Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. People have different definitions of what
Speaker 1: makes a star. Is it raw talent, beauty or is
Speaker 1: it simply an X factor, a certain ineffable quality. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is, Mary Lou Henner has.
Speaker 2: It, and she has it in spades.
Speaker 1: Singer, dancer, actor, and wellness expert, Henner is a multi
Speaker 1: talented performer who is also simply a joy to be around.
Speaker 1: She's like a Christmas tree and lights up every room
Speaker 1: she's in. She's starred in over a dozen films, seven
Speaker 1: Broadway shows, and two smash hit sitcoms. She played Ava
Speaker 1: Evans Newton on Evening Shade alongside Burt Reynolds, and perhaps
Speaker 1: most notably, Elaine Nardo on Taxi, a role that earned
Speaker 1: her five Golden Globe nominations. Mary Lou Henner has also
Speaker 1: a New York Times bestselling author and recently staged a
Speaker 1: one woman autobiographical show. It covered everything from growing up
Speaker 1: in a large family in Chicago to her preternatural mnemonic skills.
Speaker 1: Henna is one of about sixty people in the world
Speaker 1: who can recall nearly every detail of her life down
Speaker 1: to 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 every
Speaker 3: boardroom like Mary Lou, if I took you to Vegas?
Speaker 3: Could you cheat for me? Could you count the cards?
Speaker 3: Could you let's go to Vegas.
Speaker 2: I'm sure people assume that this skill you have it's
Speaker 2: not a sill.
Speaker 3: But it's yeah, it's just there. It's weird.
Speaker 2: What do you call it?
Speaker 3: I call it a gift. People sometimes call it a condition.
Speaker 3: It's not, and that's why they changed the name. They
Speaker 3: used to call it hyper tynysia, but then they thought
Speaker 3: that that was like too weird a name, which it
Speaker 3: really is. But it's not that they don't call it
Speaker 3: that anymore. It's h SAM highly superior autobiographical memory, h SAM.
Speaker 3: And it's funny you should mention that on my show
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 count.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, I Sam, because I excuse me, mister.
Speaker 3: It was a very successful number and a very successful run,
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. They said it was the best
Speaker 3: show they've done there 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 wanted everything to sort of connect to something in
Speaker 3: my life. And I was watching television and do you
Speaker 3: know the Cold Porter movie, not Night and Day, the
Speaker 3: other one that he did anyway, So all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I'm flicking through channels and there it is, and it's
Speaker 3: Elvis Costello singing Let's Misbehave, And I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 3: the closing credits to Johnny Dangerously. I'm going to sing
Speaker 3: that song as my opener and then tell a story
Speaker 3: about Johnny Dangerously, but then say everything is connected, and
Speaker 3: then I go into the song about my memory because
Speaker 3: I wanted to set that up right away because I
Speaker 3: throw dates around a lot, and then I talk about
Speaker 3: my childhood, which was so unusual, so you know, and
Speaker 3: I do a little whole tribute to growing up in
Speaker 3: 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 them went on to have the really heavy
Speaker 1: duty careers and everything and movies and TV in theater
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 2: And how did you get 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'd been flown out to Los Angeles to
Speaker 3: 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 care and
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 Thurn, 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 Hirsh.
Speaker 3: She is one of the guys, but you'd believe her
Speaker 3: having 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 Housman, 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: gonna lose her a paper chase if you don't do it.
Speaker 3: And so they said, okay, we'll do it. She's Elaine.
Speaker 3: We'll give her two little kids. So that's what they did.
Speaker 2: So how it was Housman pay per Chase and what
Speaker 2: was his name, Timothy.
Speaker 3: Something, Timothy Bottoms. No, he didn't do the TV show.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Wow, well you can be canceled now, I know.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I've got that. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 3: never had.
Speaker 2: Like who probably deserved to be canceled at some point
Speaker 2: in your life.
Speaker 3: Actually, I was very protective of myself. I've been the
Speaker 3: kind of girl that I think most whatever I don't
Speaker 3: want to say, well, you know, I had brothers, so
Speaker 3: I knew men or pigs, so I was like always
Speaker 3: on the defense. I knew I was paying attention. Some
Speaker 3: of them are some of them?
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny you say that because in that
Speaker 1: casting holding deal I went out to l A. I've
Speaker 1: told the story before, I think, but I'm there and
Speaker 1: Chris Guest's mother, Jean Guests, who I worshiped. Geen Guests,
Speaker 1: was in charge of casting. Incredible, loveliest woman and show
Speaker 1: She was one of the loveliest women in show business.
