Chicago Sun-Times Story – January 16, 2003
by Mike Thomas, Staff Reporter
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Jean Lachat / Sun-Times
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It was lunchtime when Yakov Smirnoff broke into a jig on East Adams. Bedecked from neck to heel—excepting underwear—in pricey couture (Versace, his favorite), the bearded comic, a trim and well-groomed gent of 51, looked like a million bucks, or at least many thousands of bucks, while doing a lusty if technically imperfect rendition of some unpronounceable homeland boogie before entering Russian Tea Time for some Old Country fare.
Once inside, he would partake of approximately 30 percent protein, 30 percent fat and 40 percent carbohydrates in the form of, among other delicacies, herring and sardines, stuffed vegetables and orange caviar—food he almost never eats while not in the company of kin.
A proud American of Ukrainian descent, Smirnoff and his parents, octogenarians both, emigrated to this country a quarter century ago from the former Soviet Union in pursuit of the American Dream. Yakov, who first got noticed at the legendary Comedy Store in Las Angeles, soon enough was doing just that, and doing it well enough that he bought Mom and Dad an apartment building. To keep them busy and independent, he said. So far, “knock on wood,” it’s worked out splendidly.
Today, they still own the building. And he’s still living the dream, his dream, which bears little resemblance to its previous incarnation.
Smirnoff, a formally trained artist whose grasp of the English language is decidedly better than our commander-in-chief’s, is a mogul now, a well-to-do entrepreneur, a fact some types, likely the same type who deride Barry Manilow and male figure skaters, find hard to swallow. With his own theater, a 1,400-seater, located next to Andy “Moon River” Williams’ venue in that Bizarro World of entertainment meccas called Branson, Mo., Smirnoff employs 60 people and frequently sells out two action-packed , never-too-edgy, family-friendly shows a day in which he rides a horse and flies.
No longer the funnyman du jour, the endlessly wisecracking, furrily behatted goofball America came to know and adore in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, no longer the bumbling immigrant stand-up sensation who once retained Jerry Seinfeld as an opening act, who starred on “Night Court” as Yakov Korolenko and also on his own television series, “What A Country!”, who made his big-screen debut with Robin Williams in the critically acclaimed “Moscow On The Hudson”, he is nonetheless doing just fine, thank you. Better than ever, actually.
Not that it’s obvious. The showy $2.5 million home in California’s Pacific Palisades is long gone, replaced by a modest, brightly colored three-bedroom Branson townhouse. And the slick rides—the Ferrari, the Rolls—they’re gone, too. Nowadays, Smirnoff’s Lincoln Continental gets him everywhere he wants to go. In tandem with the Zone Diet regimen, this shedding of material goods is all part of a master plan: total physical and psychological well-being.
“Originally, I was looking for: What is the status symbol that makes you look successful?” said Smirnoff, in town at the Noble Fool Theatre to overhaul his Broadway-bound one-man show, “As Long As We Both Shall Laugh”, an autobiographical, laughter-and-tears-infused examination of life and love. “It was literally one of my quests when I came (to America). I was asking people. They would say, “If you drive a Mercedes or a Rolls Royce and if you have a big house, if you have a beautiful wife…’ So I went after all of that and I was very successful in getting and achieving that. And I realized as I climbed the top of that mountain that it really didn’t bring the joy and the happiness that I was looking for.”
It’s clichéd, he’s admitted, but true. Mostly, he’s looking for answers these days. Answers to nagging questions about the world and about himself. In short, Smirnoff, a single-and-looking divorcee, devoted father, former darling of the Borscht Belt and current darling of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, appears to be having a mid-life crisis. In reverse.
While thousands of other men in his shoes (black and stylish and polished to a dull shine) wallow in self-pity or smother themselves with stuff, whether cars or clothes or women or whatever, Smirnoff, neither woeful or desperately unfulfilled, spends most days pondering the dynamic between men and women. In other words, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. It is a central focus of his new play. And aside from his business ventures and his beloved children, it is the central focus of his new life.
The key to better and lasting understanding between the sexes, he explained, is laughter. As in, the couple who laughs together stays together. Or something like that. Sounded like a touchy-feely “Oprah” show (shudder). Or, worse, A Dr. Phil episode (double shudder). Yakov Smirnoff, it occurred to me, had become John Gray.
“From my perspective,” Smirnoff went on, “it’s understanding that there is an undercurrent. It’s like electricity. Edison knew that if there’s an element between plus and minus that will resist the current the right way; you will have light, right? Well, I am feeling the same way. There is a plus and a minus in male and female relationships and there is a pattern. And when the pattern is followed, you create laughter in your life. So laughter is that light bulb. Here is a laughbulb for the relationship.”
Of course, I nodded. A laughbulb.
In fact, laughter is so important to Smirnoff that he even keeps a “laughing journal”, wherein he logs particularly memorable instances of daily mirth as well as, whenever possible, the names of those who spark said mirth. If you’re not in the book, chances are you’re not in his life.
Incidentally, he still does comedy. And he makes no excuses for leaning on ancient shtick. Fans, he insisted, expect to hear the bits that made him famous. It’s like, he analogized, if Neil Diamond performs without singing “Coming To America” or “Hello, Again”.
The difference is that nowadays he can plug the joke hole offstage, whereas once it ran endlessly.
“If you read my interviews [from] 20 years ago, it would be mostly jokes,” he said between final bites of a heaping communal meal, the remnants of which he carried back to his refrigerator-equipped lodging in a doggie bag. “There was no depth. I didn’t even know I had depth. So obviously I created a shield that was saying, ‘I can tell you another one! OK, next one!’ Because I didn’t think I was interesting to talk to unless I made people laugh. Now, I have so much profound stuff. You might not wanna hear it, but at least I have it.”
As we strolled outside, a man hustling for loose change in a bored monotone made his pitch, then did a double-take. “Hey!” he yelled after Smirnoff. “I know you!”
The fans—they’re everywhere.
Without turning, Smirnoff smiled. That was a first, he confessed. The smile became a chuckle and the chuckled morphed momentarily into that big honking laugh of his, the one Branson tour groups go nuts for. Doubled over with delight, he elbowed me pal-like as if to imply, “Ain’t that a trip?”
And indeed it was a trip. Definitely one for the laughing journal.
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