” And we were a big hit. A nightclub act is a very hard thing to compose. And his name is Jerry Herman and he wrote, (sings) “Hello Dolly, well hello, Dolly”… “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”… he was our piano player, and he still doesn’t read music! Isn’t that lovely?

PLUME: It shows that you don’t need technical skill to be a star.

DeLUISE: That’s right. Amazing. So we just, you know, spoke with him, and we still sit and talk and he says, “Remember how you made me laugh?” He’s like a darling… he’s like a boy, you know, in his little man body. So I was working with Doris Day in this picture. And we’re on a raft on a boat with Arthur Godfrey and Paul Lynde who’s an amazing experience. And my wife and I… I met my wife when I was in a place called Provincetown, Massachusetts, and we did something called Summer and Smirk – and Tennessee Williams wrote something called Summer and Smoke. So Smirk was the name of our show. and it was written by Marty Charnin. He wrote Annie. You know, (singing) “Tomorrow, tomorrow… I love ya, tomorrow”… that was the man. We were getting $75 a week. And later we worked again, my wife and I, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in another show written by Jerry Herman, and the show, (sings) “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”… we did a lot of the tunes that he later took and put in his shows. And that was called The Jerry Herman Review. So I was knowing and loving Carol, and then I asked her to marry me. I was with Doris Day again – I’m just telling you how I got there – and I said to her, “You know I’m really in love and I want to get married, and I don’t know what to do,” and she said, “Marry her. If you love her, marry her. Don’t be silly.” So I called Carol up and I said, “Doris Day said I should marry you.” So when she met Doris…

PLUME: What woman could say no to that?

DeLUISE: Ha ha! And when she met Doris she said, “Thank you. You’re the one that got me married.” We’re still friendly with Doris. She’s terrific. And she has 16 dogs. Some of them that are very small. Some of them have three legs. And she’s, uh… a special lady. You know when you get a note from Doris Day, you save it. You don’t throw it away. On the first day of The Glass Bottom Boat, I arrived and I looked at my chair – it was an old director’s chair with my name spelled in ballpoint pen… and it was spelled incorrectly – “D-E-L-O-U-I-S-E.” I had a sad face, and Doris was sitting next to me and she said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “I always dreamed of having a chair with my name on it, and it’s spelled wrong.” So the next day, I got a brand new chair, and I cried a little as I looked at it. My name was spelled correctly. I looked at Doris, and she said, “That, you can take home.”

PLUME: Do you still have that chair?

DeLUISE: I do! I also ended up working with Frank Sinatra on The Dean Martin Show. Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny. Mel Brooks came to me and said, “I want you to audition for The Twelve Chairs, and I’m gonna be in it and Frank Langella’s gonna be in it – never done a movie in his life – and a man named Ron Moody,” who had just won the Academy Award for playing Fagin in uh… (sings) “You gotta pick a pocket or two…”

PLUME: In Oliver!…

DeLUISE: In Oliver! And Mel said, “Because I did The Producers, and Peter Sellers loved it, and took ads out – ‘This is the greatest movie’ – Peter may play the part of Father Theodore, the illegitimate priest. Or you will play it if he doesn’t play it. And no matter what, we’ll be friends.” The audition was five hours. I spoke to Mr. Brooks for five hours and we’ve been friends ever since.

PLUME: What was the conversation like?

DeLUISE: Well we just talked about my father. My being at home. Being Italian. Being raised. We just talked about life. Just life. But he did say… “We’ll be friends for 25 years.” He said, “We’ll be friends for the rest of our lives.” He just called it right then.

PLUME: And you’re both native New Yorkers, right?

DeLUISE: We’re both native New Yorkers, but he’s older than me. He’s about 10 years older than me. And I’m 69, so he’s is 79. And having a wonderful time with The Producers. So, Peter Sellers didn’t do the movie, and I was very young and my son Michael was just born, and Michael’s now 33, and Mel said, “Let’s go to Yugoslavia to make a movie. Are you ready?” And I said, “Sure, sure, sure. That’s great. How long will we be there?” He said, “I don’t know but…” and I said, “And what’s my salary?” And he said, “$15,000.” And I said, “A week?” And he said, “No, no, no. For the whole movie.” For The Glass Bottom Boat I got more money than that. They gave me room and board and they treated me well in the big studio. But Mel was doing a low budget movie, and so I got $15,000 to do The Twelve Chairs.

PLUME: It’s a wonderful performance.

DeLUISE: Oh, thanks. It was really… it was very, very, very interesting to work with him. And he was a new director. So it wasn’t… things didn’t go smoothly. When we got there they had new film, and they put two lights up – and I had already done some movies, right… “There’s not enough light! This movie doesn’t have any lights!” There were two lights in the scene and then they’d shoot it, but they had this very sensitive film, and it looked wonderful. So Frank and I bonded because we were there, and Mel was, you know, nuts and wonderful, and we spent six months making that movie. And then Anne Bancroft came over, and then my wife came over for a visit, and it was thrilling. My wife had to leave our son for two weeks. My wife came for two weeks. And it was probably the best two weeks of my life. It was great.

PLUME: How would you compare working with Mel during that film, with how he was in later films? As a director, how did he mature?