Speaker 1: And if she really believed in you, she like hung
Speaker 1: in there with you. She brings me into a meeting
Speaker 1: and they put me on a holding deal because I
Speaker 1: did a pilot for them that fizzled, and they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to sign to this holding deal because we
Speaker 1: really believe in you. We're going to keep throwing it
Speaker 1: against the wall until something sticks. And then he says,
Speaker 1: we want you to be the.
Speaker 2: Next Bill Bixby. I was like, wow, that sounds great.
Speaker 3: Did you ever honor the deal? Did you ever have
Speaker 3: to or did you go get something else in.
Speaker 1: The I went to do a pilot and then I
Speaker 1: did a TV movie for them. I did a couple
Speaker 1: of things for them. This is obviously a billion years ago.
Speaker 1: In the eighties and the early eighties.
Speaker 3: The one with Stephanie Zimbleist. You were so good in that.
Speaker 2: That was NBC. Remember that, My god?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did tell you the day we met and
Speaker 3: how we met.
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 3: It was May May the twenty second of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: It was a Wednesday, and this is how we met.
Speaker 3: I knew Tuck, your roommate. So Tuck and I went
Speaker 3: till dinner one time, and in Venice and right where
Speaker 3: you guys used to live. So I went over to
Speaker 3: your house. And now we are both. I'm in New
Speaker 3: York doing the junket for Perfect and I'm on a
Speaker 3: bunch of shows and I'm on Live at five with
Speaker 3: Sue Simmons, remember yeah, and you're and so you and
Speaker 3: I were both in the room, but I didn't see
Speaker 3: you because I didn't really know you. And all of
Speaker 3: a sudden I could feel you over this person over
Speaker 3: my left shoulder, and then all of a sudden, Susman says,
Speaker 3: I'm coming up next Alec Baldwin and later Mary Lou Hannah,
Speaker 3: and it was like we looked at each other and
Speaker 3: I went, oh, my gosh, it was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: And you and I actually had lunch the day of
Speaker 3: the big Perfect opening and you were one hundred days
Speaker 3: sober that day and you showed me your coin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have thirty six years now and Febrielle have
Speaker 1: thirty seven years.
Speaker 2: Then, unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: And even last night I wanted to DEVI a drake.
Speaker 1: Last night, I thought, let me just have a gigantic glass,
Speaker 1: what would you doe, slurpy glass of red wine? Help
Speaker 1: me good because I have horrible insomnia. I've always had
Speaker 1: hard me too.
Speaker 2: Me out with these kids. It's horrible. You know.
Speaker 3: I wrote a book called I Refused to Raise a Brat,
Speaker 3: and I wrote it with a brilliant psyche flanalyist because
Speaker 3: I had these two kids, and I listened. Every time
Speaker 3: I listened to her, it didn't the kids. It was
Speaker 3: all good. And then when I didn't, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's going to bite me on the ass at some point.
Speaker 3: But it's so funny because having so many. I grew
Speaker 3: up with six. You grew up with six. We had
Speaker 3: the opposite of you, guys, because it was two boys
Speaker 3: and four girl, which is different, and you were third third.
Speaker 3: I was third. We came up with this concept, the
Speaker 3: concept of hamper, you know, because our houses were like
Speaker 3: a big hamper. So now to this day, you could
Speaker 3: have a beautiful silk blouse, but it's got a stain,
Speaker 3: so you put a pin over it. That's hamper. You know,
Speaker 3: your glasses are broken, so you put a pin in it.
Speaker 3: That's hamper. You know, you do you put a paper clip,
Speaker 3: a paper clip, your uniform had staples in it or
Speaker 3: tape or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I remember growing up, our phone court was
Speaker 3: 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 bedroom. Her bedroom
Speaker 1: was a hamper. She had an ironing board at the
Speaker 1: foot of her bed and an iron and she had
Speaker 1: like these plastic hampers, right, these collapsible plastic things that
Speaker 1: were just and they were like falling off of each other.
Speaker 1: I said, if you if you came to my house
Speaker 1: and you didn't know better, you thought this was in
Speaker 1: an illegal laundry.
Speaker 2: Someone was running out of their house.
Speaker 3: My mother used to do her laun tree on Tuesdays.
Speaker 3: There was seven teen loads, you know, and she always
Speaker 3: had like seventeen loads from all of us, because when
Speaker 3: you 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 2: My wife hates it. She's really angry with me.
