Art Buchwald made sure to leave us laughing

[thedrifter]

Art Buchwald made sure to leave us laughing
Updated 1/18/2007 8:49 PM ET
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Art Buchwald belonged to an exclusive club.

It had three members: Buchwald, TV correspondent Mike Wallace and novelist William Styron. All had clinical depression. They dubbed themselves "The Blue Brothers."

"Buchwald was there before I was," Wallace said Thursday about their depressions. "He explained it to me. He walked me through it. And when I was on the road, he'd call every night. He was that kind of friend."

Styron died in November at age 81, and Buchwald died Wednesday, also at 81. Wallace, 88, said, "Now they're both gone, and I expect I'll be joining them up there or, perhaps, down there, and we'll laugh about old times."

Buchwald, who wrote about 8,000 newspaper columns and 33 books, found a way to laugh about most everything. In the final year of a life filled with career highs and personal lows, he had become what he called "the poster boy for death."

His last book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, published in November, is a humorous account of how he moved into a hospice in Washington, D.C., last February, expecting to die within weeks, and ended up having "the time of my life."

His right leg had been amputated. His kidneys, which he called "the most underrated organ," were failing.

He was given three weeks to live. Legions of famous friends — Tom Brokaw, John Glenn, Ethel Kennedy — visited.

He did interviews as "the only person who became famous for dying."

Then, he got better. His kidneys began to work in what he called a miracle.

In July, Buchwald left the hospice to spend the summer on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., as he had done for 45 years and where he will be buried. In the fall, he moved in with his son Joel in Washington.

It was there he died late Wednesday. "The last year he had the opportunity for a victory lap," Joel Buchwald told the Associated Press. "He went out the way he wanted to go, on his own terms."

Brokaw, who interviewed Buchwald for The Greatest Generation, his best seller on World War II, said: "If he was your friend, he also made it a point to become a friend of your kids. Just as he taught us how to live and laugh, at the end, he also taught us how to die with grace and humor."

In a 54-year career as a syndicated columnist, first in Paris, then Washington, Buchwald was known for his wit, his cigars and his gentle political satire.

In his 1993 memoir, Leaving Home, he revealed he was hospitalized twice — in 1963 and 1987 — for suicidal depression.

For years, Buchwald said his mother had died when he was born. In Leaving Home, he revealed she suffered from chronic depression and paranoia. After his birth, she was sent to a mental hospital for 35 years, the rest of her life. Buchwald never saw her.

"When I was a child, they would not let me visit," he wrote. "When I grew up, I didn't want to. I preferred the mother I had invented to the one I would find in the hospital." In his midlife depression, Buchwald said, he'd lie in his hospital bed and cry, "I want my mommy. I want my mommy."

After his father, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, ran out of money, Buchwald and three siblings were sent to an orphanage in New York and a series of foster homes.

At 17, he joined what he said was his favorite foster family, the Marines. He served in the Pacific during World War II.

He got his big break in Paris after the war. He used the GI Bill supposedly to study French. He actually majored in Parisian nightlife and landed a job at The International Herald Tribune.

He wrote a famous column explaining Thanksgiving to the French, translating Miles Standish as Kilometres Deboutish. He became a celebrity. At Buchwald's wedding to Ann McGarry in 1952, Gene Kelly danced with the bride.

Buchwald and his wife adopted three children. After nearly 40 years of marriage, the couple separated but reconciled while she was dying of cancer. (She died in 1994.)

Buchwald won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982 and a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Paramount Pictures in 1992 for stealing his idea for the movie Coming to America.

Despite his popularity, he never took on literary airs. His writing wasn't as stylish as Mark Twain's or H.L. Mencken's, but he was funny on deadline, decade after decade. He said he could write a 400-word column in less than a hour: "My craft is more sketching than writing; my column is almost a cartoon in words."

In 1998, Buchwald complained to Washingtonian magazine about a new breed of newspaper editors who didn't like humor: "If it wasn't for their wives, they wouldn't even know I was funny."