DeLUISE: Well he was not… he’s not a smooth man. He’s very, very, um… raw, and what you see is his insides. You know what I mean? He laughs. Now, he’s a big director – but then, he was a first time or second time director. So he was a novice. Try anything. He would try anything. But he still says, – like when I did History of the World, Part One, he said, “I’m happy. Do whatever you want.” Nobody says that, you know? So then I would just ad lib and carry on and do anything that I wanted. You know, make a mistake. It could be brilliant or it could be throwaway-able. So he was smoother. He’s much smoother, much more confident. He did a lot of movies. But some of his movies didn’t work. Some of his movies came out and they were not big successes.

PLUME: The 90’s didn’t treat him very well.

DeLUISE: His version of Dracula. Something about… Dead and Loving It.

PLUME: Not one of my favorites of his.

DeLUISE: Right. So, you know, when he did Frankenstein, it was classic and was amazingly wonderful. And Blazing Saddles… I mean, some of his movies were spectacular.

PLUME: One of the few scenes that I really liked in Robin Hood: Men In Tights was your scene.

DeLUISE: Oh, when I did… you know he said, “I want you to imitate Brando…” ’cause I can do it in real life. And I said, “You know I’ve done that in Cannonball one and Cannonball two,” and he said, “Well, no one saw those movies.”

PLUME: I saw Cannonball Run! I grew up on Cannonball Run…

DeLUISE: And then when the man said… there was a line about the fact that his tongue was cut out. One of my cohorts, his tongue was gone, and I ad libbed, I said, “Go like this… (cluck cluck sound). Ha ha! He can’t do it!”

PLUME: Well, The Twelve Chairs still remains a classic…

DeLUISE: Yeah, that was nice, that was nice. I mean, you know, when you have six months to make a movie, that means that each moment… There was one time when I had to handle those chairs. One of them was made of mahogany, and that was the actual chair. And then another chair was balsawood, which was still very heavy. And they said, “Take this chair and run up the hill with it.” And I said, “I’m taking this chair.” And he said, “No no, take the other one. It looks better.” I said, “I can’t lift it!” And he said, “Get the f**ing chair and go up the hill!” And I said, “Up yours!” People were screaming. I had bruises, little cuts all over my body. Now I couldn’t… “I could pick up the chair, and you take a picture, I’ll put the chair down,” but I was running up hills with the chair. So then we would sit and laugh at night. We’d all go home, take a shower, and go out to dinner and we would scream with laughter about the day. And even though I said, ‘F** you, I’m not doing that!” and he’d say, “Pick it up!”

When we were there it was Frank Langella, my wife Carol, and Anne Bancroft came. It was a vacation, because we were all together and we would go to restaurants and eat and laugh and, oh my god, I was in heaven. And mind you, I had two children being taken care of by my sister in New York. But now I couldn’t do any of that. I couldn’t… in Yugoslavia when there was a rip in the rug, they would take little nails and seal the rip. It was a very poor country. So for two cents American, I would take a trolley. Mel said, “Let’s take a cab,” and I said, “No, I’ll meet you at the studio.” I just took a trolley car, and it went like this and went like that, it went like this and went like that, and it got me, you know, a half hour later right in front of the place we were gonna see rushes. But he said, “You’re gonna get killed.” Mel said, “You’re gonna get killed.” I said, “I’m not killed, I’m here.” And he said, “Well, you shouldn’t be on these public trams…” he was very worried about me. But for two cents I got there. American. One time I said to the man downstairs, “Can I have my jacket cleaned?” Man says, “Three weeks.” I said, “Three weeks? Why?” He says, “We have to send to England.” I said, “Oh, never mind. I’ll just wear it.” They had no facilities. Everything was brown and dark green. They have leather jackets, and you put them on, and they were all irregular. Yugoslavia was… Mel used to make fun, he said it was very hard to get around because the whole country was lit with a 15 watt bulb. He said it was very hard to do anything on the weekend because Tito had the car. It was a very primitive country. But we did have an experience of a lifetime, because… you know, you just would be inventing stuff with Mel. You went to work every day. Mel said, “We’re not using you today..” – you would come. Come, sit, work… no matter who was in the scene, you were there. Have you ever been to Yugoslavia? It got bombed and torn apart.

PLUME: An aunt of mine is Yugoslavian.

DeLUISE: No kidding? Yeah, that’s funny because I meet people from there and I’d say hello in Yugoslavian. And then the word which means to cook in water. But if you just say it one way, it also means two testicles.

PLUME: So it’s all context.

DeLUISE: Yeah, in Spanish you can say eggs and eggs and it’s the same word.

PLUME: You gotta wonder how those two words came to mean the same thing.

DeLUISE: Well they’re both the same shape, you know. Isn’t it? Roughly? I haven’t seen my testicles in a long time, but I’m assuming that they’re…

PLUME: It depends on how long you boil each.

DeLUISE: Exactly. And you see Mel taking gigantic chances, writing a musical of The Producers. When I did a movie with Mae West called Sextette, one of the guys from The Who, who died of an overdose, said to me, “I want to do a musical of The Producers.” And I said, “Mel, he’s asking me to ask you.” And he said, “I don’t want anybody to do it. I’ll do it some year, sometime.” That was years and years and years ago. And then finally he sat down and wrote – a little late, but obviously it was the right time for him – The Producers. And he, you know, it won every accolade you can. And I just spoke to him and he said that they’re going to have companies in every country in the world, and then eventually they’ll do the movie, but he says he won’t do the movie until he has milked the world of the need to see this play.

PLUME: How pragmatic.

