Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from iHeart Radio. It's summer, and that means
Speaker 1: it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
Speaker 1: the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
Speaker 1: our summer staff picks series first up as Engineer Frank Imperial.
Speaker 2: Thanks Alec, it didn't take long for me to remember
Speaker 2: one of my very favorite episodes. Mary Lou Henner is
Speaker 2: an actress and author, Broadway star and Golden Globe winner,
Speaker 2: but she can also remember every detail of her life
Speaker 2: since childhood, down to what she did, what she wore,
Speaker 2: and even what the weather was on any given day
Speaker 2: in her history. There are less than one hundred people
Speaker 2: in the world with this incredible type of memory, and
Speaker 2: here's Alex's twenty twenty one conversation with one of them.
Speaker 1: People have different definitions of what makes a star. Is
Speaker 1: it raw talent, beauty or is it simply an X factor,
Speaker 1: a certain ineffable quality. Whatever it is, Mary Lou Henner
Speaker 1: has it, and she has it in spades. Singer, dancer, actor,
Speaker 1: and wellness expert, Henner is a multi talented performer who
Speaker 1: is also simply a joy to be around. She's like
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree and lights up every room she's in.
Speaker 1: She's starred in over a dozen films, seven Broadway shows,
Speaker 1: and two smash hit sitcoms. She played Ava Evans Newton
Speaker 1: on Evening Shade alongside Burt Reynolds, and perhaps most notably,
Speaker 1: Elaine Nardo on Taxi, a role that earned her five
Speaker 1: Golden Globe nominations. Mary Lou Henner has also a New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author and recently staged a one woman
Speaker 1: autobiographical show. It covered everything from growing up in a
Speaker 1: large family in Chicago to her preternatural mnemonic skills. Henna
Speaker 1: is one of about sixty people in the world who
Speaker 1: can recall nearly every detail of her life, down to
Speaker 1: the exact day and date.
Speaker 3: It's so funny because you know, I worked with Trump
Speaker 3: twice on Celebrity Apprentice, but he used to start the
Speaker 3: reboard room, like Mary Lou. If I took you to Vegas,
Speaker 3: could you cheap for me? Could you count the cards?
Speaker 3: Could you let's go to Vegas.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people assume that this skill you have.
Speaker 3: It's not a skill, but it's yeah, it's just there.
Speaker 3: It's weird.
Speaker 1: What do you call it.
Speaker 3: I call it a gift. The people sometimes call it
Speaker 3: a condition. It's not, and that's why they changed the name.
Speaker 3: They used to call it hyper tygnesia, but then they
Speaker 3: thought that that was like too weird a name, which
Speaker 3: it really is. But it's not that they don't call
Speaker 3: it that anymore. It's h Sam highly superior autobiographical memory.
Speaker 3: H SAM. And it's funny you should mention that and Michelle,
Speaker 3: because I do a song about it in my show
Speaker 3: that my brother wrote the lyrics to. So I'm going
Speaker 3: to is a song called wait, don't tell me No, No,
Speaker 3: you know what it's called. It's you know, the Peggy
Speaker 3: Lee song because I'm a woman. You know that song? Okay,
Speaker 3: So I thought, hmmm, because I have h SAM, so
Speaker 3: this is what we decided. I'll just do the first
Speaker 3: one Bucks County. It was yeah, I was like this
Speaker 3: because I excuse me, mister. It was a very successful
Speaker 3: number and a very successful run, a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: They said it was the best show they've done there
Speaker 3: in seven years.
Speaker 1: Well let me ask you this. You wrote a biography
Speaker 1: back in ninety four. You've written ten books, I believe,
Speaker 1: including that book. But when you do a one woman show.
Speaker 1: Where do you start?
Speaker 3: Well, you need an opening number that sort of grabs
Speaker 3: people and sort of sets up the tone. And so
Speaker 3: I I wanted everything to sort of connect to something
Speaker 3: in my life. And I was watching television and do
Speaker 3: you know the Cold Porter movie, not Night and Day,
Speaker 3: the other one that he did anyway, So all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I'm flicking through channels and there it is,
Speaker 3: and it's Elvis Costello singing Let's Misbehave, And I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: that's the closing credits to Johnny Dangerously. I'm going to
Speaker 3: sing that song as my opener and then tell a
Speaker 3: story about Johnny Dangerously, but then say everything is connected.
Speaker 3: And then I go into the song about my memory
Speaker 3: because I wanted to set that up right away because
Speaker 3: I throw dates around a lot. And then I talk
Speaker 3: about my childhood, which was so unusual, so you know,
Speaker 3: and I do a little whole tribute to growing up
Speaker 3: in a dancing school.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, what's funny. When I think of you, I
Speaker 1: think of many things. You know, when you do the
Speaker 1: show Taxi. You're someone who is part of that elite
Speaker 1: group of people that I know who were on a
Speaker 1: hit TV show back when tens of millions of people
Speaker 1: were watching TV, but such a remarkable group of people,
Speaker 1: all of whom went on to have these, you know,
Speaker 1: really heavy duty careers and everything and movies and TV
Speaker 1: and theater and so forth. And how did you get
Speaker 1: that job?
Speaker 3: Okay, this is a good story. I believe that the
Speaker 3: key to your life is how well you deal with
Speaker 3: Plan B, because so many Plan B things you plan
Speaker 3: for Plan A, and you think this is how it's
Speaker 3: going to work out, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: forget it. I had been flown out to Los Angeles
Speaker 3: to do a screen test for a movie called Blood Brothers.
Speaker 3: I auditioned for Robert Mulligan, the guy I was testing opposite.
Speaker 3: He didn't get the job, but they kept me around
Speaker 3: because they had to find the guy. And then they
Speaker 3: found him, and it was Richard Gear, whom I knew
Speaker 3: through the Grease family because when I my first day
Speaker 3: in show business professionally, I was in the first National
Speaker 3: Company of Greece and I walked into that first rehearsal
Speaker 3: and it was Jeff Conaway playing Danny Zuko, Jerry Zach's
Speaker 3: playing Kinicki, Michael Lembeck playing Sonny, Judy k playing Rizzo,
Speaker 3: Johnny Travolta playing Duty, and Richard gear rehearsing for the
Speaker 3: London Company to play Danny Zuko. Anyway, so Richard and
Speaker 3: I crosspaths again because we ended up getting cast in
Speaker 3: Blood Brothers. So I came out to Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: then I ended up staying because I had a contract
Speaker 3: with CBS at the time, and they offered me money
Speaker 3: every month to stay away from the other networks while
Speaker 3: they found something for me, holding money, holding deal. I
Speaker 3: had a holding deal for a few years. Now, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, they're starting to audition for Taxi and
Speaker 3: Joel Thurm he really liked me. They wanted a thirty
Speaker 3: five year old Italian New Yorker because they wanted her
Speaker 3: to have like a sixteen seventeen, eighteen year old daughter,
Speaker 3: and because unmarried woman and goodbye girl those were all
Speaker 3: out then, so they liked the mother daughter dynamic. But
Speaker 3: Joel said, I'm telling you, this is the girl. I
Speaker 3: was twenty five. He said, this is the girl because
Speaker 3: she can hold her own with somebody like a Judd Hirsch.