Whenever he was asked what he was trying to accomplish, he'd say, "I'm getting even. For me, being funny is the best revenge."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Art Buchwald: 1925 - 2007
The last laugh of `a good life'

By Stevenson Swanson
Tribune national correspondent

January 19, 2007

NEW YORK -- Even in death, Art Buchwald had the last laugh.

The comic columnist's passing had no sooner been announced Thursday--nearly a year later than his doctors had predicted--than a video of him appeared on The New York Times' Web site.

"Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," the humorist says, an impish smile playing across his face.

The video, recorded last year at Buchwald's summer home on Martha's Vineyard, is the first in a series of online obituaries to be made public by the Times. The newspaper said it has recorded more than 10 interviews with the famous and powerful, including a former president, that will remain unseen until the person's death.

In the 14-minute video, Buchwald, the 81-year-old writer who became one of the best-connected commentators on life and politics in America, reflects on how his ability to make people laugh helped him compensate for an unhappy childhood.

"If you can make people laugh, you get all the love you want," he says.

Not to be outdone, Buchwald's syndicate, Tribune Media Services, released his farewell column, which Buchwald wrote 11 months ago for publication after his death. At the time, he was in a hospice, having elected to forgo debilitating kidney dialysis treatments.

Buchwald did not die on schedule. His doctor had told him that without dialysis, he would probably not last more than three weeks. That was in February.

Five months later, after a steady stream of visitors from among Washington's political and journalistic elite, Buchwald was still alive, still cracking jokes. He moved to the house on Martha's Vineyard where he and his family had summered since the mid-1960s.

That's where he granted an interview with the Tribune. He had resumed writing his column, and he had just polished off what would prove to be the last of more than 30 books, "Too Soon to Say Goodbye."

Over the course of the next 45 minutes, he reflected on his improbable life, from his start as an unhappy foster child in New York City, to a 14-year stint as a Paris-based humor and night-life columnist, and then his four decades as a widely read political satirist in Washington.

Given that run of luck, he said, his decision not to continue dialysis treatments was straightforward.

"I've done it all, I've had a good life," he said. "Why should I want to stick around?"

He sat on the enclosed back porch of his house, his legs propped up on an ottoman. Because of a circulatory problem, his right leg had been amputated below the knee.

The loss of his lower leg meant that he was dependent on others. That had sealed his decision to accept death, whenever it decided to come.

Not that he couldn't see a bright side to his condition.

"Everyone wants to know what I want to eat," Buchwald said, popping sugar-free candy into his mouth. "I get the best seats at any sporting event, and the best of all is, I get parking. I don't drive, but I get parking stickers. And when I speak now, funny enough, people listen."

Toward the end of the interview, Buchwald noted that his wife, Ann, was buried in a nearby cemetery, as was his friend John Hersey, author of "Hiroshima." And soon, he would join them. But first, he wanted to be cremated.

"And I want some of my ashes to be taken up in an airplane and scattered on all the cocktail parties on Martha's Vineyard," he said, cracking a wide grin.

soswanson@tribune.com

Life of Art

THE BEGINNING: Born Oct. 20, 1925, in Mt. Vernon, N.Y.

MILITARY SERVICE: Served as a Marine in World War II.

COLUMN: Began in 1949 in European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, in Paris.

HONORS: Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982.

LOW POINTS: Two bouts of depression.

FAMILY: Married Ann McGarry in 1952; she died in 1994. Survivors include a son and two daughters and five grandchildren.

Sources: Tribune files.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Art Buchwald's Moveable Feast
From Paris to D.C., He Lived by His Wit

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 19, 2007; C01

They say Art Buchwald is dead, but I have my doubts.

The last time Art was dying, months and months ago, he turned the hospice common room into a cavalcade of stars, from Ethel Kennedy to Donald Rumsfeld. Art basked in their adulation and gorged on the junk food they lovingly set before him. The man spent some of his best years in Paris, but his dying wish was McDonald's.

