Back in the heyday of TV variety shows like The Carol Burnett Show and The Star Wars Holiday Special, you’d get a “Special Guest Star” like Art Carney or Bea Arthur plugged in as a quick supplement to the main cast. Consider this a Special Guest Star entry in the FYCE Hollywood division. And today’s subject is Charles Grodin, who died in 2021.

Charles Grodin was well known as a comic actor, and also was famous (notorious) for his frequent guest appearances on TV as a particularly cranky, sarcastic version of himself. Here are typical appearances opposite Johnny Carson and David Letterman.

Some viewers of the Tonight Show didn’t get the act, and thought Grodin was simply rude, but you can see Carson’s delight in playing along. And of course he was perfect for David Letterman, who loved guests who didn’t deliver the usual packaged Hollywood PR patter.

Man of Hollywood

But he was also a Hollywood regular, with major supporting roles in movies like Heaven Can Wait, King Kong and The Incredible Shrinking Woman (proof that Hollywood has always loved remakes). His grumpy second fiddle persona was perfect for kids comedies too when he costarred in Clifford and the Beethoven franchise. He started out with smaller roles in popular movies like Rosemary’s Baby, and was in the ensemble for Catch 22, where he became friends with fellow cast member Art Garfunkel. This friendship soon led to Grodin being picked to direct a CBS special about Simon and Garfunkel.

His masterpiece, of course, was Midnight Run. Robert De Niro got top billing and more screen time, but the movie comes alive once the bounty hunter played by De Niro captures the fugitive accountant played by Grodin.

The two had fantastic chemistry, which you can see in this clip. Grodin barely moves or shows expression while De Niro squirms and grimaces and gnaws his chicken bone. Grodin cleverly needles De Niro, but the scene takes off because De Niro plays right back at him.

Food You Can Eat

And speaking of chicken, now we come to the FYCE. When Grodin started out as an actor, he struggled to find paying roles, and lived for $10 a week in windowless room 410 in the Capital Hall Hotel in New York, with no kitchen and a bathroom down the hall which he shared with everyone on the floor.

In 2012 he remembered those days when he contributed a recipe for chicken wings to the celebrity cookbook Made With Love The Meals on Wheels Family Cookbook. Chicken wings were 19 cents a package and Grodin said that made up much of his diet, since he couldn’t afford to eat in restaurants. Hot plates were forbidden in rooms, so he smuggled an electric frying pan under his coat and cooked chicken wings. Here is his recipe.

Charles Grodin’s Fried Chicken Wings

Serves: 1

Ingredients: Chicken wings, cooking oil

Directions: Warm oil in electric frying pan. Add chicken wings and fry until done.

Final Notes

Most of the recipes in this cookbook are for real. Suzanne Somers, for example, contributed a recipe for artichoke bruschetta, Florence Henderson has a recipe for Chicken Piccata with Pine Nuts and Capers. Joan Rivers, however, was in full Grodin mode.

Rivers’s recipe is for toast, saying for over 20 years it has been her favorite recipe for family and friends. The recipe only says place two pieces of white bread in the toaster and press down the handle. She said she used to make it for her daughter, and she’s glad to see the recipe transcend the generations now that she makes it for her grandson.

Grodin never forgot his roots. He grew up in modest circumstances as the son of a Pittsburgh shop owner, and remained committed to progressive politics, including during stints for a few years as a talk show host on MSNBC and CNBC, where he regularly spoke out on issues like the Iraq invasion and repressive drug laws.

But he was active in more issues than I can list here, and this post covers a number, although the amount of work he did on behalf of causes such as autism, homelessness, incarcerated people, and more is probably impossible to fully catalog. He was very self-effacing in real life and quick to share credit, and I think he would have been fine if you thought his wings were bland and wanted to add salt and pepper, or whatever condiments you could smuggle out of a restaurant.