Speaker 3: She's one of the guys. But you'd believe her having
Speaker 3: art aspirations. And I'm telling you, this is the girl.
Speaker 3: So he kept bringing me back with all these older actresses.
Speaker 3: But in the meantime, my mom was dying in the
Speaker 3: hospital in Chicago, so I would literally fly back and
Speaker 3: forth and back and forth and back and forth. So
Speaker 3: what happened was they really liked me, and at that point,
Speaker 3: paper Chase was picked up for a season because Taxi
Speaker 3: didn't have to do a pilot, so paper Chase was
Speaker 3: picked up for a season and they said, okay, she
Speaker 3: tested higher than even John Houseman, we have to give
Speaker 3: her a contract. And my agent said, well, there's this
Speaker 3: other show, Taxi that you know, so we have to see.
Speaker 3: So my agents were able to play one against the other.
Speaker 3: And I really wanted to do Taxi because the idea
Speaker 3: of doing a sitcom was more appealing to me because
Speaker 3: it's like a stage play, you know. So Taxi said, well,
Speaker 3: she's too young. We see this teenage girl with a daughter,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah. And they said, look, you're
Speaker 3: going to lose her to pay per Chase if you
Speaker 3: don't do it. And so they said, okay, we'll do it.
Speaker 3: She's Elaine. We'll give her two little kids. So that's
Speaker 3: what they did so.
Speaker 1: How it was Housman pay Per Chase and what was
Speaker 1: his name, Timothy.
Speaker 3: Something, Timothy Bottoms. No, he didn't do the TV show.
Speaker 1: Tim Bottoms did the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was a good movie with Lindsay Wagner
Speaker 3: and everything. John Houseman was a real character. At the
Speaker 3: rap party for the pilot, he tried to French kiss me.
Speaker 3: I mean he was like one of those guys.
Speaker 1: Wow, well you can actually be canceled now I know.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I've got that. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: never had like creepy.
Speaker 1: Who probably deserved to be canceled at some point.
Speaker 3: In Actually, I was very protective of myself. I've been
Speaker 3: the kind of girl that I think most whatever, I
Speaker 3: don't want to say, Well, you know, I had brothers,
Speaker 3: so I knew men or pigs, so I was like
Speaker 3: always on the defense. I knew I was paying attention.
Speaker 1: Some of them are some of them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that, because in that casting holding
Speaker 1: deal I went out to l A. I told the
Speaker 1: story before I think, but I'm there and Chris Guest's mother,
Speaker 1: Jean Guest, who are worshiped Gene Guests, was in charge
Speaker 1: of casting. Incredible loveliest woman in show She was one
Speaker 1: of the loveliest women in show business. And if she
Speaker 1: really believed in you, she like hung in there with you.
Speaker 1: She brings me into a meeting and they put me
Speaker 1: on a holding deal because I did a pilot for
Speaker 1: them that fizzled, and they said, we're going to sign
Speaker 1: to this holding deal because we really believe in you.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep throwing it against the wall until
Speaker 1: something sticks. And then he says, we want you to
Speaker 1: be the next Bill Dixby. I was like, wow, that
Speaker 1: sounds great.
Speaker 3: Did you ever honor the deal? Did you ever have
Speaker 3: to or did you get something else?
Speaker 1: And the pilot and then I did a tea movie
Speaker 1: for them. I did a couple of things for them.
Speaker 1: This is obviously a billion years ago, in the eighties
Speaker 1: and the early eighties.
Speaker 3: The one with Stephanie Zimblist.
Speaker 1: You were so good in that that was NBC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could tell you the day we met and
Speaker 3: how we met. What was it. It was May May
Speaker 3: the twenty second of nineteen eighty five. It was a Wednesday,
Speaker 3: and this is how we met. I knew Tuck, your roommate,
Speaker 3: So Tuck and I went till dinner one time, and
Speaker 3: in Venice and right where you guys used to live.
Speaker 3: So I went over to your house. And now we
Speaker 3: are both. I'm in New York doing the junket for Perfect,
Speaker 3: and I'm on a bunch of shows and I'm on
Speaker 3: Live at five with Sue Simmons, remember, yeah, and you're
Speaker 3: And so you and I were both in the room,
Speaker 3: but I didn't see you because I didn't really know you.
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden I could feel you over
Speaker 3: this person over my left shoulder, and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, Susimon says, and coming up next Alec Baldwin
Speaker 3: and later Mary Lou Hannah, and it was like we
Speaker 3: looked at each other and I went, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: It was like, oh my gosh. And you and I
Speaker 3: actually had lunch the day of the big Perfect opening
Speaker 3: and you were one hundred days sober that day, and
Speaker 3: you showed me your coin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have thirty six years now and Fabril have
Speaker 1: thirty seven years. The unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: And even last night I wanted to have a drake.
Speaker 1: Last night, I thought, let me just have a gigantic glass.
Speaker 4: What would you do?
Speaker 1: Wine slurpy glass? Of red wine. Tell me good, because
Speaker 1: I have horrible insomnia. I've always had hard me too.
Speaker 1: Me out with these kids, it's horrible. You know.
Speaker 3: I wrote a book called I Refused to Raise a Braath,
Speaker 3: and I wrote it with a brilliant psychoanalyst because I
Speaker 3: had these two kids, and I listened. Every time I
Speaker 3: listened to her, it didn't the kids, it was all good.
Speaker 3: And then when I didn't, it was like, Okay, it's
Speaker 3: going to bite me on the ass at some point.
Speaker 3: But it's so funny because having so many.
Speaker 1: I grew up with six.
Speaker 3: You grew up with six. We had the opposite of
Speaker 3: you guys, because it was two boys and four girls,
Speaker 3: which is different, and third third I was third. We
Speaker 3: came up with this concept, the concept of hamper, you know,
Speaker 3: because our houses were like a big hamper. So now
Speaker 3: to this day, you could have a beautiful silk blouse,
Speaker 3: but it's got a stain, so you put a pin
Speaker 3: over it. That's hamper. You know, your glasses are broken,
Speaker 3: so you put a pin in it. That's hamper.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: You do you put a paper clip a paper clip,
Speaker 3: your uniform had staples in it, or tape or something.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like I remember growing up, our phone
Speaker 3: court was always like so you had to like hold it.
Speaker 1: If you read if you read my memoir, it opens
Speaker 1: up with how my mother's bedroom was filled with plastic
Speaker 1: pails filled with laundry. It was laundry. He bedroom. Her
Speaker 1: bedroom was a hand She had an ironing board at
Speaker 1: the foot of her bed and an iron and she
Speaker 1: had like these plastic hampers, right, these collapsible plastic things
Speaker 1: that were just and they were like falling off of
Speaker 1: each other. I said, if you if you came to
Speaker 1: my house and you didn't know better, you thought this
Speaker 1: was in an illegal laundry. Someone was running out of
Speaker 1: their house.