Eventually, he felt so much better that he relaunched his legendary newspaper column with tales of his near-death, and -- between columns and VIPs -- cranked out another book, number 30-something, called "Too Soon to Say Goodbye."

For most people, dying is a milestone. For Buchwald, it was fresh material.

But suppose for a moment that he really is dead this time. We've lost a great American Dreamer, the sort of self-invented, self-made success this country holds the patent on. Buchwald's adult life was an endless improvisation on American themes in both major and minor keys -- resourceful Ben Franklin on one shoulder, desperate Jay Gatsby on the other, fizzy with glamour today and dark with depression tomorrow.

The thing about Art Buchwald, his friend Ben Bradlee liked to say, was that "his French was terrible." And if you didn't know that they had been pals for more than half a century, you might think that's a snooty thing for a Harvard-educated Boston Brahmin to say about a high school dropout from Queens.

But Bradlee was right -- Buchwald's French was terrible, and that was the essential fact to embody his career. An ordinary man who could not speak French would stay home, but Art Buchwald took his terrible French to Paris and became the toast of the postwar city. He wrote a Thanksgiving Day column in fractured franglais in 1953, then reprinted the column year after groan-inducing year for half a century. He wore his bad French like an insignia; he didn't need francais because he had chutzpah, the preferred idiom of the American original.

Buchwald was one of the most successful newspaper columnists of his time, and counted the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for commentary among his trophies. Not bad for a man who was not, technically speaking, a gifted writer. His chosen form, topical humor in 500 words, was a severe discipline for even the freshest writer, and Buchwald experienced long stretches when he wasn't fresh at all.

But there was no one more engaging than Buchwald in his memoirs, such books as "Leaving Home" and "I'll Always Have Paris." In these he recalled his amazing rise to an improbable career, and revealed himself to be the epitome of the American spirit.

His childhood was miserable. His mother was institutionalized. His father was overwhelmed. Buchwald and his three sisters grew up in an orphanage and later in foster homes. He was saved by World War II -- the Marines straightened him out and returned him to the world, outwardly exuberant yet inwardly isolated.

Nothing and no one to hold him back.

Brushing off his lack of a high school diploma, Buchwald enrolled at the University of Southern California on the GI Bill, having decided to be, of all things, a writer. Soon it dawned on him, though, that a writer belonged in Paris, like Hemingway and Joyce. Skipping another diploma, he joined a tide of ambitious young men flowing toward the Seine -- many of whom were, technically speaking, very good writers indeed: William Styron, James Jones, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton and Irwin Shaw, to name a few of Buchwald's eventual gin rummy buddies. While they went to work on novels and magazines, Buchwald talked his way into writing a nightlife column for the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune.

It was a perfect match. The Trib in its heyday was the lifeline for American expatriates and tourists. Buchwald wrote in a concise, straightforward style well suited to making newspaper deadlines, and his wit, while topical and wisecracking, wasn't lacerating or bitter. Fast and mainstream: the ideal newspaperman.

He liked to meet people and be places and see things and never feel lonely. He liked to drop names, which meant collecting names to drop. Postwar Europe lay shattered and stunned; every party and palace was wide open to Americans with pockets full of robust dollars. Buchwald simply invited himself along.

He escorted Elvis to the Lido, strolled the boulevards with Satchmo and Ellington, gave tours of the paper's office near the Champs-Elysees to Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Fred Allen and Jane Russell. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were "one of my favorite couples." Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband Mike Todd tried to stiff him on a $4,000 restaurant tab. Thornton Wilder assured him that "the rich need you more than you need them." Lucky Luciano, the exiled gangster, took Buchwald to lunch in Naples, which led to a novel that he sold to his friend Stanley Donen as a possible movie for his other friends Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

"My background as a foster child, an enlisted man in the Marines, and a student at USC had not exactly prepared me for this role of bon vivant in Paris," Buchwald acknowledged, "but I rose to the task." How? Easy. "Most of the celebrities who visited Paris often appeared uncomfortable in such unfamiliar surroundings," he explained. "And I was one of the few people with whom they could feel any kinship. I was an American, I spoke their language."

