Serenity Now! Jerry Stiller's Life Well Lived

[Brian Damage]

Thursday, February 7, Jerry Stiller regaled a nearly sold out audience at The Community Theatre with tales from his long and colorful career.

Stiller, who is 80, is known to one generation as one half of the classic comedy team Stiller and Meara, and to another as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld and Arthur Spooner on The King of Queens. Ms Meara was also in attendance, often prodding Stiller from the audience and later joining him onstage.



Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller with Community Theatre Executive Director Allison Larena and her husband, Paul, at post-event reception February 7
The evening began with a video retrospective of Stiller's career, after which he came out and told that audience that he needed them to help him sort through his life. While invoking many names of the past, clearly Stiller was not name-dropping; he grew up in a Lower East Side tenement and attended schools with the likes of future actors Walter Matthau and Zero Mostel. Relating a story of his first crush, he later found out that the girl grew up to be the mother of New York governor Elliott Spitzer. While taking any job he could at a Greenwich Village theatre, he got a job painting scenery and the person he was assigned to work with was an unknown young actor named Rod Steiger.

After a stint in the army (which he describes as distributing films about venereal disease), he enrolled in Syracuse University and later became determined to make it as an actor. Times were different, he explained; he could walk right into the office of the Shuberts (of Shubert Theater fame) and ask to meet the principals - which he did (it didn't go well).

As for meeting his wife, he explained that he took her out for coffee after a failed audition and she asked him to help him steal silverware. He knew this girl was special.

Stiller recounted the couple's struggle to find a niche, but the emergence of the comedy and improvisation team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May created an opportunity. But after signing on for a year to work at a Chicago Theatre, Anne soon wanted to get out of the contract and head back to New York to start a family. She told him either they quit or she would divorce him. "I got her pregnant that night," he said. They headed home.

Success found the couple in the clubs of Greenwich Village, and soon they became an in-demand comedy team, who became semi-regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show (video clips show Sullivan pronouncing Anne's last name Mare-Ah). Success followed for many years, but they eventually gave up night clubs because their two children Amy and Ben were growing up. Individually, they bolstered their careers in a variety of TV, screen and stage jobs, but the pair also earned renown for their series of 1970s radio commercials for Blue Nun wine (a wine with tasted good for $2.69 a bottle, according to Stiller, but "mediocre," at $6 a bottle, according to Meara.)

Stiller landed his role on Seinfeld at a time when he wasn't working all that much and had developed stage fright. He explained that co-creator Larry David originally wanted him to play the character low key, but at a script table reading, after days of unsuccessful rehearsals with Estelle Harris, and afraid he was going to be fired, he finally shot back in the boisterous screaming voice that was to become Frank Costanza's trademark, to which David said, "Okay, we'll do it your way."

Stiller and Meara have been married 54 years, according to her count; he didn't seem to recall, and clearly, they seem to be as enamored with each other as when they first met. Joining Jerry on stage, Anne playfully bantered with him and the audience. They also invited two audience members on stage to do a scene from Seinfeld in which Stiller screamed his trademark, 'Serenity now!"

Mr. Stiller also acknowledged some long time friends in the audience who came to see him, including one who harkened back to his high school days and another who was a war buddy.
Following the performance, both Stiller and Meara joined a post-event reception for Community Theatre members, mingling with the crowd for about a half hour.

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