DeLUISE: You know, he is a man who is still trying to prove that he’s entertaining, funny and skilled. I swear to you there’s a little seed in him that has not rooted. And the seed says, “I want to be noticed, I want you to think I’m funny, I want your approval”… and you know, he is… that’s one of the best things about him. We all have that, but his is prevalent. He just still wants you to know that he’s okay and funny. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s wonderful.

PLUME: You would think 30+ years of cinema history and people respecting him and his films as classics would be enough.

DeLUISE: Yeah, you would think that. But I mean, when you talk to Norman Lear, who’s also my friend, he looks like he has accepted the fact that he’s, you know, an artistic genius, and he’s much calmer, you know? Mel will dance and try to do his imitation of Fred Astaire, and he’ll kick the cupboard once, twice, three times – you’ll say, “You’re gonna hurt the cupboard…” and then 56 times later he’s kicking the cupboard, and you’re hysterical. But that’s just… he can say, “I can make you laugh.” You’d say, “You’re gonna hurt the cupboard!” and he goes da-da dum bee bop BANG BANG badda beep bop BANG BANG… and Carl Reiner and Estelle, and Normal Lear and his wife, and Carol and I, and Larry Gelbart – all those people were present. And we all were in fear for the cupboard until finally you were laughing until we held our sides, and I said, “Do you realize when he did it, it was like… it was harmful to the house? And after a while you didn’t give a s*** about the cupboard and you were just laughing?” So that unsatisfied moment in the bowels of his being is what makes him hysterical. And he has the courage to make fun of homosexuals, Hitler, producers… everybody, you know? He says “Producers are the scum of the earth.” And he says, “I know, ’cause I’m a producer.”

PLUME: Well I know that even the films that don’t work that well comedically, like Dracula: Dead and Loving It, you have to admire the energy and the gusto with which they’re made.

DeLUISE: I agree with you. He also has the nerve to do a dance number in a wedding cake. There was a guy looking in a window – I think this is in Silent Movie – and there was a wedding cake, and then he had a wedding cake as big as a house, and he and Bernadette Peters danced and were dancing and they jumped from the top of the wedding cake, and they danced a little bit and then they danced in whipped cream. So that they disappeared in whipped cream. You know, there’s very few men who have a mind like that.

PLUME: He’s the type of comedic director who will slap the audience until they laugh…

DeLUISE: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. You got it. And he is still as cute as a bug. ’cause you walk in, and he’ll say, “I’m having a great third act!”

PLUME: I’ve always wanted to interview him. I’ve tried for three years and never got past his handlers.

DeLUISE: Really?

PLUME: Yeah. It’s one of the biggest regrets I’ve had. It’s a body of work to definitely admire.

DeLUISE: He’s unique. Sweet. He’ll be so sweet to you. Once you get in the room with him, he’s a doll. And he’s married to one of the most talented, exciting women in the world, Anne Bancroft. How the f*** they got together I’ll never know. You know what I mean? They’re not likely to be together, but they are.

PLUME: And to stay together.

DeLUISE: Yeah. They’re wonderful together. She laughs at him. Listen, I make him laugh by getting a bottle of ginger ale and walking over to a plant by a pool and pretending that I’m urinating and I’ll pour the entire bottle of ginger ale slowly on the ground, and it’ll foam up and he’ll just, he’ll laugh at that. I mean I also make him laugh when I talk about my home life, about my dad. We went to a movie one time, called Lassie. My father’s very primitive and he was a farmer, and he had all his teeth, but he didn’t understand about movies, and he said, “There’s no such-a thing as-a big-a skunga like-a this.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “In the movie there was a tree skunga. One skunga was a-right, but then one skunga was a-too big, and the last one was a-big-a, and skunga don’t come-a like this. Skunga don’t come like-a this. I know skunga.” I said, “Pa, that was a close-up. That was a long shot, a medium, and a close-up.” He said, “The skunga no come like-a this.” It’s hysterical, those stories. And my father went to Lassie and said, “No can be.” What he’s talking about was the position of the camera. And it took me a long time to figure out because I didn’t know what three skunks, you know? My father was amazing, because when he was 75 years old, he was at the top of a tree trimming it. I said, “You can’t do it! You’re 75 years old!” He was, you know, an amazing man. Amazing. The last words he said was, “I want to get up.” I said, “Pa, you’re dying. You can’t get up.” He was something else. He was a tough, rough guy. Because he used to yell at us, you know. “I no see no ting-a like this in my life!” And that was on Christmas Eve! My father was just yelling. So I said, “When you were bad, what did your father do?” And my grandfather was very little, and my grandmother, who I look like, was a big, big, woman. And he said, “When I was-a bad, my father would take-a the wood and hit me with the wood.” “What? He would take wood and hit you with a piece of wood?” He said, “Yes, he hit me with the wood…” I said, “Oh, I see. Now I know why you beat the s*** out of me.”

PLUME: Were your parents proud of your accomplishments?

DeLUISE: Oh, they were thrilled. My father said, “See, you can-a make-a the money from-a the talk, then God bless.” “If you can make money by talking, then God bless you.” Very impressed. And my mother… I wrote a cookbook called Eat This, It’ll Make You Feel Better, and it was all about my mother. She was also interviewed with me, and she was wonderful. I said, “Can you believe” – and I was much bigger than my mother – I said “Can you believe that I once came out of her?” On the Merv Griffin Show I said this. And people laughed, and my mother gave me a little shot on the cheek. My mother was very skilled, and could make gorgeous, gorgeous things… like a bedspread… all done with one needle. She made blankets. She was amazing. When she came to my house, my mother would get up in the morning and go all through the garden. I have like thousands of plants outside. And she would take all the brown leaves and collect them in a bag. And then she would sit down, make bread, and then she’d say, “Give me anything that needs sewing.” So she would sit there and then we would bring her everything that had a rip, and she would proceed to sew everything for a day or two days. So you’d have the bread and she’d make things. She’d be crocheting… you know, she had this amazing energy. So I guess I’m very proud of my parents, even though my father scared the s*** out of me. I mean he was very, very proud of my accomplishments. My mother died when she was 91. My father died when he was 82. And they were coherent. My mother never said, “Who’s this, what’s that, what’s going on?” She knew everything… ’til the day she died, you know? It was pretty wonderful.

