A good life, Crystal-ized
There are two ways to describe Billy Crystal’s life: surprisingly normal and exceedingly charmed. On the one hand, Crystal was raised in a suburban Long Island home by loving parents; he has been married to the same woman for nearly 40 years; and he is a grandfather. You rarely see him in the tabloids.
On the other, he saw his first movie sitting on the lap of jazz great Billie Holiday, and for his 60th birthday, he signed a one-day contract with the New York Yankees and went to bat in a preseason game. (He hit one foul ball and struck out swinging.)
Crystal brings his life — all 61 years of it — to the stage in his one-man, autobiographical show “700 Sundays,” which, after a two-year hiatus, kicks off a six-city tour Tuesday at the National Theatre in Washington. But the show isn’t so much about Crystal as it is about the people who influenced him.
The title of the show refers to roughly the number of Sundays that Crystal had with his father, Jack, who died when Crystal was 15. His father worked two jobs but made sure he was home on Sundays.
The show came about after Crystal’s mother, Helen, a beloved uncle and a close friend died within a few months of each other in 2001.
“It was like one after another, and I was just reeling,” Crystal says from his home in Los Angeles. “I needed some relief from it.”
So Crystal turned to the stage to create a living memorial to his favorite people. Watching the show is like turning the pages of the Crystal family scrapbook as the comedian recounts anecdotes about family and friends while photographs and video are projected what resembles a suburban bungalow.
It has been “the most satisfying and wonderful experience of my career and my life, really, to get a chance to tell these stories about these people who helped form me as a man,” Crystal says, “and basically thank them and acquaint the public with them.”
Among his funny and bittersweet stories are ones about growing up when jazz was coming into its own in New York. His uncle Milt Gabler was one of the earliest jazz producers (he founded the Commodore record label), and his father ran a shop that sold the albums.
Between his father and his uncle, Crystal hung out with top jazz artists, and many became close friends of the family. His grandmother once asked famed trumpeter Louis Armstrong, “Louis, have you tried just coughing it up?”
The show has been well received by fans and critics. It sold out on Broadway in 2005.
The birthday bunch
Comedian JoAnne Worley is 72. Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) is 66. Swoosie Kurtz is 65. Jane Curtin is 62. Jeff Foxworthy is 51. Country singer Mark Chesnutt is 46. Rosie Perez is 45. Macy Gray is 42. Rapper Foxy Brown is 31.