Cleveland cuties red, hot and funny
Sure, three’s a crowd. But four is a hoot. Consider the stars of Hot in Cleveland, four funny ladies who would look right at home carved in the Mount Rushmore of comedy.
This quartet was found one day last week at a tiny midtown Manhattan cafe whose other patrons looked on, bemused, at Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, Wendie Malick and, of course, Betty White huddled with a reporter at a corner banquette.
Their TV Land sitcom, now in its fourth season, focuses on three slightly past their prime gal-pals from Los Angeles who decide to make a fresh start in Cleveland (of all places!), where they rent a house whose caretaker, played by White, serves as their salty companion and foil. Hilarity ensues.
But not just on the show. Get these four women together and the laughter is non-stop. Which prompts the question: When did each of them realize she was funny?
“I’m STILL waiting for that realization,” laughs Bertinelli.
How’s that? As a teen nearly 40 years ago she was lobbing punch lines on the hit sitcom One Day at a Time, which ran on CBS for a decade. “But then I went on to do all these movies of the week. And after that, I would go up for roles on sitcoms and people would say, ‘She doesn’t do comedy, does she?’ So I started to doubt myself.”
Hard to believe, considering her exuberance and thunderous guffaws. “She’s our little cheerleader,” says Malick.
“I’m excitable,” Bertinelli, 52, confirms, “and what’s so ironic is that, during the first season of One Day at a Time, I was screamed at because I wasn’t projecting enough.”
“Until my late 30s, I did all bad girls,” says Malick. “Because I was tall, dark and imposing, I was always the murderer or the ex-wife or some nasty girl.”
Then in 1990 came the HBO comedy Dream On, where she was cast as the psychologist exwife of series star Brian Benben. Soon enough the producers realized she was funny.
“I went from being the straight woman to being more and more neurotic,” Malick, 61, recalls. “By the end of the first season I had a total nervous breakdown. It was so freeing to just let it all out and run with it!” And from there she ran right into Just Shoot Me, a long-running NBC comedy set at a fashion magazine, where she played a slutty former model.
“It happened for me at school,” says Leaves, the British-born actress who spent 11 seasons as physical therapist Daphne Moon on NBC’s Frasier.
“I was geeky and tall and skinny,” she says, “and the best way in with the other students was to make them laugh. I can remember doing fake lessons on the board before the teacher came in. I would have the class in stitches. And I would think: This is POWERFUL, I LIKE this!”
Leaves grins. “My back will be to you in a scene, and then I’ll turn around and I’ll go like this” — she flashes a little comic scowl at White, then swivels back again. White explodes with a helpless fit of giggles.
“Then I hear THAT,” says Leaves, 51, with satisfaction. “Making her laugh is the best part of my day, I have to tell you!”
But as the whole world knows, 90-year-old Betty White is pretty funny herself, and has been since she was hosting a live talk-variety show on a Los Angeles station in TV’s infancy. Her first prime-time comedy, Life With Elizabeth, followed in 1952.
Then, years later, she scored her indelible roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. So where did her funny come from?
“I’m an only child, and I had a mother and dad who never drew a straight line: They just thought funny,” she explains. “We’d sit around the breakfast table and then we’d start kicking it around. My dad was a salesman and he would come home with jokes. He’d say, ‘Sweetheart, you can take THAT one to school. But I wouldn’t take THIS one.’ We had such a wonderful time.”
Of course, just because these four actresses are funny didn’t guarantee they’d click as an ensemble.
“That’s always the one unknown element: chemistry,” says Leaves.
“You don’t know until you’re all together the first time,” says Malick, “and the lines pop right off the page.”
On this show, they’re still popping.