PLUME: Thankfully they got to see your tremendous success.

DeLUISE: Yeah, that was very sweet of them. I don’t think of tremendous, but that’s a nice word for me to hear you say.

PLUME: I think it’s applicable.

DeLUISE: Good, I’m pleased. I think of myself as a guy who’s still trying. I swear to you, there must be something… even Burt Reynolds, I said, “How do you deal?” and he said, “Every time I finish a movie I think, they’re gonna find out about me.”

PLUME: At what point do you figure, well, you know, the gig went well?

DeLUISE: You know something is very interesting. I hear… I play cards with Frank Sinatra’s widow, and when Frank was there we played cards together and it was wonderful to get to sit there. And now, Jeannie, Dean Martin’s wife, says, “Dean loved you! He said ‘That kid is terrific! That kid is terrific.'” She said, “He used to come home and talk about you all the time.” I tell you, I was so touched. I mean I knew Dean, but I didn’t know he went home and talked to his wife about me. You know? And she said, “And now that he’s gone, you’re mine.” And she gave me a kiss. She said, “I just love that I know you.” So then once in a while you think, “Geez, Dean really… S***. That’s wonderful.” It’s grand, you know? I have amazing fans. I mean people… we’ve spent time with Cary Grant and… it was wonderful. We went to the races. He said we’d like to go to the races, so we spent some time with him. In fact, in the book all about him, we’re in the end of the book, with Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds and Carol and I and his wife and Cary Grant. It was wonderful to be with them. And we spent a nice day with him at the races, and he took my camera and said, “Carol, you and Dom get together.” Then I took a lot of pictures of Cary and Burt Reynolds and… Burt Reynolds made fun of me because I had my little camera. But then later, when I gave him pictures, he had them… you know, Burt has restaurants all over the place, and they appeared in every one of his homes and in all the restaurants. The pictures of him and Cary Grant and I, and of me and Carol.

PLUME: From the little camera that he made fun of.

DeLUISE: That’s right, my little camera. And then I’ll tell you a story about the camera in just a moment, but Carol was having breakfast the day after we were with Cary Grant and she started to cry. And I said, “What are you crying about?” and she said, “He was so nice to us.” To me. She says, “He was so nice to me.” That was Cary Grant, you know. One time I was in Washington, and there were 3,000 Italians there with the Italian American Association. And Danny Devito was being honored, and President Clinton was coming in, and they said, “When he gets here, can you start the evening off with a laugh?” and I said, “Sure. I don’t know, let me think.” So I got up after the president and Mrs. Clinton were there and I said, “Mr. President and Mrs. Clinton, this is so auspicious. Here we are honoring Danny Devito, and I’m so thrilled and I hope you don’t mind but I brought my camera.” I took the same camera that I still use. And I said, “And would you allow me to… Mr. President, could you stand up a moment?” So President Clinton on my right stood up and I gave him the camera, and I said, “Danny.” And I didn’t even tell Danny. And Danny got up and I put my arm around Danny, and President Clinton took four or five pictures of me and Danny Devito. So they laughed their asses off. I mean, it was just wonderful. And in fact, at the end, President Clinton gave his speech and he said, “I came here as the President, and I ended up as Dom DeLuise’s photographer.” In my second cookbook, there’s so many pictures of that. A lot of people took pictures. They’re all depicted. You actually see him taking the picture of me and Danny Devito. It was very special. And have I entertained some presidents? From Ford to… I can’t even think who’s after Ford…

PLUME: Carter…

DeLUISE: Carter, and then Reagan, and then Bush – the other Bush. Clinton… a lot with Clinton. That’s a lot of presidents to, you know… you go to the White House and it’s a thrill. It’s a f***ing thrill to be, you know – you’re sitting at a dinner and say, “Oh, am I gonna be able to say hello to Mrs. Bush?” And he says, “You’re sitting next to her.” “Really? I’m gonna sit next to Mrs. Bush? Okay!” So there’s hundreds of people, and you set right next to her. And I put my hand on her back and I, I rubbed her back a little bit, and I said, “Are you having a good time?” and she said, “I’m having a ball.” And then I went across the table and there was a very foreign looking man with a little pith helmet on. Not pith but… yes, yes, a little, little hat. And I said, “Would you take a picture of me and Mrs. Bush?” and he said, “Sure man.” And I said, “Oh.” And as I took the picture with Mrs. Bush, and this very handsome black man took a picture, and I said, “He spoke English very well,” believing he was a foreign dignitary. She said, “That’s Dizzy Gillespie.” I said, “Oh, Jesus Christ.” And then I said to Mrs. Bush, “Would you take a picture with me and Dizzy Gillespie?” So there’s a little boy in me who still, you know, goes to the White House with a little camera, you know? I’m not very sophisticated, but when I walk in I say to the drum & bugle corps, “I’d love to conduct someday.” The man took me, pulled my arm. I was on a little platform. And he gave me the baton, and I finished conducting the song that they were playing, and everybody gathered around – this is after I’ve been there a few times – and then he gave me the baton. Well, you know, that’s what you do for a child. You don’t do that for a… he saw the child in me, and I was so happy. I think I left with a lot of jellybeans, ’cause of Reagan. I mean, I had bags of jellybeans. And as I went down the spiral staircase to get out of the White House, the beans were like chk-kuh chk-kuh as I went down the stairs. I mean I stuffed my pockets. Little bags of jellybeans.

