Don Rickles: At 81, Still Adding Insult to Comedy

By Matt Hurwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 2, 2007

"Hurwitz -- you're Jewish?" Don Rickles asks. Of course, I say, adding that my fiancee is Mexican.

Rickles is concerned: "Is your family happy about the Mexican girl?" Yeah, no problem.

"Oh, all right. On Yom Kippur, we'll give her a taco and send her home early."

Bingo. My own personal Don Rickles insult. "It's not really an insult," the 81-year-old comic explains. "It's just an exaggeration. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been headlining for 50-odd years."

And for that 50-odd years, "he has essentially done the same material. . . .," director John Landis says. "And what's amazing is: one, it's still shocking; two, it's still funny; and three, he doesn't really offend anybody."

Even more incredible, says actor and pal Sidney Poitier, "people come looking for it."

And they continue to come looking for it, as seen in Landis's new HBO documentary, "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project," which premieres tonight. The movie contains live performance footage of the comedian at Las Vegas's Sahara Hotel -- something he has never previously allowed to be filmed -- and interviews with more than 50 friends and colleagues, including Clint Eastwood, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Martin Scorsese, Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman and others, including his best buddy, Bob Newhart.

"No one can steal Don's material," Newhart says. "Because Don is just doing Don. And no one can do Don."

Not that people don't try. "It's like being at the zoo and watching kids taunt the leopard," Newhart continues. "The zookeeper says, 'Kid, I wouldn't do that if I were you.' Well, the equivalent with Don is when people come up to him and try to 'do' him. You want to go, 'Please. . . . don't do that. You're going to regret doing that -- trust me. You're just playing with fire.' "

For all his fame as a comic, Rickles began his career as an actor. After getting out of the Navy in the '40s, he studied at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts alongside the likes of Jason Robards and Anne Bancroft. "I auditioned for [the academy] and they accepted me -- ask me why, I don't know," he says. He spent the next few years working Broadway, finally deciding to take a whack at comedy.

Like most comics of the day, he first worked in burlesque, entertaining the audience in between performances by strippers. "They were called 'striptease joints,' but by today's standards, they're nothing," he says. "Just little tassels on the boobs, and that was a big deal."

Although he could do a few impressions, telling jokes was not his forte. "To this day, if you gave me $1,000, I can't tell a joke. But I can make it a joke, out of an exaggeration," which he did, poking fun at the drunken sailors in the audience.

He began to make a name for himself in such places as Washington's old Wayne Room on then-seedy 14th Street NW before graduating to shows in Miami and, eventually, Las Vegas, in the early '50s.

Rickles built his career playing in such venues as the lounge at the Sahara, doing shows throughout the night -- 2, 4 and 5 a.m. "It was always a lot of fun," he recalls. "But, hey, when you're in your young 30s . . . If I had to do it today, we might have to call the paramedics."

"You'd get through with your show at 1:30, and, naturally, the adrenaline is still pumping," Newhart remembers. "You'd say, 'Hey, let's go catch Keely Smith and Louis Prima or Vic Damone.' " And, of course, Don Rickles.

Even the era's big names would pop in to see Rickles fairly regularly, including Nat King Cole (for whom Rickles would later serve as a pallbearer) and members of the Rat Pack -- most notably Frank Sinatra. Upon Sinatra's first visit, Rickles famously greeted him with, "Make yourself at home, Frank -- hit somebody."

"Everyone looked to see what Frank would do," Landis says. "Because there were those 12 guys over there with guns." Thankfully, Frank laughed -- and all the guys laughed with him. "If he didn't laugh, I'd be on the Jerry Lewis telethon," Rickles says now.

Vegas at the time was run by "the guys," as mobsters were known. "They really knew how to run the town," Newhart says. "It was virtually crime-free. They made sure that any transgressions were . . . taken care of immediately. One thing you learned was never to ask the owners, 'What did you do before this?' "

Rickles and Newhart became fast friends, having been introduced by their wives, and have remained close, even traveling the world together. Their relationship is particularly intriguing given the differences in their humor and personalities. "Don is all touchy-feely, hugging, etc.," says Landis, who first met Rickles in 1969 working as a gofer on the film "Kelly's Heroes." "Bob, though, is probably the whitest person you'll ever meet. He defines the word 'gentile.' "

"We're like apples and oranges," Rickles says. "Our humors are two different ballparks. But when we're together socially, we fall on the floor laughing at the same stuff."

"People will say, 'Geez, how can you go on vacation with Rickles? I mean, 24 hours a day?' " Newhart says. "I just tell them it's like elevator music. It's just kind of a din in the background -- you don't pay a lot of attention to it. Otherwise you'd go crazy. You just kind of tune in every so often to see what subject he's ranting on."

It is Newhart who probably understands Rickles best. "There's a part of all comedians that remains a child, while other people get civility pounded into them," he says. "But somehow comedians don't. This is particularly evident in Don. Whatever he sees, he says. And it's what we all think, but we're too civilized to say."

Newhart recalls watching one of Rickles's Sahara shows with his wife, noting one particularly obvious target for Rickles's abuse sitting in the front row, though the comic didn't appear to notice. "There was a guy sitting in the front row with . . . with this really bad hairpiece -- I mean, it looked like a divot that somebody threw on somebody's head," he recalls. "Don kept walking past the guy, but he didn't say anything. I turned to my wife, and I said, 'Geez, he's gotta see that guy in the front row.' Finally, he looks at the guy, and he says, 'No one would ever guess, sir.' "

In more than 50 years of performing, Rickles has never regretted anything he's said in jest. "I'm like a fighter," he says. "I always throw my best punch, and I never take it back or apologize for what I said. I never take it back, because when I say it, I believe it. And I believe it's funny."