Speaker 1: That you're so meticulous that I'm so crushed by an
Speaker 1: OCD at that level with my kids, like I'm always
Speaker 1: cleaning in my household, and long with my wife.
Speaker 2: Was like, 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, then 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 2: I think the same.
Speaker 1: I'll tell my wife, I go, don't you want to
Speaker 1: let's go to the opposite here. Don't you want to
Speaker 1: commend me for how neat I am? But would you
Speaker 1: rather have a husband who didn't want to clean? Now
Speaker 1: you have two biological.
Speaker 3: Children, two biological children, and they're how old?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: They're twenty one is twenty seven, the other one's twenty
Speaker 3: five and a half.
Speaker 1: And you have them doing what phase of your career?
Speaker 1: What were you working on at the time you decided
Speaker 1: to put the brakes on and have kids?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: 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 you run up to the
Speaker 3: team and he says, do it again, do it again,
Speaker 3: do it again, do it again. So that night I
Speaker 3: was sitting in a restaurant, and this is after three
Speaker 3: and a half years. I was sitting in a restaurant
Speaker 3: and I looked at Rob and I went, the eagle
Speaker 3: has landed. I just got pregnant. He said, what I said,
Speaker 3: I'm telling you. Contact was made, and sure enough I
Speaker 3: was pregnant. So I always tell people Burt Renolds got
Speaker 3: me pregnant. Even though he's not the father of my kids.
Speaker 2: He's the spiritual father, a spiritual father. Yeah. And when
Speaker 2: you worked with him, you did Cannibal too.
Speaker 3: With him, Well, I first did the man who loved women,
Speaker 3: and 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 Countball I've never told this story before.
Speaker 3: The Countball Run two script was about the Dom and
Speaker 3: Bert sort of rescue this girl who's hiding out in
Speaker 3: a sanitarium and she's an heiress, and then they rescue her,
Speaker 3: and then she and Bert end up in a thing.
Speaker 3: And so then I get Harvey Miller, who's a taxi
Speaker 3: writer the job, and he turns it into two women.
Speaker 3: And then Shirley McLean wanted to do it. So then
Speaker 3: of course they put Shirley with Burt and I was
Speaker 3: with Dom, which was fine, but it's kind of funny.
Speaker 3: But I had like one of the best experience. That
Speaker 3: movie was so stupid. But there were a couple days
Speaker 3: where we had like twenty three wagon trains in the
Speaker 3: desert outside of Tucson, Arizona, because it was one hundred
Speaker 3: and seventeen degrees. So we started hair and makeup was
Speaker 3: at two o'clock in the morning so we could be
Speaker 3: on the road before four, and we pulled the plug
Speaker 3: at one. But then everybody hung out at the pool
Speaker 3: at the Arizona Inn. So it was Sammy Davis Junior,
Speaker 3: and Dean Martin, all these guys and even Frank for
Speaker 3: a day. And to be with Shirley, who I I
Speaker 3: had always loved and always idle to play her friend
Speaker 3: and then to have her hanging out with the rat pack.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, I was this little girl
Speaker 3: from Chicago who's watching these people at drive ins and stuff.
Speaker 3: So it was like a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I met him.
Speaker 1: For those people who don't know this, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: on a big devotee of this, but I went a
Speaker 1: few times. It's that Norby Walters, the famous record executive.
Speaker 1: Norby Walters had his.
Speaker 2: Card game, his legendary card game.
Speaker 1: In his apartment Wednesday nights and West Wednesday nights in
Speaker 1: West Hollywood, and you go up to the department of
Speaker 1: his near Holloway.
Speaker 3: Yeah Halloway, Losi Anago, Yeah Losi.
Speaker 1: On your way to Barney's Beanery and on your way
Speaker 1: to the sunset Marquis and you go to his house
Speaker 1: and I went there.
Speaker 2: I went a handful of times.
Speaker 1: You know, velvida cheese and he's in a bowl, my god,
Speaker 1: and no alcohol.
Speaker 2: 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. It was no
Speaker 1: serious gambling, right, And you went there. And I remember
Speaker 1: sitting there one time, and there was Harvey Korman.
Speaker 3: And Tim Oh, Tim Conway, Yeah Conway.
Speaker 1: The two of them were there one time. Kathy Lee
Speaker 1: Crosby would go.
Speaker 3: Every now and then Rod Steiger was there a couple of.
Speaker 2: Times when you were there. Bert was there when I
Speaker 2: went one.
Speaker 3: Time, Oh he was.
