His sixth is Reiner’s book of books

My Anecdotal Life

A Memoir

Carl Reiner

St. Martin’s: 236 pp., $24.95

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My dad once took me to his friend’s house to play tennis. At the time, I was half of the No. 1 high school doubles team in the city, so I figured we’d win pretty easily. We got clobbered. These fellows were professionals -- not tennis players, comedy writers. (My dad, Arnold Peyser, was too.) Every time I threw the ball up to serve or was about to hit a shot, they told a joke. I never laughed so hard or so enjoyed losing. If my teenage tennis opponents had been as funny as these comedy writers, I never would have won a match in league competition.

One of the guys who beat my dad and me that day has a new book: “My Anecdotal Life.” Beloved and prolific, Carl Reiner has won a Grammy, 12 Emmys, wrote and performed on “Your Show of Shows,” created, produced and co-starred as the tyrant-in-a-toupee Alan Brady on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and directed many memorable movies such as “All of Me” with Steve Martin. Like most of his TV and film work, Reiner’s sixth book shows he’s truly funny and an expert storyteller.

For a lot of baby boomers, Reiner surfaced on our radar with “The 2000 Year Old Man” records he made with Mel Brooks. The routine grew out of Reiner wanting to goof on “We the People Speak,” a stuffy weekly news show in the 1950s in which actors impersonated newsmakers. In a totally impromptu version of this, Reiner once asked Brooks if he knew Jesus: “Jesus ... yes, yes ... thin lad ... wore sandals ... always walked around with 12 other guys.” Plays had test runs in New Haven, but “The 2000 Year Old Man” had previews at dinner parties in New Rochelle.

My favorite chapter in “My Anecdotal Life” recalled a 1978 trip Reiner and his wife, Estelle, took to the Dominican Republic. They were invited by the powerful Charles Bluhdorn, owner of Paramount Pictures, head of Gulf & Western and the man who at the time signed Reiner’s paychecks. Reiner describes the guy as an over-the-top Sid Caesar character: “Mr. Bluhdorn spoke with a Polish-German accent and rolled his r’s as effectively as a Nazi drill sergeant.... He never just said my name, he shouted it.” Reiner was horrified to have to tell Bluhdorn that the mogul’s proposed movie -- “Buffalo Bill Meets Adolf Hitler” -- was the worst comedy idea he had ever heard and one he did not wish to be involved in.

Undaunted, Bluhdorn then tried to strong-arm Reiner into doing the third “Bad News Bears” movie by swearing he had the biggest star in the world committed to do it. Reiner begged off of this project too, in no small part because the “star” Bluhdorn wanted to put in it was none other than Fidel Castro. (The film wound up being produced as “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan,” a credit that doesn’t feature prominently on too many Hollywood resumes.) Forget decades of trade embargoes; Reiner swears that “The Bad News Bears Go to Cuba” not getting made is the real reason Castro’s been so mad at America. What’s revealing about this story is that Reiner had the strength of character to turn down the head of Paramount twice. Ninety-nine percent of people in Hollywood would have said yes before Bluhdorn finished yelling.

The Bluhdorn chapter proves that the biggest names don’t necessarily make the best anecdotes. Two of the chapters were a bit disappointing -- one involving Johnny Carson and the other Billy Wilder. However, other stories make up for these minor shortcomings. For his playwriting debut, Reiner took a whack at the then-fashionable Theater of the Absurd style. His 1967 stage comedy, “Something Different,” was sort of Catskills Pirandello. It didn’t have much of a run, but Reiner’s description of events regarding the production is a hoot, including a drunk New York critic who dozed through the first act and a surprise appearance in a curtain call to praise the production by none other than Groucho Marx. Impressively, “Something Different” got a rave review from drama critic Frank Rich. But since Rich was then writing for the Harvard Crimson, and hadn’t yet made it to the New York Times, it didn’t save the production.

Also check out “A Purse Is Not a Pocket Book,” in which a nerve-wracked Reiner had his first, as yet unpublished literary manuscript read in front of him by acclaimed novelist Herman Wouk. If this weren’t enough pressure, this happened as Reiner drove his neighbor Wouk from New York’s Fire Island back to New York City. Reiner was dying to know what Wouk was thinking and often looked more at Wouk who was reading than at the road he was navigating. This chapter alone proves Reiner’s uncommon skill at writing -- and driving.

The book ends with a touching chapter about Reiner being bestowed the Mark Twain Prize in 2000 at the Kennedy Center in a star-studded, televised event. But the focus here is on Reiner’s brother, Charlie. A meeting was arranged with then-President Clinton so that Charlie (who was dying of cancer) could hunker down for a chat with the president about Charlie’s experience as a GI who landed at Utah Beach during World War II. While Reiner marvels at this visit with Clinton in the Oval Office, he was more impressed with the passionate way the president treated his ailing sibling.

There’s a scene in “Ocean’s Eleven” at a dog track in which Brad Pitt gently ropes a retired con man into joining his planned heist. Fifty years into his acting career, Reiner effortlessly holds his own with a modern superstar like Pitt. Reiner doesn’t even mention “Ocean’s Eleven” in “My Anecdotal Life,” which suggests a second volume of his anecdotes deserves to be written.