Speaker 3: So my mother used to do her laun tree on Tuesdays.
Speaker 3: There was seventeen loads, you know, and she always had
Speaker 3: like seventeen loads from all of us because when you
Speaker 3: think about it, a house full of kids like that.
Speaker 3: The beginning of the pandemic, I was home. My boys
Speaker 3: were here, my brother has two children, my husband, we
Speaker 3: were here. I never did more cooking and cleaning and
Speaker 3: laundry and scrubbing grout in my life because I'm very
Speaker 3: you know, I like to be very organized. But we
Speaker 3: had a rule that everybody.
Speaker 1: My wife hates it. She's really angry with me that
Speaker 1: you're so meticulous that I'm so crushed by an OCD
Speaker 1: at that level with my kids, like I'm always cleaning
Speaker 1: in my household, and long with my wife was like,
Speaker 1: this is going to kill you.
Speaker 3: Well, with kids, you got to let it go. I mean,
Speaker 3: because I was always and I was tested for OCD
Speaker 3: because that was part of the whole memory thing. They
Speaker 3: take blood, they do all kinds of tests for you.
Speaker 3: I don't have OCD. I call my oco obsessive compulsive
Speaker 3: order because one kid in the family had to have
Speaker 3: it with six kids, and my bedroom was off the
Speaker 3: kitchen and had no door, so people could be on
Speaker 3: the phone or at the kitchen table and look in
Speaker 3: at a little girl sleeping, and I didn't care. I
Speaker 3: was my oldest sister shared it with me, than my
Speaker 3: younger sister, than my brother. I mean, but always my
Speaker 3: room had no door. So I think that's how I
Speaker 3: ended up in show business.
Speaker 1: I think the same. I'll tell my wife, I go,
Speaker 1: don't you want to let's go to the opposite here.
Speaker 1: Don't you want to commend me for how neat I am?
Speaker 1: But would you rather have a husband who didn't want
Speaker 1: to clean. Now you have two biological children, two biological children,
Speaker 1: and they're how old now?
Speaker 3: They're one is twenty seven, the other one's twenty five
Speaker 3: and a half, and.
Speaker 1: You have them doing what phase of your career? What
Speaker 1: were you working on at the time you decided to
Speaker 1: put the brakes on and have kids.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I had finished, okay, so I finished evening Shade.
Speaker 3: I do tell this in my club act because I
Speaker 3: always say I couldn't talk about the eighties and nineties
Speaker 3: without talking about Burt Reynolds, because I did five projects
Speaker 3: with him and we never had a thing, which is
Speaker 3: probably why we were able to work together so often.
Speaker 3: But I always adored him and he one morning, you know, Rob,
Speaker 3: my second husband, and I were frisky and then I
Speaker 3: go to work and Bert is directing this episode where
Speaker 3: he has me do a stunt where I am running, running, running,
Speaker 3: leaping over like a fence in a football stadium stand
Speaker 3: and I land and then run up to the team
Speaker 3: and he says, do it again, do it again, do
Speaker 3: it again, do it again. So that night I was
Speaker 3: sitting in a restaurant and this is after three and
Speaker 3: a half years I sitting in a restaurant and I
Speaker 3: looked at Rob and I went, the eagle has landed.
Speaker 3: I just got pregnant. He said. What I said, I'm
Speaker 3: telling you. Contact was made, and sure enough I was pregnant.
Speaker 3: So I always tell people Burt Reynolds got me pregnant,
Speaker 3: even though he's not the father of my kids.
Speaker 1: He's the spiritual father.
Speaker 3: The spiritual father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you worked with him, you did Cannibal
Speaker 1: Too with him?
Speaker 3: Well, I first did the man who loved women, and
Speaker 3: we had such a great chemistry the very first day.
Speaker 3: But he called me the night that we met, the
Speaker 3: very night and he said, I want you to come
Speaker 3: down to the Dinner Theater in Jupiter, Florida. I want
Speaker 3: you to do their playing our song, he said, And
Speaker 3: I want you to do Cannonball Run too. But I
Speaker 3: want a rewrite of the script. Do you know anybody,
Speaker 3: any of the guys from Taxi that might be willing
Speaker 3: to take a crack at it. I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: So originally the counterball I've never told this story before.
Speaker 3: The count Ball Run Too script was about the Dom
Speaker 3: and Bert sort of rescue this girl who's hiding out
Speaker 3: in a Santa Terrim and she's an heiress and then
Speaker 3: they rescue her, and then she and Bert end up
Speaker 3: in a thing. And so then I get Harvey Miller,
Speaker 3: who was a taxi writer the job, and he turns
Speaker 3: it into two women, and then Shirley McLean wanted to
Speaker 3: do it. So then of course they put Shirley with
Speaker 3: Burt and I was with Dom, which was fine, but
Speaker 3: it's kind of funny, but I had like one of
Speaker 3: the best experience. That movie was so stupid. But there
Speaker 3: were a couple days where we had like twenty three
Speaker 3: wagon trains in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona, because
Speaker 3: it was one hundred and seventeen degrees. So we started
Speaker 3: hair and makeup was at two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 3: so we could be on the road before four, and
Speaker 3: we pulled the plug at at one. But then everybody
Speaker 3: hung out at the pool at the Arizona Inn. So
Speaker 3: it was Sammy Davis Junior, and Dean Martin, all these
Speaker 3: guys and even Frank for a day. And to be
Speaker 3: with Shirley, whom I had always loved and always idle,
Speaker 3: to play her friend, and then to have her hanging
Speaker 3: out with the rat pack. It was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I was this little girl from Chicago who's watching these
Speaker 3: people at drive ins and stuff. Was like a lot
Speaker 3: of one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I met him. For those people who don't know this,
Speaker 1: and I was not a big devotee of this, but
Speaker 1: I went a few times. It's that Norby Walters, famous
Speaker 1: record executive. Norby Walters had his card game, his legendary
Speaker 1: card game at his apartment Wednesday nights and West Wednesday
Speaker 1: nights in West Hollywood. And you go up to the
Speaker 1: department of his near.
Speaker 3: Holloway, Yeah, Halloway and Losi Anago, Yeah, Losi, on.
Speaker 1: Your way to Barney's Beanery and on your way to
Speaker 1: the Sunset Marquis, and you go to his house. And
Speaker 1: I went there. I went a handful of times. You know,
Speaker 1: Velvida cheese and no alcohol. That was a no alcohol
Speaker 1: and you bought one hundred dollars worth of chips and
Speaker 1: when you were finished, you were done. There was no
Speaker 1: serious gambling. And you went there. And I remember sitting
Speaker 1: there one time and there was Harvey Korman and Tim.
Speaker 3: Oh Tim Conway, Yeah Conway.
