Don Rickles

Don Rickles: At 81, Still Adding Insult to Comedy

By Matt Hurwitz

Special to The Washington Post 
Sunday, December 2, 2007; Page M05

"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.

He kids because he loves: "I'm like a fighter," says Rickles, the subject of an HBO documentary tonight. "I always throw my best punch." (By Anne Cusack -- Los Angeles Times) TOOLBOX  Resize Text  Save/Share +  Print This  E-mail This COMMENT  washingtonpost.com readers have posted 2 comments about this item. View All Comments » Comments are closed for this item.  Discussion Policy WHO'S BLOGGING » Links to this article

"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 Silvermanand 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.