PLUME: Don’t you think that sense of wonder has kept you young?

DeLUISE: Yeah, it’s terrific. There’s no… there’s no way for me to be calm if I’m on a tour and they say, “Will these rooms do?” And then you’re in the presidential suite, and you look to the left of the room, there’s a television, there’s a bar, there’s food, there’s fruit. You look over there, there’s another… there’s three toilets. And they’re saying, “Will these facilities work for you?” And I go, “Oh, yeah, sure!” And I wanted to say, “They’re fine.” But I came to say, “It’s terrific! Oh my god, look! Look, there’s bananas!”

PLUME: And the windows don’t rattle.

DeLUISE: That’s right, the windows! So there’s a part of me that is so, you know, excited that we’re going to the White House. In fact I gave a show there, and I said, “You know, we really need the band to be… the audience has to face the other way.” And usually they have the performers standing in the Lincoln Room under the picture of Lincoln, and I said, “All the seats have to be facing this way so we can have the drum and bugle call in the hallway, so I can do my numbers.” I was gonna sing a number. And I drew a diagram, and when I got to the White House, all the seats were facing in the right direction. It’s not… you have to be very excited about that. One time I dressed up as Santa Claus, and Mrs. Reagan hid behind me. And then she poked out. She was gone. She poked her head out, and they took a lot of pictures of me as Santa Claus that year. You know, I said… these are thrills. These are thrills of a lifetime, you understand.

PLUME: We were talking about how you’re surprised at your career and still wanting to do more, and I look at the fact that I grew up watching your movies. I’m of a generation that you’re the first actor I ever identified as playing more than one role. I remember, as a kid, watching The Muppet Movie, then hearing your voice in The Secret of Nimh. That was the first time I got a sense that there are actors out there who do multiple roles. I remember watching Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on cable one day…

DeLUISE: That was a thrill too, doing that movie with Dolly Parton. She was bigger than life. But you know, she’s such a sweet, wonderful, very available person. And still is, you know.

PLUME: That was the first role you ever did based on a real person, wasn’t it?

DeLUISE: Absolutely. And then I got to meet him eventually, and he was sweet as pie. I heard he was like, nuts, but he was very kind. We went to dinner with him… this is years later, not when I did the movie.

PLUME: It’s Marvin Zindler, right?

DeLUISE: Right. Very, very sweet man.

PLUME: Had you done any preparation for the role?

DeLUISE: I saw a lot of his pieces… he said, “Welcome to the AAAAHHH witness news!” You know, he was very dramatic and passed a lot of lines, you know. But he was good hearted. One lady said that she lost $500 on a car, and he pursued it and got that money back for her and that was what he did. He righted a lot of wrongs.

PLUME: Was he happy with your performance?

DeLUISE: I’m not sure that we… I think he was flattered, you know, that he was… but he felt entitled to be depicted. I mean, he really… he had no chin, and he had a gigantic nose, and he was bald. So he had this wig composed, and then he had his nose made smaller, and then – like Carol Burnett and Elizabeth Taylor – he had his chin extended forward. They opened up inside and then they put a false chin, to give him a profile. ‘Cause he had a face that was… the furthest thing out was his nose and it just receded inside. So if you see a picture of him, he looks like a cartoon – and then he gave himself a face, you know?

PLUME: I know one of the great scenes of the film is in the dressing room as you’re getting ready for the performance.

DeLUISE: That was Burt’s idea. That was not in the play, of course, but that was Burt’s… I mean, his rendition. I mean that was a… it was almost dangerous. When he shocked me, they put silicone on the floor, and they said, “Hold your leg straight because when this machine pushes you, if your legs are not rigid, your legs will break.” So I stood stiff for a long, long time. I was exhausted by the time I was finished. And they pushed me 28 times, so my body would SLIDE along the floor, and they would shoot me from the top to get that one moment of me sliding right to the middle of the floor where there was a star in ceramic.

PLUME: I was always surprised you didn’t get hurt when you fell into the fountain.

DeLUISE: Oh my god. Well that was tough. All the leaves were being held in place by wires. It was like a stunt. It was just enough room for me to go back. I didn’t hit my head. And if you see it, it was risky. And me, of course, I just wanted to… I couldn’t get out of it because I got tangled in the wires. They had to help me.

PLUME: I guess it worked for the scene…

DeLUISE: Oh, yeah, it was fine. It was fine. That show was great to do, but I did everything on my own. I mean, I was running around. And if you see the dance numbers, it was very energetic.

PLUME: One of the great song performances in that, too.

DeLUISE: “You Got Trouble Right Here in River City?” No. “Texas Has a Whorehouse In It…” Dolly Parton was very sweet, and she came to my recordings and helped me relax. One time I was really hoarse. She said, “Sometimes you get great sound when you just sing right over it.” I was singing and it was 3:00 in the morning, and she was amazing. She’s an amazing person. She wanted to help me get it done correctly and well and relaxed.

