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by Roger Ebert
"These two newlyweds are driving down to Florida on their honeymoon," Lou Jacobi was telling me. "The guy puts his hand on his wife's leg. 'We're married now,' she tells him. Why don't you go a little farther?' So, he goes to Fort Lauderdale."
This was in a restaurant in Toronto in 1999, where we were having lunch before Lou was scheduled to dedicate his star on Canada's Walk of Fame. Lou died Friday at 96.
Every time I saw Lou, he told me new jokes. I called him on the phone, he told me jokes. We went to dinner, he did 10 minutes of standup for the people at the next table. Lou Jacobi was not happy unless everyone around him was smiling.
Lou is the only man I've known who could be introduced just like Jack Benny: Star of stage, screen, radio, TV, records, and the violin. He made his stage debut at the age of 12, playing a violin prodigy in "The Priest and the Rabbi," a Toronto stage play where it turned out (I'm not entirely clear about this) that he was the son of the priest, or of the rabbi, or they were brothers. "I was off after the first act," he said, so maybe he never got to stay around for the end of the play.
You may remember him from Woody Allen's "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex," where he played a dinner guest who excused himself, went upstairs, raided the hostesses' closet, put on a dress, was almost caught, escaped out a window, and was arrested by a cop who wanted to know why a man was wearing a dress and a mustache.
He was also in Barry Levinson's "Avalon," as the Jewish uncle who drove out to the suburbs from the old city neighborhood, arrived late, stood in the doorway and said disbelievingly, "You cut the turkey without me?" And he was the bartender in Billy Wilder's "Irma la Douce," and a lot of other films, and did a lot of TV (he was a regular on the Dean Martin program). On Broadway, he starred in Neil Simon's first play, "Come Blow Your Horn," in "The Diary of Anne Frank," in Simon's "Sunshine Boys," and in "Don't Drink the Water," a play Woody Allen wrote for him.
I am writing down these credits partly because it was Lou Jacobi's day. But mostly I am writing them because I love Lou and his wife Ruth, who he didn't marry until he was 43, his sister told me, "because finally he knew he'd found the right girl."
I met Lou at Dusty and Joan Cohl's annual Chinese dinner at the Toronto Film Festival 20 years ago. He offered the toast at my wedding. "Thank you for your warm welcome," he told our guests. "I don't deserve it. Of course, I've got arthritis, and I don't deserve that, either."
I reviewed a few of his film performances, but at 85 Lou was just about retired. What inspired me was the way Lou and Ruth preserved their zest for living. They attacked every moment like a thrilling opportunity.
That day, halfway through that year's film festival, Lou and Ruth were at lunch with their friends Dusty and Joan. Bill Marshall, who founded the festival with Dusty, was also at the table, along with film critic Kathleen Carroll and man about town Billy Ballard.
"On our first date in 1947, Dusty took me to a benefit at a club, and Lou was the entertainment," Joan told me. "He was wearing a dress and a blonde wig and was sprawled on a piano, singing about a naughty lady named Sadie."
In those days Lou played the Canadian borscht belt, nightclubs, weddings, and stag parties. ("Oooooh, I told the dirtiest jokes!" he twinkled.) Only later did he become a stage star, first in London, then on Broadway. Even after he became admired as a serious actor, he still went for laughs; his record albums have titles like "Tijuana Al and his Jewish Brass," and "The Yiddish are Coming! The Yiddish are Coming!"
As you make your way through life, sometimes you happen upon people who know how to be happy. I remember Lou and I'm not afraid to be old like Lou was, if I can get there in Lou's style.
At lunch that day, Lou had a new joke. He had to stand up to tell it.
"An old guy is walking down the street with two big watermelons in his hands," Lou said. "A guy asks him, 'How do I get to CBS?'"
Lou pantomimed an old man with arthritis.
"First he leans over and puts down one watermelon.
"Then he leans over and puts down the other watermelon.
"Then he puts up his hands and shrugs."
Adapted from a report written from the Toronto Film Festival in 1999.