Don Rickles (as told by his mother, Etta)
Douglas Cooper joins Etta Rickles as she recounts her son's career, triggered by pictures in an album of his work highlights. She tells a version only she and Don could recall, including revelations he would never expose.
The Interview
Etta tells Doug Cooper about her son's extreme shyness as a boy. He had to be prompted to perform his youthful routines. However, he always said that he wanted to be a great actor. After a stint in the army, he entered The American Academy of Dramatic Arts on Long Island, near where the two lived following his father's premature death. After losing his father, Don always asked his mother to go with him to every performance.
Etta set a photo album on the desk, and began to recount Don's career by centering each vignette on one of the Hollywood celebrities who appeared among the pictures. Don's early favorite was Milton Berle. He loved television. Cooper asks how he became an insult comic, and Etta tells how he used to entertain army men. They'd heckle him, and he'd hone his skills, heckling back.
Etta shows an autographed picture of Clarke Gable and explains how Don got his start in the movies with Run Silent, Run Deep. She tells short remembrances about Don's work with Bob Newhart, Carroll O'Connor, and his big break on television with Dean Martin.
She relates how it took a personal call from Johnny Carson to get him to do that show, and about Mike Douglas, Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan. She peppers the conversation with recollections of their friendship with Frank Sinatra.
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The Douglas P. Cooper Distinguished Contemporaries Collection (1967-1974) contains rare interviews with influential writers, statesmen, artists, songwriters, journalists and others who have left their mark on our culture.
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