PLUME: Do you think few people realize just how intelligent she is as well?

DeLUISE: Oh, I think everybody knows. They all love her. You know, people… when you say Dolly Parton, they say, “She’s so nice.” You know? And she is grand. When we were doing the picture, it was Halloween, and I said, “It’s Halloween, so happy Halloween.” She says, “It’s my favorite holiday. What are you gonna do?” And I said, “Oh, we’re gonna take the kids out.” They were young then. She said, “Can I come?” and I said, “Sure!” So she came. I remember we made chicken and lentils. Had lentil soup. And she arrived with red shoes and polka dots on her stockings. A short skirt. You didn’t see her bosoms because she had a peasant blouse on that was… I don’t mean peasant. I mean it was, it was… she looked like a little girl. Then she had polka dots on her face, and she had pigtails that stuck out, and a little hat. And she came trick or treating with my sons who were a werewolf and Dracula, and whatever the hell they were wearing. So we all went from house to house, and they would give her, “You’re a big little girl,” they said, and she collected candy. She was right in there. No one knew it was Dolly Parton.

PLUME: That wasn’t your first film with Burt Reynolds…

DeLUISE: No, no. The first film that I did with Burt Reynolds was, I think, Silent Movie. Or The End.

PLUME: Did you hit it off immediately with him?

DeLUISE: Oh, yeah. The first time I met Burt Reynolds, I was on the Johnny Carson show, and he was gonna be there, so I said, “You know what?” – he had already done the picture in the Cosmopolitan laying naked, so I said, “I’m gonna do that…” And I got the music, 2001 – “Ba ba ba ba ba ba.” And I said, “This is Burt Reynolds waking up in the morning.” And I pantomimed taking off my pajamas, stretching, taking off my pants and my pajamas, and looking in a mirror and checking my teeth, and then noticing my body. And as the music plays, you know, “daaa, daaa”… then I notice my penis in the mirror and I’d go, looking at my penis in the mirror, “DUN dun DUN dun DUN dun”… and the people were screaming. And then I laid on Johnny Carson’s desk, and I assumed the position where one arm is over my genitalia and the other one was holding my head as I laid down on the desk. And it was pretty amazing. I mean, I hadn’t met him until he came out. And then we really hit it off. I mean, he was funny and wonderful. And the very next day, there was delivered a handwritten note by Burt Reynolds and he said, “Dear Dom, Will you please leave me alone. Love, Burt.” And we have been friends like brothers ever since. I mean we… I’ve spent so much time with him and I did, like, you know like seven movies with him. Did a lot of movies with him.

PLUME: You can always see the chemistry in the movies that you did.

DeLUISE: Ah, he was great for me. And you know what he’s most comfortable doing in life, is making a movie. He is just so at home. You know, he directed The End. We did Silent Movie. We did Cannonball. We did Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

PLUME: So when are you teaming up again?

DeLUISE: He has an idea that we should be old people, and try to rob a bank and… he was gonna get Charles Durning and him and Shecky Green and… we have lunch once in a while. His son, his adopted son, is amazing. He’s 14 now, and Carol and I took him out to lunch with my son and his family, and he’s just darling. And his mother, Loni Anderson, is lovely. Lovely and sweet and wonderful and very dedicated to the boy. I was having spaghetti one time, when she wasn’t there and I was with Burt, and I guess I was talking with my mouth full and I was talking and he was young – I don’t know, maybe 12 – and he went, pointing to my mouth, “mm-mm-mm-mm” so I had to know that… I said, “Oh my mouth, I’m so sorry.” And it happened again and he went, “mm-mm-mm-mm” and I said, “Okay.” And I knew that Loni Anderson must have told him, “I don’t want to see what you’re chewing when you’re talking.” So he’s this amazing, wonderful… polite kid. He’s very sweet. And he hit it off with my grandchildren. He’s just a nice boy. And Burt wanted a son. One time I told Burt that I was taking a nap, and my son David wrote me a note, and he put it on my chest, and it said, “Dad, I love you, love David.” And I said I woke up and there was this little note, you know. And then Burt said “I’d give anything for that,” you know, “anything.” And I said, “You can have him for $250,000. You can take David right now.” He didn’t.

But he always wanted a son, and he loved the idea of having his own child. He was going with Sally Field for a long time. First of all, he loved Dinah Shore with all his heart. And he was very devoted. Everybody thinks he was sleeping with everybody, but he was sleeping with, you know, his love at the time, Dinah Shore. Then he changed to Sally Field, and he was going with Sally Field for a long time. Then we got a call that we were invited to dinner. And we accepted. And we went, and then I rang the bell. Loni Anderson answered the door, and I thought it was gonna be Sally Field, and I said, “S-Loni!” I mean, that’s when I found out that he was going with Loni Anderson, who he married.

PLUME: It’s unfortunate how ugly their divorce was.

DeLUISE: Oh it was just… like, people were throwing mud at them and they were wallowing in it. She was better. She didn’t say anything. But he, I think, used her… he was… it was very painful to him.

PLUME: Do you think he regrets some of the things he said at the time?

DeLUISE: I’m not sure. I only know that he was… it was not an easy divorce, that he paid a big price for that.

PLUME: Are they on speaking terms in dealing with their son?

DeLUISE: Now they talk. They’re fine. They have lunch together. He sees her, yeah, absolutely.

PLUME: How misunderstood do you think the public’s perception is of Burt Reynolds? Because few people know him as well as you do.