Speaker 1: He seemed like he was in the throes of his
Speaker 1: kind of medicated agony. But he But then to the
Speaker 1: right of me one time was Don Adams. And Don
Speaker 1: Adams is in a China white jumpsuit and everyone's waiting
Speaker 1: for the moment to arrive when someone's going to just
Speaker 1: do this and do the Don Adams thing. So somebody
Speaker 1: will puts down two pairs, you know. He puts down
Speaker 1: two pairs, and I put down.
Speaker 2: I say, I have three kings.
Speaker 1: I do and everybody left and he doesn't laugh, and
Speaker 1: then finally he smiles and nods to me, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: good for you. You saw the opportunity and you took it.
Speaker 1: But he was very serious and very really super antiseptic
Speaker 1: and very He was there to play cards. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about his career or chit chatty. Was
Speaker 1: there to play cards with a bunch of schmucks. We
Speaker 1: were card players, were eating.
Speaker 2: Velveda and Hershey's kisses and drinking on pop punch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you're bringing up Norby Walter because you
Speaker 3: probably don't remember this, but we were both supposed to
Speaker 3: be there on it was it was June the seventh
Speaker 3: of two thousand and one. Okay, it was a Wednesday,
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. It was what happened was we
Speaker 3: got together because I was avoiding the process servers because
Speaker 3: everybody said, oh, you have to let the woman serve first,
Speaker 3: otherwise it looks like she cheated. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And we were having a friendly divorce, you know, we
Speaker 3: went away that weekend and read about it ourselves in
Speaker 3: the paper. Rob and I we're 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 Sushi Roku for like two
Speaker 3: and a half hours, and you told me everything that
Speaker 3: was going on and what I should watch out for.
Speaker 2: I know you remind me.
Speaker 1: Your energy and my feelings for you remind me of
Speaker 1: when I was around streisand once and I said to her,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I would be the greatest divorced couple.
Speaker 1: You know, we would be married, we'd be in love,
Speaker 1: maybe we'd have a kid. Of course, we get divorced.
Speaker 1: It just has to be that way. It shows us.
Speaker 1: But I come over every Sunday. We'd have Chinese food
Speaker 1: screenings exactly, and I feel the same way about you.
Speaker 3: You and I would have made great ex pers Yeah,
Speaker 3: very similarly, And that we have that big family kind
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 is 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. Like say that to my kids
Speaker 3: all the time, you know, smile not and move on.
Speaker 2: So you were married three times, you were married twice,
Speaker 2: and you're married again.
Speaker 3: Now very final.
Speaker 1: There's final, and so each of these meant the extent
Speaker 1: you're willing to say, what did they represent for you?
Speaker 1: You seem to be such a thoughtful, deliberate aware. You
Speaker 1: seem like somebody that all the lights are on your brain,
Speaker 1: your mind, your soul is like a house you pull
Speaker 1: up to. It's like some kind of a Richard Neutra,
Speaker 1: all glass structure and all the lights are on.
Speaker 2: You're always on, you know what I mean? And alert
Speaker 2: and aware.
Speaker 1: So when you married one, and you're married two, and
Speaker 1: you married three, what were you marrying them for?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: First, Freddie and I met at a screen test and
Speaker 3: I didn't know that they had added a kiss. And
Speaker 3: I was the sixth girl screen testing opposite him for
Speaker 3: a film called Hammet, and we just did.
Speaker 2: Some people who don't know, this is Forrest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, Frederick Forrest the Academy Award now called Freddie.
Speaker 3: And so he was so different from anybody I knew.
Speaker 3: He was a lot older than I was, but he
Speaker 3: was so different from anybody I ever knew. And I
Speaker 3: was so fascinated by him because his brain was so
Speaker 3: different and he was just I've just never seen anything
Speaker 3: like a totally instinctive, brilliant actor. Brilliant actor and would
Speaker 3: transform himself every part that he's played. He looks completely different.
Speaker 3: And he wanted to marry me a few months after
Speaker 3: we started dating and I said, no, let's live together.
Speaker 3: He said, no marriage or nothing. I said, okay, well
Speaker 3: then nothing. And then I went to my tenth year
Speaker 3: high school reunion in Chicago and he went to a
Speaker 3: wedding and he called me and we were both feeling
Speaker 3: very sentimental, and we said, okay, let's get married. I
Speaker 3: said okay, and then we ended up getting married three
Speaker 3: weeks later in New Orleans and that was it. And
Speaker 3: then coming home from the honeymoon because the actors were
Speaker 3: on strike, I was going back to taxing. I thought,
Speaker 3: what have I just done? I married a total stranger
Speaker 3: to me. You know, it was like crazy, but he
Speaker 3: was so fascinating and so loving and so full of
Speaker 3: demons that if you're not somebody who is exposed to
Speaker 3: demons a lot, you think like, I'll fix it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to take care of it. Twenty eight twenty.
