Don Rickles: no joke, an actor first

By Luaine Lee
Knight Ridder Newspapers

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Don Rickles stars in "The Wool Cap," premiering Sunday on TNT.

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LOS ANGELES — He can tease you about your girth, your religion, your nationality, but Don Rickles insists he's not telling jokes.

"It was just an attitude I'd take. I'd say, 'You're wearing that yellow outfit, you look like a parakeet.' I would say something like that and that's what I did," he shrugs, seated on a round settee in a meeting room of a hotel here.

What Rickles did as a comic was poke fun at every sacred cow in the pasture. And he was so good at it that no one minded.

While everyone thinks of him as a comedian, he really started as a bona-fide actor straight from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. The trouble was, he says, he couldn't get a job as an actor.

"I couldn't get anyplace, so I started doing what I do — whatever that is — talking to people on the stage and getting $10 here, $20 there — then 40 years later I'm here. So there it is."

Even so, Rickles, now 78, has never deserted acting, as audiences will see when he co-stars with William H. Macy as an irascible tenant in "The Wool Cap," premiering Sunday on TNT.

The touching tale is about a mute building superintendent whose relationship with a young girl helps both of them overcome wounds from the past. Rickles plays Macy's truculent friend who lives in the building.

On TV "The Wool Cap," at 8 p.m. Sunday on TNT.

Spark for comedy

The comic has been elbowing funny bones ever since he was a kid. "Like a lot of kids at that time, I had bad grades in school, was president of the dramatic society and in trouble with all my classes. I was the class joker, you know. Child trouble? I was never in major kind of trouble. I was well liked," he says.

Rickles tried a variety of jobs while he was scouring for an acting gig. He pitched cosmetics, cars and insurance. "I was a lousy insurance man because I could never close. Somebody would say, 'I'll think about it.' I'd say, 'Fine,' and I'd leave.

My father was a great insurance man. He said, 'What did you do? You should've stayed there with him until he closed.' I didn't have that spark to make them buy it."

But he did have the spark for comedy. His brand of rapid-fire, targeted improvisation doesn't come from a tortured soul or a Darwinian childhood.

"I don't think I'm neurotic," he says. "Some people who don't know me might think so, but I'm the average guy. I love to watch sports. I go out with my wife. I'm married 39 years. I have two grandchildren and live a normal life. I lie on the couch like anybody else. I'm so different when I perform on the stage, I really am. I've never had a problem with 'Why am I doing this? Who am I? What's my motivation?' I've never been like that," he shrugs.

While he was doing standup he was conscripted for the film 'Run Silent, Run Deep," his own TV series, "The Don Rickles Show" and "CPO Sharkey," and films like "Kelly's Heroes," "Innocent Blood," "Casino" and the two "Toy Story" movies, in which he played Mr. Potato Head with an attitude.

But it was his testy zingers and right-on stereotypes that kept him coming back to "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" and to the showrooms in Las Vegas. "My stuff is never mean-spirited," he says.

"It's always been fun ... I say a lot of things, but it's never mean-spirited and it's never dirty, so what else can you ask for? The proof of it is I'm still headlining after all these years."

Happily married

Rickles says the secret to a lasting marriage is "being very loyal to each other and good friends and respecting each other's opinions and I respect my wife's opinion tremendously. She's a very bright lady.

"It'll be 40 years in March, so we're very happy. ...

"I never found marriage difficult. I never thought of separating or 'I can't take this anymore.' Never, never, never. It sounds crazy, but it's true. On the road, my wife [Barbara] has been able to come with me in the early years, not so much now. But we've always been together and never reached the point where we'd say, 'I have had it, I'm going my way,' " he says.

"Now that I'm 78, maybe in a half-hour ... if we talk much longer, it may be over."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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