DeLUISE: Well, you know, they all have different opinions. First of all, he was the darling of the movies. When they loved him, they loved him. You know what I mean? In other words, he could do no wrong. But for some reason or other, when he had a divorce, they took umbrage to it. They weren’t fond of what happened. It was like the box office… he was the biggest box office draw for years and years. As was Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rooney was… you couldn’t find a bigger star when he was in his prime as a teenager. And Burt Reynolds had that same phenomenon, that he was like the biggest box office draw. In fact when he did Cannonball, he worked for three weeks – which was 15 days – and he made 15 million dollars on the movie. And then people were saying that’s disgusting, and he said, “I’ve been told that it’s disgusting and I was really stupid.” He said that it would be really stupid not to take the money. He said that when he would go do banquets, they were objecting to him. “I’m going to have $350,000 a word.” He was making a lot of money on those pictures.

PLUME: Well if people are willing to pay that much money, how can you turn it down?

DeLUISE: Well, the only thing there’s a lot of people think that he compromised himself. When I saw Cannonball with my kids… no, not Cannonball, Smokey & the Bandit, my kids came to me and they said, “Can I have this movie for my birthday?” I said, “What are you talking about?” They said, “On my birthday can I have this movie?” I said, “We don’t even do that.” He said, “Well can we? Can we?” And I went to Burt and I said, “My kids want this movie,” and he said, “It’s a drive-in movie. It’s only a drive-in movie.” And I said, holy mackerel, but we all loved it so much. And that movie went on to be historical. The man who wrote it was the man who got the coffee and the donuts. And he went to Hal Needham and said, “I have a script,” and Hal Needham said, “This is the worst script I ever… let me show it to Burt.” Burt looked at it and said, “This is the worst script I ever saw. But let me have it.” And he sent it to Jackie Gleason who said, “This is the worst script I ever read.” And then he sent it to Sally Field who said, what a surprise, “This is the worst script.” And then they fixed it up, and the man who sold the coffee and the donuts made two million dollars on that movie. Can you imagine? And then Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham made a lot of money with that movie.

PLUME: I don’t know why that film has a bad rap, or why Cannonball Run has a bad rap.

DeLUISE: Well, because they think it was not, uh… there was no substance. But people in the Midwest… you’ve just got to leave New York and California and Chicago, and you go to the Midwest and they say, “Dom, that movie Cannonball, we just luuuv it, luuuv it!” And they really mean it with all their hearts and souls. They really love that movie. And I just say, “Thank you very much.” You know, I can’t tell them, “I’ve done better work.” I can’t say that. When Victor, the little mechanic, becomes the strong Captain Marvel character and goes “dun dun DUNNN,”, they cheer for him. They love it. So a lot of people were happy with the Cannonball movies.

PLUME: I have a friend who’s a college graduate with an English literature degree, who’s working as a journalist, who all the time will – in your voice – call me JJ.

DeLUISE: Really? Oh, isn’t that sweet. Well that’s darling. I mean, look… there are all kinds of movies and… sometimes I see movies and I say, “Why, why did you make that movie?” For me, it doesn’t work. But a lot of times, people are… they’re eating it up, you know. Have you seen About Schmidt?

PLUME: I have seen About Schmidt.

DeLUISE: Yeah, I thought that was a wonderful performance on his part, but I was surprised that they went to so much trouble to shut up his jokes. I thought Kathy Bates should not have been asked to take her clothes off. Did you see that moment?

PLUME: Yes.

DeLUISE: Didn’t you want her to just, like, go in the water quickly? I felt bad for her.

PLUME: It struck me as a gratuitous moment.

DeLUISE: Yeah, because they could have been shooting his face… not too close, but I mean medium, and have her go in from right to left, and then you would know that he was seeing her body. You just had to get his reaction… but you didn’t need to see all that.

PLUME: It looked for a cheap pop in the audience.

DeLUISE: Was there a response to that?

PLUME: Yeah, it was along the lines of, this is gratuitous. This doesn’t serve the story.

DeLUISE: Well I thought it was… that was harsh. And I like her so much. But did you like the movie?

PLUME: I enjoyed it for the most part. I liked his performance, because it was so unlike him.

DeLUISE: I agree that he was unique and very, very, very unprotected, you know? I just wish that it was not so, uh… uh…

PLUME: Measured?

DeLUISE: Yeah, measured, yeah. ‘Cause everybody… they said, “Now you do this and then we’ll see Jack’s response to it,” you know…

PLUME: It’s like connect the dots.

DeLUISE: Yeah, right.

PLUME: Instead of being surprised as an audience, like you’re saying, everything was built up so much that you kinda saw things coming.

DeLUISE: Right. No, I don’t think that it’s the best… they keep saying Academy Awards, you know, because I guess he’s very unique, but he’s a darling. He can’t do anything wrong. I mean, he’s just so wonderful. I think one of the best things I’ve ever seen on the screen is As Good As It Gets. I loved that. I loved his performance in it. I mean, stepping over the cracks from that little dog, and…

PLUME: Well he deserved an Oscar for that.

DeLUISE: Oh, wonderful.

PLUME: But I think he deserved it for About Schmidt. Of course there’s so little competition this year.