Speaker 1: The two of them were there at one time. Kathy
Speaker 1: Lee Crosby would go every now.
Speaker 3: And then Rod Steiger was there a couple of times.
Speaker 1: When you were there. Bert was there when I went
Speaker 1: one time, Oh he was. He seemed like he was
Speaker 1: in the throw of his kind of medicated agony. But
Speaker 1: but then to the right of me one time was
Speaker 1: Don Adams, and Don Adams is in a China white
Speaker 1: jumpsuit and everyone's waiting for the moment to arrive when
Speaker 1: someone's going to just do this and do the Don
Speaker 1: Adams thing, so somebody will puts down two pairs, you know.
Speaker 1: He puts down two pairs, and I put down I
Speaker 1: say I have three kings, and everybody left, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't laugh. Oh, and then finally he smiles and nods
Speaker 1: to me, like, okay, good for you. You saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity and you took it. But he was very serious
Speaker 1: and very really super antiseptic and very He was there
Speaker 1: to play cards. He didn't want to talk about his
Speaker 1: career or chit chatt. He was there to play cards
Speaker 1: with a bunch of schmucks. We work card players were
Speaker 1: eating Valveda and Hershy's kisses and drinking Hawaian punch whatever
Speaker 1: the hell they had there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny, you're bringing up Norby Walters because you
Speaker 3: probably don't remember this, but we were both supposed to
Speaker 3: be there on it was. It was the seventh of
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. Okay, it was a Wednesday at
Speaker 3: June the sixth of two thousand and one, seriously, and
Speaker 3: you called up and said you weren't going to make it.
Speaker 3: He put me on the phone with you, and I said,
Speaker 3: you said, how are you doing blah blah blah, And
Speaker 3: I said something about I just I'm filing for divorce.
Speaker 3: And you said, oh, can I talk to you about divorce?
Speaker 3: I said, you said, let's meet tomorrow. So you and
Speaker 3: I went to Sushi Roku on Third Avenue and you
Speaker 3: were telling me there was all the pitfalls. This was
Speaker 3: two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: What happened was we got together because I was avoiding
Speaker 3: the process servers because everybody said, oh, you have to
Speaker 3: let the woman serve first because otherwise it looks like
Speaker 3: she cheated. Blah blah blah blah blah. And we were
Speaker 3: having a friendly divorce.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We went away that weekend and read about it ourselves
Speaker 3: in the paper. Rob and I were still friends. You know,
Speaker 3: I do things weird, but we're still like really good friends.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we sat at the sushi Roku for like
Speaker 3: two and a half hours and you told me everything
Speaker 3: that was going on and what I should watch out for.
Speaker 1: I know you remind me energy and my feelings for
Speaker 1: you remind me of when I was around Streisand once
Speaker 1: and I said to her, you know, you and I
Speaker 1: would be the greatest divorced couple. You know, we would
Speaker 1: be married, we'd be in love, maybe we'd have a kid.
Speaker 1: Of course, we get divorced. It just has to be
Speaker 1: that way. It shows us. But I come over every Sunday.
Speaker 1: We'd have Chinese food screen exactly. And I feel the
Speaker 1: same way about you. You and I would have made
Speaker 1: great x P.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we think very similarly, and that we have that
Speaker 3: big family kind of thing.
Speaker 1: This is a trite word, and this is a trite idea,
Speaker 1: but not so trite now in the age of the
Speaker 1: pandemic and beyond. And that is positivity. And you have
Speaker 1: always been this like staggeringly positive healthy. What's the secret?
Speaker 3: Well, A couple of things come to mind. I had
Speaker 3: a really great family and we're still super close. My
Speaker 3: parents both died tragically, both of them very young, and
Speaker 3: I think it bonded the family. I did a lot
Speaker 3: of therapy. I got my whole family involved in therapy.
Speaker 3: My therapist would put six speaker boxes up in her
Speaker 3: office at Princeton, New Jersey, and every other Sunday for
Speaker 3: ten years, the siblings would do a group therapy. So
Speaker 3: we've worked out a lot of our stuff. That's number one.
Speaker 3: But I had an extraordinary childhood which was totally unusual,
Speaker 3: with the dancing school in the backyard, beauty shop in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, an uncle who taught art at the Catholic
Speaker 3: grammar school and lived upstairs with his boyfriend Charles, and
Speaker 3: a menagerie of animals. And I just had such an
Speaker 3: unusual way of growing up. And I always had this
Speaker 3: mission to make something of myself and to share. I
Speaker 3: think it's a middle child and me always wanted to, like,
Speaker 3: if I have a good idea, I want to share
Speaker 3: it with everybody. I've never been very proprietary over anything.
Speaker 3: I just always want to share with people. I think
Speaker 3: it comes from being the middle maybe, But I also
Speaker 3: think having my memory has helped, because the memory makes
Speaker 3: you get over things very quickly, because you start to
Speaker 3: see the waves. And also being an actress. You know,
Speaker 3: every bad experience was like, Okay, I'm going to take
Speaker 3: note of this. What can I do better next time?
Speaker 3: How can I figure this out? You know I say
Speaker 3: to people all the time, they go, how do you
Speaker 3: do it? And it's like this, I go, think of
Speaker 3: flaps up and it's like you just close your ears
Speaker 3: to it, flaps up. You say that to my kids
Speaker 3: all the time, you know, smile not and move on.
Speaker 1: So you were married three times, you were married twice,
Speaker 1: and you're married again now third in final, final, And
Speaker 1: so each of these meant the extent you're willing to say,
Speaker 1: what did they represent for you? You seem to be
Speaker 1: such a thoughtful, deliberate aware. You seem like somebody that
Speaker 1: all the lights are on your brain, your mind, your
Speaker 1: soul is like a house shoe pull up to It's
Speaker 1: like some kind of a Richard Neutra, all glass structure
Speaker 1: and all the lights are on. You're always on, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And alert and aware. So when
Speaker 1: you married one, and you married two, when you married three,
Speaker 1: what were you marrying them for?
Speaker 3: Well? First of all, Freddie and I met at a
Speaker 3: screen test, and I didn't know that they added a kiss,
Speaker 3: and I was the sixth girl screen testing opposite him
Speaker 3: for a film called Hammet, and.
Speaker 1: We just did.
Speaker 3: Some people who don't know this is Forrest, Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 3: Frederick Forrest. The Academy Award nominated Freddy Freddy. And so
Speaker 3: he was so different from anybody I knew. He was
Speaker 3: a lot older than I was, but he was so
Speaker 3: different from anybody I ever knew. And I was so
Speaker 3: fascinated by him because his brain was so different and
Speaker 3: he was just I've just never seen anything like a
Speaker 3: totally instinctive, brilliant actor. Brilliant actor and would transform himself
Speaker 3: every part that he's played. He looks completely different. And
Speaker 3: he wanted to marry me a few months after we
Speaker 3: started dating, and I said, no, let's live together. He said,
Speaker 3: no marriage or nothing. I said, okay, well then nothing.
