How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am by Charles Grodin Page A

sauna, and he was sitting on a
     table wrapped in a towel. He asked me what I thought was my best idea. I told him, and he told me to do it.
    The idea was that I was a young aspiring singer from Pittsburgh, and my uncle, played by the late Joey Faye of vaudeville
     fame, would tell a professional singing coach that he promised his late sister, my mother, that he would back me in a singing
     career, but he wanted a professional’s judgment of my potential.
    We paid a coach for the use of his studio, and the coach called about six other coaches, telling them he had to be out of
     town and asking if they could come over to hear this young man and give their judgment. I believe we paid each one twenty
     dollars. Again, this was the 1960s. We scheduled them about an hour apart so they wouldn’t run into each other.
    The studio was rigged with hidden cameras and mikes. The piano player, of course, was with us, and I burst into a completely
     sincere but way less than mediocre version of a somewhat operatic piece called “Be My Love,” made famous by Mario Lanza.
    All day long the coaches were stunned, surreptitiously glancing at the piano player and Joey Faye, both of whom acted as though
     something reasonably acceptable was coming out of me.
    A middle-aged heavyset male coach just stared at me as I sang, stunned. When I finished, I said, “I did this song for a group
     of Shriners in Pittsburgh and got a standing ovation! Of course, I didn’t do it as well as I just did it now.” The coach said,
     “I wonder what the hell
that
sounded like?”
    One woman coach said to me indignantly, “I manage a baritone whom the
New York Times
has called one of the ten finest singers in this country, and
this man cannot make a living
!” I looked at her a moment and asked, “Does he have my range?”
    Their outrage was hilarious. I went back to my office feeling great. The phone rang, and it was my agent. He said, “Congratulations!”
     I thought, “Wow, good news travels fast,” but I soon realized he was being facetious. He then said, “You’re fired.” “I’m fired?”
     He said, “You set a record.
Candid Camera
is
known
for firing people, but nobody ever got fired on the first day.”
    Evidently, a couple of coaches had already threatened lawsuits, and Allen Funt was very upset with me. I went to see him and
     asked him to look at the footage to see how funny it was, even though we couldn’t show the segment. He did and rehired me.
    I did some good work after that. Once we took over a sightseeing bus in New York, and Joey Faye described the sights of what
     we called the Garage and Warehouse Tour. The bus drove up and down streets filled only with garages and warehouses, and Joey
     would say things like, “Trucks come here every day and load up with supplies that are taken to stores around the city.” The
     camera was on the passengers, who were growing more and more agitated. Suddenly, an English fellow called out, “Where’s the
     Empire State Building?! Where’s the U.N.?” and Joey said, “The Garage and Warehouse Tour is our most popular tour.”
    Another time we took over a New York restaurant called Voisin. Every time someone would take a sip of water, I would rush
     over and fill their glass. If there were any crumbs on the table, I would swoop in and sweep them off. Then I’d go back and
     listen with my headset to their comments, which began with, “Boy, they have some service here,” and then changed to, “This
     is starting to get on my nerves.” Ironically, when we announced we were from
Candid Camera
, no one would sign a release, because at every table we had miked, people were with someone they weren’t supposed to be with.
    After a short time Allen asked me to go out to Kennedy Airport and put up a fake men’s room door. I told him I didn’t think
     it would lead to comedy when people came off a plane wanting to use a bathroom and then couldn’t. That shoot was a disaster,
     and I was