Speaker 2: Eight, you're very young. Yeah, everything you do in your
Speaker 2: twenties is a book. 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 got to have heat.
Speaker 2: Oh that wasn't Saintan zuber reed, No, no, ok, sorry.
Speaker 3: So you got to have vision in heat. So my
Speaker 3: first marriage was all heat, my second marriage was all vision,
Speaker 3: and finally I have vision and heat in my third marriage.
Speaker 1: Wow, Actress Mary Lou Henner. If you like hearing about
Speaker 1: the lives of groundbreaking women in comedy, check out my
Speaker 1: interview with Carol Burnett. Her hit variety show ran for
Speaker 1: more than a decade in the late sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and at the height of her success, she had to
Speaker 1: tread carefully.
Speaker 4: In that era, the only one who really would speak
Speaker 4: up was Lucy. She was very strong, but It's not
Speaker 4: in my nature to take.
Speaker 2: Over confront or anything.
Speaker 4: You know, if a sketch wasn't working or something, instead
Speaker 4: of like Gleason or Sid would say, look, guys, this stinks.
Speaker 3: Now, come on, you got to fix it.
Speaker 2: 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 been a bitch.
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with Carol Burnett in our
Speaker 1: archives that Here's Thething dot org. After the Break, Mary
Speaker 1: Lou Henner talks about how a change she made and
Speaker 1: her approach to auditioning completely opened up her career. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here is the Thing.
Speaker 1: Mary Lou Henner is passionate about encouraging people to take
Speaker 1: charge of their happiness and well being. She's written several
Speaker 1: best selling books on living a healthy lifestyle, often sharing
Speaker 1: 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 some lectures.
Speaker 3: I was like okay. So in between shows, I would
Speaker 3: do these seminars and I'd have a little, you know,
Speaker 3: like recorder and I'd be, you know, talking to them,
Speaker 3: and then I'd be putting on my eyelashes like the
Speaker 3: evils of dairy products, you know, as I'm putting on
Speaker 3: my eyelashes to go do roxy. And so then I
Speaker 3: worked with somebody who was like a real crafts person
Speaker 3: in terms of like books, and I was so revved
Speaker 3: up from all the fossy, and my boys were very little,
Speaker 3: so I could like give them a bath, go to
Speaker 3: the theater, be revved up, go to an office and
Speaker 3: work on the book. And a few weeks after the
Speaker 3: show ended, the book came out and it went on
Speaker 3: the New York Times bestseller list, and I've sold over
Speaker 3: a million copies of that first health book. But then
Speaker 3: got a contract to keep going and going and going,
Speaker 3: so then I've done ton.
Speaker 1: What's your biggest health concern? You know, 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, and which has been so for me
Speaker 1: and demoralizing for me. Yeah, what's your health concerns?
Speaker 2: Now? Like, what do you say to yourself? I never eat.
Speaker 1: I sometimes eat every now and then I cheat, and
Speaker 1: I allow myself to eat. When you want to treat
Speaker 1: yourself to something that you know isn't the best possible
Speaker 1: thing for you, Is it something sweet?
Speaker 3: Is something I'm a savory person. No, I would say
Speaker 3: probably sushy is like my own, my last not so
Speaker 3: guilty pleasure. Yeah. But I haven't had dairy since August fifteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine. It was a Wednesday I gave up
Speaker 3: dairy and have never had dairy since. And it changed
Speaker 3: my life. So I'm always trying to get people off
Speaker 3: of dealer.
Speaker 2: What was the impact other than sinuses and congestion?
Speaker 3: You here, but well that's a lot, but you know,
Speaker 3: sore throats and stomach aches all the time. When I
Speaker 3: lived in New York, I'd live near zay Bars, and
Speaker 3: I would go pick up cheese, and you know at
Speaker 3: zay Bars where they'd cut the cheese a certain way
Speaker 3: and the little rind and stuff. And I'd buy these
Speaker 3: little cheese bags, cheese ends bags on my way to
Speaker 3: unemployment and wondered, why am I not working when I'm fat,
Speaker 3: constanpated and half impulse, you know, I mean, my whole
Speaker 3: stomach changed after I gave up dairy.