Speaker 3: And then I went to my tenth year high school
Speaker 3: reunion in Chicago and he went to a wedding and
Speaker 3: he called me and we were both feeling very sentimental
Speaker 3: and we said, okay, let's get married. I said okay,
Speaker 3: and then we ended up getting married three weeks later
Speaker 3: in New Orleans and that was it. And then coming
Speaker 3: home from the honeymoon because the actors were on strike.
Speaker 3: I was going back to taxing. I thought, what if
Speaker 3: I just don't. I'm married a total stranger to me,
Speaker 3: you know. It was like crazy. But he was so
Speaker 3: fascinating and so loving and so full of demons that
Speaker 3: if you're not somebody who is exposed to demons a lot,
Speaker 3: you think like, I'll fix it. I'm going to take
Speaker 3: care of it. Twenty eight.
Speaker 1: You're very young. Yeah, everything you do in your twenties
Speaker 1: is a moment. Yeah. No.
Speaker 3: I have three theories of marriage. The first one is
Speaker 3: marriages like making waffles. You throw the first one out, okay.
Speaker 3: The second one is marriage is finding that special certain
Speaker 3: someone you just know you'd love to aggravate the rest
Speaker 3: of your life, because marriage is like, you know, all
Speaker 3: these little, like diggy kind of things. And I said,
Speaker 3: but no, the real theory Saint A. Zuberrie wrote something
Speaker 3: and I added something to it, and that is you'll
Speaker 3: have a happy marriage when you realize marriage isn't two
Speaker 3: people gazing longingly into each other's eyes, but rather looking
Speaker 3: out over the mountain in the same direction, with their
Speaker 3: hands on each other's genitals. That's the part I added.
Speaker 3: That's the part I added because you've got to have heat.
Speaker 1: Oh that wasn't saint than zuber reed?
Speaker 3: No, no, sorry, So you got to have vision and heat.
Speaker 3: So my first marriage was all heat, my second marriage
Speaker 3: was all vision, and finally I have vision and heat in.
Speaker 1: My third marriage. Wow actress Mary Lou Henner. If you
Speaker 1: like hearing about the lives of groundbreaking women in comedy,
Speaker 1: check out my interview with Carol Burnett. Her hit variety
Speaker 1: show ran for more than a decade in the late
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and at the height of her success,
Speaker 1: she had to tread carefully. In that era.
Speaker 3: The only one who really would speak up was Lucy.
Speaker 1: She was very strong.
Speaker 3: But it's not in my nature to take over confront
Speaker 3: or anything.
Speaker 4: You know, if a sketch wasn't working or something, instead
Speaker 4: of like gleaes and or Sid would say, look, guys,
Speaker 4: this stinks.
Speaker 3: Now, come on, you got to fix it.
Speaker 1: But but you know they would do that.
Speaker 4: I would say, I'd call the writers down into the
Speaker 4: rehearsal hall and I'd say, you know, guys, I'm not
Speaker 4: doing this too well. Do you think maybe you could
Speaker 4: help me out with a different line here or there?
Speaker 4: Because you know, otherwise I would have.
Speaker 1: Been a bit hear more of my conversation with Carol
Speaker 1: Burnett in our archives that Here's Thething dot org. After
Speaker 1: the Break, Mary Lou Henner talks about how a change
Speaker 1: she made and her approach to auditioning completely opened up
Speaker 1: her career. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. Mary lou Henner is passionate about encouraging people
Speaker 1: to take charge of their happiness and well being. She's
Speaker 1: written several best selling books on living a healthy lifestyle,
Speaker 1: often sharing lessons that changed her own life.
Speaker 3: What happened was, I went with Jerry Katzman, who's the
Speaker 3: head of William Morse at the time. He said, you
Speaker 3: have to write a book. I'm hooking you up with
Speaker 3: Judith Reagan. So Judith and I met at lunch and
Speaker 3: we hung out together all day and everything. I had
Speaker 3: a book deal, so I started working on my autobiography.
Speaker 3: She is a character, and when she started her own imprint,
Speaker 3: she said to me, you have to write a health
Speaker 3: book because you're in such good shape of this. You
Speaker 3: changed so much since blah blah blah. Every time I
Speaker 3: have anything wrong with me, my kids, I call you,
Speaker 3: and you always seem to know the answer. So I
Speaker 3: was doing the show Chicago on Broadway, and one of
Speaker 3: the guys said, oh, why don't you give us like
Speaker 3: some lectures. I was like okay. So in between shows,
Speaker 3: I would do these seminars and I'd have a little,
Speaker 3: you know, like tape recorder, and I'd be, you know,
Speaker 3: talking to them, and then I'd be putting on my
Speaker 3: eyelashes like the evils of dairy products, you know, as
Speaker 3: I'm putting on my eyelashes to go do roxy. And
Speaker 3: so then I worked with some who was like a
Speaker 3: real crafts person in terms of like books, and I
Speaker 3: was so revved up from all the fossy and my
Speaker 3: boys were very little, so I could like give them
Speaker 3: a bath, go to the theater, be revved up, go
Speaker 3: to an office and work on the book. And a
Speaker 3: few weeks after the show ended, the book came out
Speaker 3: and it went on the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 3: And I've sold over a million copies of that first
Speaker 3: health book. But then got a contract to keep going
Speaker 3: and going and going. So then I've done ton what's.
Speaker 1: Your biggest health concern? You know, we're growing up in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, everybody was always saying, you know, don't smoke,
Speaker 1: and then when I went through my drug phase, people
Speaker 1: said you got to get sober and stop taking all
Speaker 1: these drugs and drinking, which I've had a very relatively
Speaker 1: brief but white hot period of that for a couple
Speaker 1: of years in the eighties when I was very young,
Speaker 1: and then as I've gotten older. You know, the thing
Speaker 1: that shocks me, that is the utter poison in my
Speaker 1: life is sugar. Because I was pre diabetic and now
Speaker 1: I'm full diabetic. Has been so gotten married for me?
Speaker 1: For me, Yeah, what's your health concerns now? Like, what
Speaker 1: do you say to yourself? I never eat. I sometimes
Speaker 1: eat every now and then I cheat and I allow
Speaker 1: myself to eat. When you want to treat yourself to
Speaker 1: something that you know isn't the best possible thing for you,
Speaker 1: is it something sweet? Is something? No? No?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: If I'm a savory person, no, I would say probably
Speaker 3: sushi is like my own, my last not so guilty pleasure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I haven't had dairy since August fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: It was a Wednesday I gave up dairy and have
Speaker 3: never had dairy since. And it changed my life. So
Speaker 3: I'm always trying to get people off of deser.
Speaker 1: What was the impact? Oh, the sinuses and congestion you here, but.
