Around 1977, give or take a year, Len Wein was living in New York but visiting Los Angeles with increasing frequency. We both knew it was only a matter of time before he rearranged his East Coast life so he could move out here and start a West Coast one. When he was in town, I played host to him and I'd say things like, "Hurry up and move out here so I can stop playing host to you."
Before one trip, he told me he wanted to go see a TV show being taped or filmed. At the time, I knew a lot of people who worked on comedy shows then in production so I said, perhaps showing off a bit, "Name any sitcom or variety show you want to go see and I'll get us in." Even as I spoke those words, I realized I should have added, "Except M*A*S*H" because M*A*S*H filmed without a live audience and its soundstage was not all that welcoming to visitors.
I was one syllable into adding the "Except M*A*S*H" when Len said, "M*A*S*H!" I asked him to pick something else. He said, "You said to name any show I wanted and I want to go see M*A*S*H." He was not going to change his mind.
So I called someone I knew at Twentieth-Century Fox Studios and she arranged to take four of us — Len, me and two of our friends — to the set and leave us there. We stood near the cameras and watched about an hour of shooting — mostly Hawkeye arguing with Colonel Potter while Radar O'Reilly ducked in and out. Len was a bit disappointed that the whole cast wasn't around but I told him, "I said I'd get us on the set of M*A*S*H. I didn't promise Loretta Swit or Jamie Farr would be here." The four of us observed until the crew broke for lunch, at which time our plan was to dine in the studio commissary and then depart.
Photo by Greg Koudoulian
I haven't dined on that lot for many years so I don't know if it's still like this but the Fox commissary then was split into two parts. On the left was the fancy dining room where smartly-dressed serving folks took your order. I wasn't the only one who found the place stuffy and pretentious and a good reason to drive the four blocks to Factor's Delicatessen down on Pico. If you weren't starring in a series shot on the Fox lot, you could wait an hour for your cheeseburger and it would come with toppings you didn't want.
That's how it was on the left side of the building. On the right was a cafeteria-style section with much better food and, since it was self-service, better service. This was where the stage crew and lesser players lunched. I decided that was where we belonged.
Len and I argued…a little. In all the time I knew him, we almost never argued and never for very long. This may have been the longest one and it only lasted about two minutes. We settled it by arriving at what I now call a Republican Compromise, which means that one side gets everything it wants. In this case, it was me and Len was not happy about it.
There's a Yiddish expression, "Hakn a tshaynik," which English-speaking folks have corrupted into "hocking the chainik." It has many definitions but the relevant one here is to keep talking and talking about something that is not going to change. We were in line at the cafeteria and Len was still carrying on about how we should be on the sit-down, order-from-a-menu side.
Our party had four people and four trays. Our two friends had the first two trays, then came my tray and then Len's tray. As we waited for line to move, Len was saying — and loudly so others around us heard — "If we were eating on the other side, we'd probably see some movie stars. The movie stars never eat on this side." And as he said that, he was facing me so he didn't see who was right behind him, sliding the next tray along the line. It was Gene Wilder.
Mr. Wilder was on the lot shooting a film called The World's Greatest Lover and this was not long after Young Frankenstein and Silver Streak. He might not have been the biggest movie star in the business but you weren't likely to encounter a bigger one on either side of the Fox Commissary.
Try and imagine my point of view. I'm looking at Len and he's going on and on, "hocking the chainik" as it were, about how you'd never find any self-respectable movie star in this silly cafeteria line. And over his shoulder, I can see Gene Wilder smirking and trying to not laugh out loud. Our eyes connected and I could tell he was truly enjoying the moment. Then with the expert timing of a comic master, he signaled me with his eyes that it was time for the big reveal.
I pointed to a dish of cooked carrots and asked Len, "Would you ask the man behind you to pass that to me?" Len asked Gene Wilder to pass the carrots, Gene Wilder passed them to Len and then Len passed them to me. And then Leonard Norman Wein did what may well have been the greatest double-take ever performed in or around any motion picture studio in Hollywood. Even Jimmy Finlayson in his prime never topped this one.
Don't remember Jimmy Finlayson? He's the guy at left in this photo…
Nobody could do a double-take like Jimmy Finlayson. Nobody until Len Wein noticed Gene Wilder standing 12" from him, that is.
And Len began to laugh. He laughed and he laughed and oh, how he laughed. When I heard Len had died, I asked myself what were my favorite memories of Len? And that was the first one that came to mind: Len doubling over in laughter at what had happened, even though the joke was kind of on him. It was like a gift…and one of those that keeps on giving because for the next year or so, you could make Len fall over laughing by whispering, "Don't look now but Gene Wilder is right behind you."
That day in the cafeteria, we had a very nice, albeit short conversation with Mr. Wilder. All I remember him saying to Len is, "Your reaction did not disappoint me."
That was the first memory of Len that came to mind yesterday when I heard the news. I have others and I'll be sharing them here.