DeLUISE: I did see Catch Me If You Can, and I thought that both those people were amazing. And I loved to see a 1978 program called To Tell The Truth. They just put it on because of the movie, and you saw this man that nobody voted for. There were three people saying that they were this imposter. And they finally said to him, after he got to talk, what was the narrowest escape? He said, “I was in a hotel, and the place was surrounded, and I came out a door, and three policemen grabbed me and I said, ‘O’Brien, FBI.’ And they said, ‘Oh excuse me sir, sorry,’ and I got in my car and I drove away.” But you just have to like him. Even though he was a crook and everything, he used to say “Well…” That was amazing, that he had the chutzpa to be the head of a hospital and not really betray it. He said, “Well, I’d read up on it.”

PLUME: I think the pilot thing scared me the most.

DeLUISE: He never flew a plane, he just knew the jargon.

PLUME: Well, he posed as a copilot so he wouldn’t have to fly the plane…

DeLUISE: Right, exactly. And I love the fact that he was with a woman, a prostitute, who said, “You know, can we work this out?” And then… “A thousand dollars.” And he had a lot of checks made out and he said, “I only have $1400.” And she said, “I’ll give you $400 and you give me the check.” Which was no good. And he said, “That actually happened.” Steven Spielberg had a lecture that a lot of people went to, and he said, “He told us that story and we just put it in the movie. He told us that, and now he’s in his 80s. And, you know, we wrote it and put it right in the movie and it’s great that she… he made $400 on an encounter.”

PLUME: Truth is stranger than fiction.

DeLUISE: Right. Did you see the movie? Did you see Catch Me?

PLUME: Yes.

DeLUISE: You see a lot of movies.

PLUME: Yeah. Well, it’s part of the job, unfortunately.

DeLUISE: Yeah, The Pianist is supposed to be amazing. I have not seen that. Polanski.

PLUME: I heard it’s very good, it just takes a long time to build.

DeLUISE: And also they said it was very sad. And they said it was like Schindler’s List.

PLUME: Well, Schindler’s List, I didn’t find to be very, very slow. But I’ve heard The Pianist is quite slow. I thought Schindler’s List moved pretty quick.

DeLUISE: Yeah, I loved the fact that Spielberg’s mother said, “You’re Jewish. Write something. Write something.” And so he ended up doing that movie, which I thought was grand.

PLUME: Well it was his most unpretentious film up to that point.

DeLUISE: Yeah, that’s right, right.

PLUME: And the one that didn’t crave popcorn box office…

DeLUISE: Right. Well, it was very moving. And then you knew that some of the people were around still. And when the actual people put the stones… I was gone by then.

PLUME: Wonderful, wonderful film.

DeLUISE: And then that actor, I loved him so much. Liam.

PLUME: Liam Neeson…

DeLUISE: Yeah.

PLUME: I would be remiss if I didn’t talk to you about your feature film directorial debut, with Hot Stuff. We talked earlier about your time behind-the-scenes in the Cleveland theater shortly after high school. How much of that was helpful when you finally got a chance to direct?

DeLUISE: It all helps. You don’t really realize what you’re absorbing as you live your life. The main thing is how you deal with people. I directed Hot Stuff and Boys Will Be Boys, and I directed Carol Burnett and Burt Reynolds onstage in Same Time Next Year… And they were very, very funny and the play was very, very good. In fact, he came in with a cigar, thinking he was going to make love to the lady he meets every year for a weekend – and she’s facing the fireplace – and as she turns around, she’s pregnant. And the audience howls, and his cigar went from an upright position to facing the floor. The cigar was up, and slowly, in Burt Reynolds’ mouth, the cigar went down to the floor. They were howling! It was good.

PLUME: What is Boys Will Be Boys?

DeLUISE: Boys Will Be Boys is a movie that had Jon Voight, my son Michael DeLuise, Catherine Oxenberg, Mickey Rooney, and Julie Hagerty. That was a very nice experience.

PLUME: Wasn’t Ruth Buzzi also in it?

DeLUISE: Ruth Buzzi was also in it, right. And Charles Nelson Reilley.

PLUME: Is directing something you want to do again?

DeLUISE: Sure, sure. It’s wonderful fun. Especially if you’re onstage. Burt Reynolds had a stage in Florida, and I had an opportunity to do something called Butterflies Are Free, with Farrah Fawcett and Dennis Christopher, and it was a wonderful experience to do.

PLUME: So when are you going to direct again?

DeLUISE: I’m ready! I’m ready! But at the moment, I’m busy with my radio shows and my children’s books.

PLUME: Well, I know you have an appointment coming up, so perhaps this is a good wrapping up point. Again, I appreciate your time…

DeLUISE: Oh please, it was fun. It was wonderful remembering some of the things I could remember.

PLUME: Well, I’m glad it wasn’t too painful.

DeLUISE: Nah it wasn’t.

PLUME: Well thank you very much, Dom.

DeLUISE: Bye!

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10 QUESTIONS

1. What is your favorite piece of music?

“Fly Me to the Moon” – Sinatra

2. What is your favorite film?

The Wizard of OZ

3. What is your favorite TV program, past or current?

The Honeymooners and The Sopranos

4. What do you feel has been your most important professional accomplishment to date?

Entertaining my grandchildren.

5. Which project do you feel didn’t live up to what you envisioned?

My honeymoon.

6. What is your favorite book?

Any story by Eudora Welty.

7. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?

More people would work more often, so they wouldn’t have to wait tables.

8. Who – or what – would you say has had the biggest influence on your career?

Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Gleason, and my father.

9. What is your next project?

Waking up tomorrow.

10. What is the one project that you’ve always wanted to do, but have yet to be able to?

A picture I wrote with my son, Peter, called Cacciatore Ghost.

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