2 'Friars' Specials
Are a Toast to Roast

LET ME IN, I HEAR LAUGHTER: A Salute to the Friars. Tonight at 7 on Cinemax.

THE N.Y. FRIARS CLUB ROAST OF JERRY STILLER. Tomorrow at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.

here's an unmistakable sense of nostalgia running through "Let Me In, I Hear Laughter," tonight's briskly paced and strangely sweet documentary about Manhattan's fabled Friars Club, but you also come away feeling there's something magical about the joint.

Foulmouthed, bawdy, boozy and mercilessly mocking, yes. Yet what other word but magical describes a place where the legends of show business, especially comedy — Jack Benny and George Burns, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and Henny Youngman, Alan King and Buddy Hackett and Johnny Carson, Richard Pryor and Robin Williams and Billy Crystal — gathered in private to tell jokes to each other, for each other and about each other? Your heart could stop at the very thought of it.

Jerry Stiller and Jason Alexander at the Friars Club Roast.

Which, by the way, actually happened, tonight's Cinemax presentation recounts, to Friars' member Harry Einstein, aka Parkyakarkas (sound it out), who stood at the club's podium and slayed a 1958 crowd gathered to pay tribute to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, then took his seat next to Berle, put his head down and simply passed away.

The great Buddy Hackett offers two of the documentary's best moments.

Hackett reflects on the perennial question of who was (or is) the greatest comic. "I am," he says wryly. "I remember the night!" His point: On any given night, any of the true professionals could be the greatest of their kind.

"I've seen Milton," Hackett recalls, "on a night when I wondered, 'Do I have the right to be in the same business?'"

And with a twinkle and a simple turn of phrase, Hackett transforms a potentially gross story about Johnny Carson into a lovely little gem.

"Let Me In, I Hear Laughter," it must be said, is something of an inside job. It was directed, edited and co-produced by Dean Ward, a member of the Friars' board of directors. However, true to the club's let-the-chips-fall mind-set, Ward doesn't shy away from some of the Friars' flareups of controversy:

There was the L.A. club's card-game cheating scandal, complete with an FBI bust, that followed the admission of gangster Johnny Roselli into the family in the 1960s.

There was the sensationalized uproar over Ted Danson's appearance in blackface for a roast of his then-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg in 1993.

Much more significant was the eventual repeal of the Friars' longstanding ban on women as members, recalled in comments from Phyllis Diller, who dressed as (and apparently had no trouble passing for) a man to sneak into the club in violation of the rules, and from Gloria Allred, a respected civil-rights attorney in 1987 when she sued the club to force the issue of her admission.

The charm and warmth of "Let Me In, I Hear Laughter" stands in sharp contrast to tomorrow night's entry in this little klatch of Friars Club material: Comedy Central's "N.Y. Friars Club Roast of Jerry Stiller."

This one-hour special — about 45 minutes plus commercials — coughs up about five minutes' worth of laughs, and that generously includes a joke about Jerry Seinfeld that host Jason Alexander fumbles in its delivery.

Only roaster/comic Jeffrey Ross manages to offer material that not only embodies the Friars' tradition for stunning profanity, but also is genuinely and consistently funny.

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