On aging gracelessly and loving it

By Ed Goldman

New data is confirming what most of us have long suspected: people who deal in “funny”—as writers, comedians, artists or just appreciative consumers—often live longer lives than those who don’t. 

I’m not trying to be funny by reporting this. —On the other hand, if it will help me pile on a few more birthdays, I’m trying to be flat-out hilarious by reporting this.

Let’s round up the usual suspects. 

• Al Jaffee, the cartoonist who engineered Mad Magazine’s fold-in back covers, by which a triptych drawing became something else entirely, died this year at 102.
• George Burns and Bob Hope both checked out at 100, though in separate years. 
• Carl Reiner, creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” took his final bow at 98. Mel Brooks, his best friend and occasional comedy partner (“The 2,000-Year-Old Man”), is still cracking wise at 96. 
• Norman Lear, who co-created “All in the Family”—a TV show remembered less for its laughs (though there were plenty) than for its sociological impact, turns 101 on July 27.
• The great American artist Wayne Thiebaud passed away at 101 (I was born on his birthday, though not in his birth year). He was a serious painter but his most memorable works are his lovingly rendered depictions of pastry, which he once told me—and a few years later on PBS, told the entire country—that he painted simply because “I like pie.” 

For the record, he was a very trim man who played tennis into his late 90s. I mention this lest you stop reading and immediately dash over to your local Cheesecake Factory in quest of immortality.

It’s certainly not an infallible rule that if you ply the chuckles trade you’ll live long. For example, Ring Lardner wrote sports columns and hilarious short stories, and came up with one of my all-time favorite lines in one of his books: “‘Shut up,’ he explained.” Yet he lived to only the age of 48.

Then there was Robert Benchley, who wrote short, satirical essays and made short, satirical films (in which he, who was short and satitircal, starred). He was a mere 56 on his sell-by date.

Nevertheless, Lardner’s son ­Ring Lardner, Jr., not only survived the notorious Hollywood 10 blacklist in the 1950s but also went on to become the Oscar-winning screenwriter of M*A*S*H—the original film, not the series that ran nearly four times longer than the war it depicted. (Korean Conflict: 3 years; TV series set during same: 11 years.)

The movie had some screamingly funny scenes. Lardner, Jr. lived to celebrate his 85th birthday. But when his even funnier dad died he was 37 years younger than that. So what can I tell you? Maybe the funny-bone’s longevity gene skips a generation sometimes.

Now, as someone who’s spent his career writing intentionally laughable (and often forgettable) essays and plays, I can’t tell you that doing so will grant me a long life. 

But I can absolutely assert that being a humorist (i.e., a comedian who doesn’t wait around to see if he’s getting laughs) has made life bearable, at least for me (your mileage may vary, readers). 

Laughing at things that often hurt has made the years I’ve had so far—and will make, I imagine, the ones I hope to have—somewhat easier on the stress-o-meter.