Speaker 3: Well that's a lot, but you know, through sore throats
Speaker 3: and stomach aches all the time. When I lived in
Speaker 3: New York, I'd live near zay Bars, and I would
Speaker 3: go pick up cheese ends, you know at zay bars
Speaker 3: where they'd cut the cheese a certain way and then
Speaker 3: they have the little the little rind and stuff. And
Speaker 3: I'd buy these little cheese bags, cheese ends bags on
Speaker 3: my way to unemployment and wondered, why am I not
Speaker 3: working when I'm fat, constabated and have been impulsed, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean the whole stomach changed after I gave up dairy.
Speaker 1: I used to be an ice cream addict. I was
Speaker 1: like Brando. Yeah, and they say that brand would sit
Speaker 1: with like a half a gallon of ice cream and
Speaker 1: watch TV and you have like a big jug of
Speaker 1: ice cream and lay in his bed and just with
Speaker 1: a spoon and eat like a half a gallon of
Speaker 1: ice cream. That wasn't that that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But Darry is always the first thing I talk
Speaker 3: to people about. Always. That's been on my that's my
Speaker 3: soapbox speech. Immediately with people especially, I can read people's
Speaker 3: faces and tell that they're like allergic to it or
Speaker 3: something like that, or they've had trouble. But the big
Speaker 3: killer right now, I think for everybody is the whole
Speaker 3: stress management people. Really, you know, I say three things.
Speaker 3: Learn to love the food that loves you. And we
Speaker 3: know what doesn't love us. Learn to love the food
Speaker 3: that loves you. It's very obviously what does Dairy did
Speaker 3: not love me, Meat did not love me. Sugar does
Speaker 3: not love meat, nor does it love you obviously, So
Speaker 3: I say, learn to love the food that loves you.
Speaker 3: I say motion is the lotion, because we've got to move.
Speaker 3: You know, your cap stretches, your dogs, you walk your dogs.
Speaker 3: Your hamster's got a wheel with this beautiful human animal.
Speaker 3: You've got to walk, you got to do. You gotta move, move, move,
Speaker 3: Motion is the lotion. And then I also say, you
Speaker 3: better fall in love with your stress or it's going
Speaker 3: to kill you. Because if I give I go all
Speaker 3: over the country.
Speaker 1: Stress, you better I can't fall in love with my stress.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean it's but no, you have to,
Speaker 3: I always say, because I give speeches all over the country.
Speaker 3: I'm always like asked to give you know, could go
Speaker 3: to different things, seminars and stuff. And I always say,
Speaker 3: if every one of you in this audience wrote down
Speaker 3: your problems on a piece of paper and I collected
Speaker 3: them and I started reading them out, and you had
Speaker 3: to pick some problems that are on a list, you'd
Speaker 3: all take back your own because you know the beast,
Speaker 3: you know how to handle it. You just might not
Speaker 3: be doing it well.
Speaker 1: I always tell people whenever i'm especially when i'm speaking
Speaker 1: to people in this profession. Number One, find out how
Speaker 1: much you love acting itself, because you're going to get
Speaker 1: to do so little of it. Oh, the life of
Speaker 1: the actor is all this other bullshit. You know, the
Speaker 1: rest of the year and you're in front of a camera,
Speaker 1: what forty five minutes a day, an hour a day.
Speaker 1: The rest is sitting in your room. You do the show,
Speaker 1: it's two hours a night. If you're inclined to do theater,
Speaker 1: and I said, you don't need to find that how
Speaker 1: much you love it. And number two, if you're in
Speaker 1: get into it. Don't do what I did, which is
Speaker 1: to be like fuck la and fuck you, and I
Speaker 1: think you're all full of shit. And you know, this
Speaker 1: whole thing is just this business is full of shit.
Speaker 1: Be a part of it. Join the academy, go to
Speaker 1: the screening, be a part of the business, and don't
Speaker 1: be cynical about it. And if not, then get out.
Speaker 1: Get out.
Speaker 3: I always say, if something, do you or don't do it.
Speaker 3: If someone can talk you out of it, let it,
Speaker 3: because otherwise you have to really really want to do it.
Speaker 3: And also I always say to people, look fall in
Speaker 3: love with auditioning because it might be the only ten
Speaker 3: minutes you have that job. So if you do it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, then it's like your job
Speaker 3: for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And maybe you remember all these people from the TV
Speaker 1: star shelf that we always talk about. Gregory Harrison, who
Speaker 1: did an interview wants to change My life Gregory Harrison.
Speaker 3: I mean, we did Jack Nicholson and Margaret parts in
Speaker 3: Cardinal Knowledge at the Pasadena Playhouse. We played those parts,
Speaker 3: so we saw each other naked in a shower. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh my.
Speaker 1: God, I'm sure you both look pretty good. We do,
Speaker 1: We still do. I he did an interview once years ago,
Speaker 1: was a million years ago, like TV Guide or some
Speaker 1: stupid thing, and he did an interview where he said, basically,
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing. He was like, you know, his whole energy changed,
Speaker 1: his whole career changed when he walked into auditions and
Speaker 1: his attitude was like, how can I help you? Like
Speaker 1: you called me here right. I didn't put a gun
Speaker 1: to your head and make you, but it comes audition
Speaker 1: me for this part. I have something you want? Yes,
Speaker 1: you're looking for something and whether and once he stopped
Speaker 1: giving the energy of like oh and being fawning and obsequious,
Speaker 1: then everything changed.
Speaker 3: It's so funny you're saying this because I tell a
Speaker 3: story in my show again about how I auditioned for
Speaker 3: forty commercials before I got one and the reason I
Speaker 3: finally got one, and then I booked seventy two and
Speaker 3: two and a half years. It was quite crazy. I
Speaker 3: was doing commercials constantly, but it took me forty auditions
Speaker 3: to get my first one. Because on the thirty ninth
Speaker 3: a friend of mine called me and it was for
Speaker 3: mister Coffee. I still remember the jingle and I had
Speaker 3: to sing it. I was so wrong for the part,
Speaker 3: but he called me in and he called me that
Speaker 3: night and he said he knew I was having trouble
Speaker 3: with auditions, and he said, are you this way the
Speaker 3: way you were today with me in your auditions? And
Speaker 3: I went, oh, my gosh, no, are you kidding. I
Speaker 3: was just so myself because you were there. He said,
Speaker 3: we almost changed the whole concept of the commercial because
Speaker 3: you were so original. He said, that's what you have
Speaker 3: to do every time you go into an audition. Stop
Speaker 3: giving people what you think they want. Just go in
Speaker 3: there and it's going to hit. It's going to hit.
Speaker 3: And he was right. And then I booked one right
Speaker 3: after the other and I became this body parts model
Speaker 3: and it was just like crazy that I did a
Speaker 3: lot of different parts of the body.
Speaker 1: I was, which parts of the body did you do?
Speaker 1: Which party? This is in my show? I said.
Speaker 3: I did four playtext Brad commercials. You know it's got
Speaker 3: sash here and seamless support to play text panties.
Speaker 1: You were wearing a bra, you were a bra model.
Speaker 3: I was a bra model, but sometimes I had like
Speaker 3: a shirt on, you know, and you could see certain things.