Speaker 1: I used to be an ice cream addict. I was
Speaker 1: like Brando, And they say that brand would sit with
Speaker 1: like a half a gallon of ice cream and watch
Speaker 1: TV and you have like a big jug of ice
Speaker 1: cream and lay in his bed and just with a
Speaker 1: spoon and eat like a half a gallon of ice cream.
Speaker 2: That wasn't that bad.
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 cat 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 got
Speaker 3: to move, move move. Motion is the lotion. And then
Speaker 3: I also say, you better fall in love with your
Speaker 3: stress or it's going to kill you. Because if I
Speaker 3: give I go all over the country open.
Speaker 2: Through stress, you better I can't fall in love with
Speaker 2: my stress.
Speaker 3: Got 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
Speaker 1: camera at what forty five minutes a day, an hour
Speaker 1: a day. The rest is sitting in your room. You
Speaker 1: do the show, it's two hours at night. If you're
Speaker 1: inclined to do theater, and I said, you don't need
Speaker 1: to find that how much you love it. And number two,
Speaker 1: if you're in get into it. Don't do what I did,
Speaker 1: which is to be like fuck la and fuck you
Speaker 1: and I think you're all full of shit, and you
Speaker 1: know this whole thing is just this business is full
Speaker 1: of shit.
Speaker 2: Be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Join the academy, go to the screening, be a part
Speaker 1: of the business, and don't be cynical about it.
Speaker 2: And if not, then get out.
Speaker 3: Get out. I always say, if something, do it or
Speaker 3: don't do it. If someone can talk you out of it,
Speaker 3: let it, because otherwise you have to really really want
Speaker 3: to do it. And also I always say to people,
Speaker 3: look fall in love with auditioning because it might be
Speaker 3: the only ten minutes you have that job. So if
Speaker 3: you do it, you know what I mean, then it's
Speaker 3: like your job for ten minutes. And maybe you remember.
Speaker 1: All these people from the TV star shelf that we
Speaker 1: always talk about Gregory Harrison, who did an interne Wants
Speaker 1: to Change My Life Gregory Harris.
Speaker 3: I mean we did the Jack Nicholson and Margaret parts
Speaker 3: in Carnal Knowledge at the Pasadena Playhouse. We played those parts,
Speaker 3: so we saw each other naked in a shower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, I'm sure you both look pretty good.
Speaker 3: We do. We still do.
Speaker 1: He did an interview once years ago, was a million
Speaker 1: years ago, like TV guide or some stupid thing, and
Speaker 1: he did an interview where he said, basically I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, his whole energy changed, his
Speaker 1: whole career changed when he walked into auditions and his
Speaker 1: attitude was like.
Speaker 2: How can I help you? Like you called me here, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't put a gun to your head and make you,
Speaker 2: but it come to audition me for this part. I
Speaker 2: have something you want? Yes, you're looking for something and
Speaker 2: whether and once he stopped giving the energy of like
Speaker 2: oh and being fawning and obsequious with them, 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: find got Then I booked seventy two in two and
Speaker 3: a half years. It was quite crazy. I was doing
Speaker 3: commercials constantly, but it took me forty auditions to get
Speaker 3: my first one because on the thirty ninth a friend
Speaker 3: of mine called me and it was for mister Coffee.
Speaker 3: I still remember the jingle and I had to sing it.
Speaker 3: I was so wrong for the part, but he called
Speaker 3: me in and he called me that night and he
Speaker 3: said he knew I was having trouble with auditions, and
Speaker 3: he said, are you this way the way you were
Speaker 3: today with me in your auditions? And I went, oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh, no, are you kidding. I was just so
Speaker 3: myself because you were there. He said, we almost changed
Speaker 3: the whole concept of the commercial because you were so original.
Speaker 3: He said, that's what you have to do every time
Speaker 3: you go into an audition. Stop giving people what you
Speaker 3: think they want. Just go in there and it's going
Speaker 3: to hit. It's going to hit. And he was right.
Speaker 3: And then I booked one right after the other and
Speaker 3: I became this body parts model and it was just
Speaker 3: like crazy that I did a lot of different parts
Speaker 3: of the body.
Speaker 2: I was which parts of the body did you do there?
Speaker 3: Which party this is in my show? I said, I
Speaker 3: did four playtext broad commercials. It's got sash here and seamless,
Speaker 3: two play text panties.
Speaker 2: 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 exactly. And then I
Speaker 3: did two play text panties commercials or all you saw
Speaker 3: was my butts.
Speaker 2: And these were separate commercials, separate. The bra and the
Speaker 2: panties were two.
