Albert Brooks Recalls His Father Harry Einstein’s Tragic Onstage Death
Actor and comedian Albert Brooks is looking back on the night his father died. Comedian Harry Einstein (often known as Harry Parke or Parkyakarkus) performed a stand-up routine at Lucille Ball’s induction into the Friars Club in 1958. During the show, he suffered from a fatal heart attack. At first, people thought it was a joke when Milton Berle shouted, “Is there a doctor in the house?” because it was a charity event for local hospitals and many doctors were in attendance.
Despite doctors rushing to the scene, one even using a pen knife for an open heart massage, he was pronounced dead at the event. Berle’s comment and the events that followed became a dark joke that Brooks has told many times during his long career.
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He explained, “So there was a very famous singer named Tony Martin — older generation, but he had the No. 1 song in the country at that time — and Milton Berle was there when my father dropped his head. It was at the Beverly Hilton. They said, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ A third of the audience came up, and they took him backstage, and they literally cut them open with a pen knife and tried to [save him]. Nothing worked.”
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He continued, “But Milton Berle was still Mr. Show Business, and the audience was sitting there stunned, and Milton Berle was going, ‘What do we do?’ He said to Tony Martin, ‘Get up there, sing your hit.’ And Tony Martin got up, and he sang, and his hit was called, ‘There’s No Tomorrow.’”
Brooks was just 11 years old when his father died and dealt with the grief and trauma with some of the roles he portrayed. For instance, in the 1991 film Defending Your Life, Brooks plays a recently deceased comedian who finds himself watching a bad comedian. When the comic asks him how he died, he says, “Onstage, like you.” Brooks opens up even more about his life and career in the Emmy-nominated documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.
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