Speaker 3: But it was just like I'm like, well exactly. And
Speaker 3: then I did two play text panties commercials or all
Speaker 3: you saw was my butts and they were cracked.
Speaker 1: But these were separate commercials, separate. The bra and the
Speaker 1: panty were two. He was a separate shoots because if
Speaker 1: I was the producer, that's what I would have said, said,
Speaker 1: and we need to shoot these separately, and we need
Speaker 1: to shoot them over five days four and I did
Speaker 1: do yes.
Speaker 3: And then I said, but all you see is my button,
Speaker 3: my crotch, walking my dog, walking around Lincoln Center getting
Speaker 3: on a bus. Well, the polaroids when you walk into
Speaker 3: the audition for a panties commercial, it's amazing because you
Speaker 3: see all these polaroids of just people's crotches and butts
Speaker 3: and side views and everything else. And then I was
Speaker 3: even the Fruit of the Loom pantyhose girl inside of
Speaker 3: a giant apple with my legs sticking out. And so
Speaker 3: I did like different carts. But then I also did
Speaker 3: like I did an exce on Bicentennial Minute where I
Speaker 3: played Annie Sullivan. I got a Cleo nomination for that.
Speaker 3: And I did everything from Reese's peanut butter to gleam toothpaste,
Speaker 3: so many different times. I was the Ponderosa Steakhouse girl,
Speaker 3: the samson I luggage girl. So I just kept doing
Speaker 3: and doing it. And doing it because every time and
Speaker 3: I learned this the heart, I mean, I learned the
Speaker 3: hard way. You walk in and you'd bring something to it,
Speaker 3: like Gregory says, how can I help you? Let me
Speaker 3: show you something like I would do with it.
Speaker 1: But what did you study at you Chicago? You studied theater.
Speaker 3: No, they had a theater department, but they had no
Speaker 3: theater degree.
Speaker 1: So even though I was kind of course, did you
Speaker 1: take so? I?
Speaker 3: No, I was a political science major and so and
Speaker 3: the first two years is mostly the core curriculum.
Speaker 1: So where did you learn to sing and dance? Well?
Speaker 3: I grew up in the dancing studio, and I always
Speaker 3: sang because my two older sisters were in choir and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. So I'd go to their practices and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it was just something I always wanted, you know.
Speaker 3: I was on stage at two and a half at
Speaker 3: a father doma.
Speaker 1: In Chicago, like a pinnacle for you? Is that a
Speaker 1: big dream? Country?
Speaker 3: That was a big gream. They called me on March
Speaker 3: the four, nineteen ninety seven, Walter, whom I knew from
Speaker 3: the Greece family, and they called me and they said
Speaker 3: Annie Ranking is leaving Chicago. And she thinks she'd be
Speaker 3: a good replacement. What kind of dance shape are you in?
Speaker 3: And I said, ooh, I haven't had my legs up
Speaker 3: over my head except for childbirth or a good weekend
Speaker 3: for about five years, so I better get my ass
Speaker 3: back into class. So I went to class for ten
Speaker 3: days and then I went to audition and then he
Speaker 3: said go home, work on the fosse, and I did.
Speaker 3: And I went back and there were like twenty seven
Speaker 3: potential actors in the room and they kept eliminating, eliminating
Speaker 3: until they told me I had the job. So I
Speaker 3: did four hundred and eight performance, four hundred and eight
Speaker 3: performance on Broadway Broadway, but I also did Vegas because
Speaker 3: they asked me to come to Vegas and I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want to go to Vegas. And then my
Speaker 3: agent said, well, let's have some fun with your quote.
Speaker 3: And then he called me back. He said, they made
Speaker 3: you an offer you can't refuse. You're going to Vegas.
Speaker 3: It was like okay, So I went to Vegas. But
Speaker 3: my favorite Vegas story because people always said, what's the
Speaker 3: difference between Broadway and Vegas? Although it's not this anymore,
Speaker 3: I'd say, oh yeah, Cup holders, because back then you
Speaker 3: could this was ninety nine and two thousand you couldn't.
Speaker 3: You could drink in Vegas, but you couldn't do it
Speaker 3: on Broadway. So I'd been there two weeks and they
Speaker 3: said we love you here. I said, really, you've the
Speaker 3: show and I was like all excited. He said, no,
Speaker 3: I haven't seen the show yet, but your crowd drinks
Speaker 3: a lot more Belvedere than most people.
Speaker 1: Okay, we love Velvitere. Yeah, I'll never forget. Someone was
Speaker 1: connected to like one of these big phizzy musicals and
Speaker 1: they were doing like some kind of a cast replacement
Speaker 1: and they wanted all this stunt casting with somebody famous.
Speaker 1: And this actress walks into audition for the lead role.
Speaker 1: She's this famous actress, and she comes in and she
Speaker 1: does her audition and she leaves and everyone's just kind
Speaker 1: of standing there slack joe. After she leaves, and the
Speaker 1: director turns over and goes, she can't sing, she can't dance,
Speaker 1: she can't act. She's a star, you know, like we're
Speaker 1: gonna hire her even though she has She gets a
Speaker 1: D or an F in all three categories based on
Speaker 1: what they saw there in that room that day.
Speaker 3: It's so funny because there's all these stories that you
Speaker 3: know that sort of shape your life, like that one,
Speaker 3: you know, and you just write, you hear it and
Speaker 3: you understand it and you know it right away. When
Speaker 3: I was first on Taxi is somebody at ABC. He goes,
Speaker 3: I've got a movie for you, Mary Lou. I said, really,
Speaker 3: what is it? And he said Sizzle? I said, what's
Speaker 3: it about? He said, who cares sizzle? So Johnny and
Speaker 3: I always used to say we would like jokers, like
Speaker 3: people were like you, who cares sizzle?
Speaker 1: You know, it's just that thing that you do. New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling author Mary Lou Henner. If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we return, Mary Lou Henner talks
Speaker 1: about finding lasting love the third time around. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Mary Lou Henner
Speaker 1: recently developed and performed a one woman autobiographical Shoe. It's
Speaker 1: filled with songs and stories from her remarkable life.
Speaker 3: I sing a song about my sons and show a
Speaker 3: video of like pictures of them and little videos. Oh
Speaker 3: it kills me every time if I watch it, I'll
Speaker 3: cry just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I cry.
Speaker 3: And it's a mash up between nick of Time because
Speaker 3: you know, it's funny Nicky took me three and a
Speaker 3: half years to get pregnant. Joey like immediately I didn't
Speaker 3: get my period. It was like Bam, I'm pregnant again.
Speaker 3: So he and so I do nick of Time and
Speaker 3: happiness is just a thing called joe and that's it.
Speaker 3: And also I sing a song about Freddie, my first husband.
Speaker 3: I do Desperado because that's kind of who he was
Speaker 3: in my life. And that song always gets to me too.