Speaker 1: There were separate shoots because if I was the producer,
Speaker 1: that's what I would have said, and we need to
Speaker 1: shoot these separately, and we need to shoot them over five.
Speaker 3: Days or and I did do yes. And then I said,
Speaker 3: but all you see is my button, my crotch, walking
Speaker 3: my dog, walking around Lincoln Center, getting on a bus.
Speaker 3: Both the polaroids when you walk into the audition for
Speaker 3: a panties commercial, it's amazing because you see all these
Speaker 3: polarids of just people's crotches and butts and side views
Speaker 3: and everything else. And then I was even the Fruit
Speaker 3: of the Loom panty host girl inside of a giant
Speaker 3: apple with my legs sticking out, and so I did
Speaker 3: like different carts. But then I also did like I
Speaker 3: did an exce on Bicentennial Minute where I played Annie Sullivan.
Speaker 3: I got a Cleon nomination for that. And I did
Speaker 3: everything from Reese's peanut butter to gleam toothpaste, so many
Speaker 3: different times. I was the Ponderosa Steakhouse girl, the samson
Speaker 3: I luggage girl. So I just kept doing it and
Speaker 3: doing it and doing it because every time and I
Speaker 3: learned this the heart. I mean, I learned the hard way.
Speaker 3: You walk in and you'd bring something to it, like
Speaker 3: Gregory says, how can I help you? Let me show
Speaker 3: you something like I would do with it.
Speaker 2: 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. So even though did you take so, I No,
Speaker 3: I was a political science major and so in the
Speaker 3: first two years is mostly the core curriculum.
Speaker 2: So where did you learn to sing and dance?
Speaker 3: Well? I grew up in the dancing studio and I
Speaker 3: always sang because my two older sisters were in choir
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. So I'd go to their practices
Speaker 3: and stuff, and it was just something I always wanted,
Speaker 3: you know. I was on stage at two and a
Speaker 3: half at a father Gym, was the.
Speaker 2: Lead in Chicago, like a pinnacle for you? Was that
Speaker 2: a big dream country?
Speaker 3: That was a big gena. 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. In 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 seen
Speaker 3: the show and I was like all excited and 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. Okay, we love Belvedere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Someone was connected to like one of these big phizzy
Speaker 1: musicals and they were doing like some kind of a
Speaker 1: cast replacement, and they wanted all this stunt casting with
Speaker 1: somebody famous, and this actress walks into audition for the
Speaker 1: lead role.
Speaker 2: She's this famous.
Speaker 1: Actress and she comes in and she does her audition
Speaker 1: and she leaves and everyone's just kind of standing there
Speaker 1: slack Jode after she leaves, and the director turns over
Speaker 1: and goes, she can't sing, she can't dance, she can't act.
Speaker 1: She's a star, you know, like we're going to hire her,
Speaker 1: even though she gets a D.
Speaker 2: Or an F in all three categories based on what
Speaker 2: 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, somebody at ABC cany 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 joking like
Speaker 3: people were like, you know, who cares sizzle? You know,
Speaker 3: it's just that thing that you do.
Speaker 1: New York Times best selling author Mary Lou Henner. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever.
Speaker 2: You get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we return, Mary Lou Henner talks about finding lasting
Speaker 1: love the third time around. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
Speaker 1: is Here's the thing. Mary Lou Henner recently developed and
Speaker 1: performed a one woman autobiographical show. It's filled with songs
Speaker 1: 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. I cry. And it's a
Speaker 3: mash up between nick of Time because you know it's
Speaker 3: funny Nicky took me three and a half years to
Speaker 3: get pregnant Joe, like immediately I didn't even get my period.
Speaker 3: It was like bam, I'm pregnant again. So and so
Speaker 3: I do nick of Time and happiness is just a
Speaker 3: thing called Joe and that's it. And also I sing
Speaker 3: a song about Freddie, my first husband. I do Desperado
Speaker 3: because that's kind of who he was in my life.
Speaker 3: And that song always gets to me too. So it's
Speaker 3: like telling some of those type stories and talking about
Speaker 3: Bird was very emotional to a couple of times. So
Speaker 3: it depends, you know, it depends on the crowd.
Speaker 2: When you come and you're gonna camp, bet he is
Speaker 2: your husband going to come with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's great. That's he's another whole story.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We wrote a book. We got together. He was my
Speaker 3: roommate's boyfriend. I didn't dare twinkle in his direction. But
Speaker 3: then when he called me out of nowhere, six months
Speaker 3: after my divorce from Rob was final, we got together.
