Dangerfield gets respect in hometown
NEW YORK — As a boy growing up in Queens, New York, Jacob Cohen got no respect.
His many menial jobs included delivering groceries to wealthy neighbors. He endured anti-Semitism. He played baseball for a shabbily outfitted team against a team from the more celebrated neighborhood next door, said Carl Ballenas, a local historian.
That disadvantaged boy became Rodney Dangerfield, a stand-up comedian with a self-deprecating style based on his woeful upbringing in Kew Gardens.
Go ahead now and fidget with your imaginary necktie, mop your beleaguered brow and stammer the words the way Rodney did:
“The whole ‘no respect’ theme came from his environment,” Ballenas said. “Kew Gardens was the birthplace, the formation of his themed monologues and catchphrase.”
Eager to confer a measure of respect upon Dangerfield and upon Kew Gardens, Ballenas and some of the students at the school where Ballenas teaches helped get a memorial plaque made to honor Dangerfield, who died in 2004 at 82.
Ballenas watched it being installed recently in a small green space next to the Kew Gardens station for the Long Island Rail Road. Dangerfield lived in the neighborhood with his mother and sister in an apartment above what is now Austin’s Ale House, one of the best-known bars in Queens.
As workers installed the memorial, onlookers were eager to recall oneliners from the King of No Respect, often zingers based on uncaring parents, a poor upbringing and other aspects of a troubled life.
The plaque, which bore the comic’s youthful image from his 1939 yearbook from Richmond Hill High School, lists three of his top film appearances: “Caddyshack,” “Easy Money” and “Back to School.”
Also listed are his 1981 Grammy-winning comedy record, “No Respect,” and his 1983 hip- hop single, “Rappin’ Rodney” — which, the plaque noted, reached No. 83 on the Billboard charts.
Dangerfield was born on Long Island and lived in several New York City neighborhoods before moving with his mother and sister to Kew Gardens in the early 1930s when he was 10. He remained there throughout his teens.
His father abandoned the family and Dangerfield grew up “unloved and unwanted,” with a mother who withheld affection and kindness, said his widow, Joan Dangerfield.
“His mother convinced him to open a savings account one summer so he could save up for a football uniform,” she said, in what sounded like a Dangerfield joke setup. “Then she stole his money.”
Joan Dangerfield, who lives in Los Angeles, said during an interview that her husband’s routines were certainly inspired by the hardship of his boyhood, which included juggling jobs such as working at a snack bar, delivering eggs, selling magazines and ice cream, delivering groceries, setting bowling pins and being a barker at a theater.
Joan Dangerfield recalled that her husband used to joke about “the time I was kidnapped and they sent back a piece of my finger to my father — he said he wanted more proof.”
Before his death in 2004, Rodney Dangerfield would occasionally return to visit the old neighborhood — especially Bailey’s, the bar that preceded Austin’s Ale House.
“He would come in,” said John Ryan, an owner of Austin’s, “and break up the place for a few minutes” with an impromptu bit of comedy.