Speaker 3: So it's like tell telling some of those type stories
Speaker 3: and talking about Bird was very emotional to a couple
Speaker 3: of times. So it depends, you know, it depends on
Speaker 3: the crowd.
Speaker 1: When you come and you're gonna camp, bet he is
Speaker 1: your husband going to come with you?
Speaker 3: He comes? Yeah, he's great. Oh he's another whole story.
Speaker 3: You know, we wrote a book. We got together. He
Speaker 3: was my roommate's boyfriend. I didn't dare twinkle in his direction.
Speaker 3: But then when he called me out of nowhere six
Speaker 3: months after my divorce from Rob was final. We got
Speaker 3: together within a week. We're saying I love you, We're
Speaker 3: going to spend the rest of our lives together. And
Speaker 3: two months later he's diagnosed with two cancers, bladder cancer
Speaker 3: and lung cancer. And we ended up doing a whole
Speaker 3: protocol for him that didn't involve chemo or radiation. They
Speaker 3: wanted to remove his bladder, his prostate, run a hose
Speaker 3: up his penis and we could pump it up six
Speaker 3: times if we wanted to have sex. They were they
Speaker 3: were pushing all of this. I was like, no, and
Speaker 3: we always say.
Speaker 1: This is he's done with the pump by the way
Speaker 1: he finishing.
Speaker 3: Don't do it for fun. No, he doesn't need the
Speaker 3: pump at all. No, my husband, thanks, No, No, not
Speaker 3: at all. He saved all of his organs. He saved
Speaker 3: his organs and he's been in remission. It'll be eighteen
Speaker 3: years November the twenty fourth. It's pretty remarkable. And he
Speaker 3: didn't he did immunotherapy, but he went completely vegan, and
Speaker 3: he went got rid of I mean he did everything.
Speaker 3: He shot himself with iscador, which is extract of mistletoe.
Speaker 3: He got rid of all of the mercury, fillings in
Speaker 3: his mouthculation therapy, high colonics, lymphatic massages, infrared saunas, and
Speaker 3: he stayed on this protocol and he has been in
Speaker 3: remission almost eighteen years. It's pretty remarkable, you know, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: When I went to the doctor and he was going
Speaker 1: to do the anterior hip replacement process, and he says
Speaker 1: to me, now, I want to just review with you
Speaker 1: that you know that that when you do the anterior procedure,
Speaker 1: when we go in the front as opposed to the side,
Speaker 1: it's the quickest to heal. But there are some complications.
Speaker 1: Is like point zero two percent that we're going to
Speaker 1: nick some nerves in there. There's some material to it.
Speaker 1: And I said, what nerve? He took his finger and
Speaker 1: he went like this, no, And I turned her mind
Speaker 1: and said, oh, you can just tear that out just right.
Speaker 1: I'm done. You can just yank that, get a pair
Speaker 1: of pliers, and I've done with that.
Speaker 3: Sex come on you. And we have an expression in
Speaker 3: my family PF. Okay, we have this expression. My brothers
Speaker 3: and I made it up and it's like measures the
Speaker 3: sexual cuotient of things like oh man, there was so
Speaker 3: much PF at that party, or man, I saw that
Speaker 3: movie no PF between the two of them, and PF
Speaker 3: stands for pussy factor or penis factor, right, because things
Speaker 3: have PF, you know. And I don't like BD for
Speaker 3: big dick energy because that is sexist and sizest, do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? But you and Hilaria obviously
Speaker 3: have tons of PF. Obviously six kids, but you still
Speaker 3: want to have You're still going to have PF.
Speaker 1: Even I want you. I don't want to retire from that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, please, but six kids, it's really been. It's
Speaker 1: been like a super six and eight years is yeah,
Speaker 1: six kids in seven.
Speaker 3: Years, seven years and seven years old. Oh that's right,
Speaker 3: seven years. You know. I don't know if you remember
Speaker 3: this day, but we were all all the kids because
Speaker 3: Ireland is close to my Joey's age. He's born November twelfth,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, so she's like the month. So we
Speaker 3: were all at a meet because Joey was like the
Speaker 3: real athlete in the family. But Joey was at this meet,
Speaker 3: and Caitlyn Jenner was there and her kids and you know,
Speaker 3: Ireland and my Joey and they were all doing their
Speaker 3: sports thing. And you walked up to my son, Nick,
Speaker 3: who was about thirteen at the time, fourteen at the time,
Speaker 3: And you said, and what are you going to be
Speaker 3: besides the Ralph Lauran model, because he's very cute.
Speaker 1: What is he doing now?
Speaker 3: He's a director. He's a director. He went to Columbia
Speaker 3: and he directs all these videos. And he directed this
Speaker 3: short that has now been bought by Will Ferrell's company
Speaker 3: and he's turned it into a two hour movie and
Speaker 3: he might be directing it, we'll see. But it looks good.
Speaker 3: Can I just say what my son Joey's doing too?
Speaker 3: Because he's yes, okay, because I said about Nick. So
Speaker 3: Joey lives in Brooklyn. He does his improv troupe that
Speaker 3: they do whatever. But he's an international bridge player. He's
Speaker 3: one of the top bridge players in the world under
Speaker 3: twenty five, and he became a life master at twenty four.
Speaker 3: And he has all these women that he plays bridge
Speaker 3: with and they pay a lot of money to play
Speaker 3: with him because he's so cute. And he's writing a
Speaker 3: script called Bridge Jiggelow because I have a comedy writer
Speaker 3: and I have a director.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Telling telling me should read Jonathan Ames's book The Extra
Speaker 1: Man that was made into a film with Kevin Klein
Speaker 1: and Paul Dano, and that's your son, the Paul Danel.
Speaker 1: He is a character because it's about a boy that
Speaker 1: meets like a guy who's like a walker. He's like
Speaker 1: a male prostitute and he doesn't necessarily sleep with the women,
Speaker 1: but he's like he like takes old of these old
Speaker 1: biddies to like Palm Beach, Cotillions and all the show.
Speaker 3: I don't think are thinking that my son is talking
Speaker 3: about them as old biddies, because you know, someone who
Speaker 3: knows not his not his bridge party.
Speaker 1: Anyway, My love to you, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing you in New York.
Speaker 3: Okay, give my love to your kids. And you're one.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's called Mary Lou.
Speaker 1: I know, so.
Speaker 3: I forgot that.
Speaker 1: I know we literally they my wife calls are Mary Lou.
Speaker 1: I know she does Maria Luthia, but my wife calls
Speaker 1: her Mary Lou.
Speaker 3: It's on the back of her little high chair. I know.
Speaker 3: See I pay attention. Well, my name is Mary, Lucy, Denise,
Speaker 3: ce Celia, Hannah Forrest, Lieberman Brown.
Speaker 1: Good luck vision and heat, good luck on that chair.
Speaker 1: My love to you, sweet We'll talk to you down
Speaker 1: the road, okay. Actress and author Mary Lou Henner. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue, Maureen Hobin,
Speaker 1: and Zach MacNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Is brought to you by iHeart Radio