Speaker 3: Within a week. We're saying I love you, We're going
Speaker 3: to spend the rest of our lives together. And two
Speaker 3: months later he's diagnosed with two cancers, bladder cancer and
Speaker 3: lung cancer. And we ended up doing a whole protocol
Speaker 3: for him that didn't involve chemo or radiation. They wanted
Speaker 3: to remove his bladder, his prostate, run a hose up
Speaker 3: his penis, and we could pump it up six times
Speaker 3: if we wanted to have sex. They were pushing all
Speaker 3: of this. I was like, no, and we always say.
Speaker 2: He's done with the penis pump by the way, he finished, do.
Speaker 3: It for fun. No, he doesn't need the pump at all. No,
Speaker 3: my husband, thanks, No, no, not at all. He saved
Speaker 3: all of his organs. He saved his organs and he's
Speaker 3: been in remission. It'll be eighteen years November the twenty fourth.
Speaker 3: It's pretty remarkable. And he didn't he did immuno therapy,
Speaker 3: but he went completely vegan, and he went got rid
Speaker 3: of I mean he did every He shot himself with iscador,
Speaker 3: which is extract of missiletoe. He got rid of all
Speaker 3: of the mercury fillings in his Mouthculation therapy, high colonic
Speaker 3: lymphatic massages, infrared saunas, and he stays on this protocol
Speaker 3: and he has been in remission almost eighteen years. It's
Speaker 3: 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: which I said, what nerve? He took his finger and
Speaker 1: he went like this, no, And I turned to her
Speaker 1: mind and said, oh you can just tear that out,
Speaker 1: just with that.
Speaker 2: Nerve right down. I'm done. You can just yank there,
Speaker 2: get a pair of pliers and.
Speaker 3: Come on you. And we have an expression in my
Speaker 3: family PF. Okay, we have this expression. My brothers and
Speaker 3: I made it up and it's like measures the sexual
Speaker 3: cuotient of things like, oh man, there was so much
Speaker 3: PF at that party, or man I saw that movie.
Speaker 3: No PF between the two of them. And PF stands
Speaker 3: for pussy factor or penis factor, right, because things have PF,
Speaker 3: you know. And I don't like BD for big dick
Speaker 3: energy because that is sexist and sizest, do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? But you and Hilaria obviously have tons
Speaker 3: of PF. Obviously six kids, but you still want to
Speaker 3: have You're still gonna have PF.
Speaker 2: Even I don't want you.
Speaker 1: I don't want to retire from that, but yeah, please,
Speaker 1: but six kids, it's really been. It's been like a
Speaker 1: student six and eight years is six kids in seven years.
Speaker 3: Seven years and seven years old. Oh that's right, seven years.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember this day, but we
Speaker 3: were all all the kids because Ireland is close to
Speaker 3: my Joey's age. He's born November twelfth, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: So she's like the So we were all at a
Speaker 3: meet because Joey was like the real athlete in the family.
Speaker 3: But Joey was at this meet and Caitlyn Jenner was
Speaker 3: there and her kids and you know, Ireland and my
Speaker 3: Joey and they were all doing their sports thing. And
Speaker 3: you walked up to my son Nick, who is about
Speaker 3: thirteen at the time, fourteen at the time, and you said,
Speaker 3: and what are you going to be besides the Ralph
Speaker 3: Lauran model? Because he's very cute.
Speaker 2: What does 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 Jigglow because I'm a comedy writer and
Speaker 3: I have a director. Yeah, I love it. 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 because it's about a boy
Speaker 1: that meets like a guy who's like a who's like
Speaker 1: a walker.
Speaker 2: He's like a male prostitute, and he doesn't necessarily sleep
Speaker 2: 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 ship.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking that my son is talking about them as
Speaker 3: old biddies because you know, someone.
Speaker 1: Who know not his not his bridge part.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, my love to you, and I look forward to
Speaker 2: seeing you in New York.
Speaker 3: Okay, and you're killed one. Sometimes it's called Mary Lou.
Speaker 3: I know, so 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.
Speaker 2: Lou, daughter Mary.
Speaker 3: It's on the back of her little.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: See I pay attention.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: My name is Mary, Lucy, Denise, ce Celia, Hannah Forrest,
Speaker 3: Lieberman Brown, good Luck vision and heat.
Speaker 2: Good on that share I love to use, Sweetie.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you down the road, okay. Actress and
Speaker 1: author Mary Lou Henner. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Carrie Donahue, Maureen Hoben, and Zach McNeese. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.