(He spoke it like he was trying to hold a dime under his tongue while talking, another impediment that Buchwald simply shrugged off. He earned a fortune as a public speaker without actually being able to speak clearly.) Buchwald's 1952 wedding -- Lena Horne arranged for it to be held in London's Westminster Cathedral -- was attended by Gene Kelly, John Huston, Jose Ferrer, Perle Mesta and Rosemary Clooney, to name a few. If these names don't ring a bell with you, suffice it to say they were the sort of international superstars who do not normally attend the weddings of 26-year-old newspapermen.

As the Paris column grew more popular, Buchwald made it more and more about himself -- a comic version of himself. On the eve of the biggest wedding of the age, matching gorgeous Grace Kelly to Monaco's Prince Rainier, he wrote that the only reason he wasn't on the guest list was because the Buchwald family and the Grimaldi dynasty had been feuding for 500 years.

His invitation from the prince was hand-delivered the next day.

"What I planned to do was spend my life entertaining the crowd," he later explained with characteristic candor. "I needed constant applause." But those amazing 1950s passed away. Appropriately, Buchwald -- short, swarthy and round -- closed the decade by appearing in a Richard Avedon fashion shoot, wearing white tie alongside Audrey Hepburn. As the era closed, he decided to return to the United States. The only question was where.

"If he had gone to New York, I guess he would've become another Leonard Lyons," Bradlee said not long ago, recalling the names of the major gossip columnists of that era. "If he'd gone to L.A., he would've been another Earl Wilson."

Instead, Buchwald moved with his wife, Ann, and three children to Washington, where -- Jack and Jackie notwithstanding -- glamour was in short supply. So he invented himself again, this time as a political satirist.

Once again, Buchwald perfectly leveraged his gifts. The cutting edge of American humor was drawing more and more blood, but Buchwald chose the safer role of jester to the court of official Washington. He preferred not to ridicule actual lobbyists, flacks, bureaucrats and members of Congress; instead, he invented fictional malfeasants and spun imaginary conversations in which they blandly disclosed their dumb ideas and bad intentions to an eternally credulous narrator.

In this way, he tackled hot issues -- like anti-communism, women's rights, gun control, Vietnam and the sexual revolution -- without making enemies. He also enjoyed pricking overblown egos, especially those of the highborn and overserious. His Vietnam-era play "Sheep on the Runway" lampooned the pompous pro-war columnist Joseph Alsop. Buchwald took glee in the squirms of Important Washingtonians who desperately wanted to see the show but worried that Alsop would hear about it.

Buchwald was soon syndicated to more than 500 newspapers, including the Denver Post, where I first encountered his work during the summer of 1973. It was the height of Watergate; I was a 12-year-old dweeb who spent those prime months in the basement watching the televised hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Watergate. When the hearings adjourned each afternoon, I moved to the front step and waited for the afternoon paper to be delivered. I wanted to see two things: Pat Oliphant's brilliant editorial cartoons and Buchwald's common-sense columns.

By then, Buchwald was as wired into Washington as he had been in Paris. You could find him every Easter wearing a bunny costume at Ethel Kennedy's house. He lunched weekly with Bradlee, the charismatic Washington Post editor, and the powerful lawyer Edward Bennett Williams. He talked Hollywood with producer George Stevens, shared inside jokes with Katharine Graham and commanded the best tables at Sans Souci and Maison Blanche.

These names meant little or nothing to a gawky kid in a Denver suburb. Yet I got a life-shaping jolt from the discovery that someone got paid for saying irreverent things about the president in newspapers from coast to coast. Buchwald's columns weren't deep or nuanced; he didn't believe in transition sentences or dependent clauses. But if he had been a writer of more subtle ideas, more complex prose, more cutting humor, I probably wouldn't have been reading him, and I suspect that's true for many of his millions and millions and millions of readers over the decades.

I was reminded the other day of Buchwald's column from July 30, 1974. I recalled it instantly, because Buchwald had collaborated with another of my early heroes, Dr. Seuss. In a typical turn of Buchwaldian fortune, he had met Theodor Seuss Geisel at the San Diego Zoo and they immediately became friends. They, like a growing number of Americans, were fed up with the Nixon presidency. Buchwald proposed that they write something together.

Dr. Seuss had recently published a book titled "Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!" It was a simple thing to cross out one name and substitute another. In 500-plus papers, the writer of kids' books and the poor kid from the orphanage published "Richard M. Nixon Will You Please Go Now!"

Nine days later, Nixon went.

Buchwald loved that story. It had a famous friend, a mild joke and a lot of moxie. The little guy made it big, which was the essence of Art Buchwald, and the reason he endures, no matter what the obituaries say.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Buchwald amused everyone except maybe Marine sergeants
RAY MCALLISTER
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Saturday, January 20, 2007

Art Buchwald was a frequent visitor to Richmond.

Sadly, Art Buchwald is dead.

Buchwald might say: Finally, Art Buchwald is dead.

You don't think so? Did you see his video obituary on the New York Times site? He begins: "Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died."

Buchwald long was funny about politics. The past year, he confronted his mortality in his syndicated columns.

"People are afraid of death, they're afraid of talking about death," he said on the videotape. "They don't know what to do about it."

Buchwald was an orphan who dropped out of high school to join the Marines. Telling jokes, he has said, was a way of finding love. He went to college, then to France as a writer, then to Washington in 1962. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982.

Buchwald was a frequent visitor to Richmond, too, and an entertaining one.

He visited at least six times, the last four to the Richmond Forum.

In 1963, he spoke to the Tuckahoe Woman's Club.

In 1965, he was here to speak to Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University).

In 1969, he capsulized the 1968 election for the Richmond Forum. "Nixon looked like the guy you wouldn't buy a used car from, Humphrey looked the guy who did and Wallace looked like the man who stole one." He also wondered about the spate of plane hijackings: "If we don't want to recognize Castro, we could at least recognize Havana Airport."

In 1977, he joked to the Forum about then-Sen. William Scott of Virginia, ranked as the dumbest senator by a small magazine. "New Times had a circulation of about 40," he said, "but Senator Scott called a press conference to deny it, which made him the dumbest senator in Washington."

The line was so good, Buchwald repeated it in 1988.

In '88, he also chided the Democratic presidential candidate (the FDA has ruled that "no one can drive or use heavy machinery after listening to Mike Dukakis' campaign") and President Ronald Reagan as his presidency was ending ("he's logged many sleepless days trying to figure out what happened" ).

In 1991, he appeared with "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney to speak about "Humor in the Press." I had the chance to be one of the panelists.

Buchwald walked in to our pre-event meeting, said hello and sat by himself at the end of the table.

He pulled out a cassette player and popped in a tape of "Frere Jacques," his favorite song. The lyrics were replaced by "Hey, Art Buchwald," a parody presented by Forum President Ralph Krueger on his last visit.

Soon Buchwald was grinning.

Soon we all were.

He also showed he was a pretty good standup comic that night.

Of course, Buchwald told the Forum audience, not everyone loves a humorist.

"You're not going to believe this," he dead-panned, "but the Marines have no use for humorists.

"For four years, sergeants kept hitting me over the head, saying, 'What's so damned funny, Buchwald?'"

His political columns were not always born of humor. Buchwald said that night he wrote some in anger -- then had to go back and make them funny.

But he always found the humor.

"I don't want to die," Buchwald told friends in recent days, "the same day Castro dies."

Now that's a sense of humor.

Ellie