Turning Old Jokes Into Broadway Gold

Heard this one? Feldman walks into his doctor’s office. The doctor tells him he has bad news and worse news.

“The bad news is you have 24 hours to live.”

Feldman exclaims, “Oh my God, what could be worse than that?”

The doctor says, “I couldn’t reach you yesterday.”

Everyone’s heard that one, right? And for those who go to see the hit off-Broadway play “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” they’ll hear many more like it, and a big reason for that is Sag Harbor resident Peter Gethers, who created the show with longtime friend and former New York Times editor Daniel Okrent.

In addition to the show being an instant hit when it opened in May, what makes “Old Jews Telling Jokes” unique is that it originated as a website.

“Dan discovered the site and he contacted the owners and told them he had to tell a joke on that site, he loved it so much, and at 60 he just made the cutoff of being an old Jew,” explained Mr. Gethers, who doesn’t yet qualify for the website. “Our mutual friend Norman Stiles,” he said, referring to the writer for “Sesame Street” who lived in Sag Harbor for many years, “went on it, and soon everyone I knew was on or going to this site.”

“It took a year for something intelligent to occur to me,” he continued. “I saw that Random House was about to publish a book titled ‘Old Jews Telling Jokes.’ I thought I was a moron for not thinking of it first. Then I saw a production of ‘Celebrity Autobiography,’ a very simple, bare-bones, very funny play. I called Dan and said, ‘Let’s buy the dramatic rights from the website guys and do it as a play. How hard can it be?’ Famous last words. So we bought the rights, then looked at each other and said, ‘Now what do we do?’”

The reason why Mr. Gethers envisioned a daunting task ahead was that he was not at all a theater veteran. He has, however, done about everything else in the writing game.

His first job in book publishing was at Bantam Books in 1974. A mere six years later, he was appointed executive editor at Random House.

There were other jobs within the company until a new position was created for him, vice-president and editor-at-large at Random House. Among the authors Mr. Gethers edited along the way were Jimmy Carter, Pete Hamill, Caroline Kennedy, Tim McCarver and Anna Quindlen.

The new position gave him more creative flexibility, and Mr. Gethers sure took advantage of it. He wrote for television shows, including the successful situation comedy “Kate & Allie.” He wrote and doctored film scripts for such noted directors as Rob Reiner, Garry Marshall, and Roman Polanski.

Under his own name, and under the pseudonym Russell Andrews, he has written novels and nonfiction books, including “The Cat Who Went to Paris” and its sequels. “Ask Bob,” a novel, will be published next year.

And then there is baseball. Mr. Gethers is passionate about the sport. Over 30 years ago, he cofounded Rotisserie League Baseball, which is not only fun during the season but helps aficionados of the national pastime get through the long, seemingly endless off-season.

“I’ll wager I’m the longest-playing fantasy sports player on the planet Earth,” Mr. Gethers said proudly. “I’m the only person left from the original league who’s been playing every year. No doubt that will be in my obituary, but not the first line, I hope.”

Another unique venture that he is involved in heading is Random House Films. Every week, Mr. Gethers receives a list of books recently signed by the publisher and its divisions. He also scours the company’s “back list.” The aim is to identify books that would translate well into screen projects.

Random House Films has thus far produced two movies and has three in development—among them “The Galton Case” by the late, great detective writer Ross MacDonald. The company is forging partnerships with HBO and other outlets.

Asked why Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins and the handful of other major publishing companies have not gone this route of maximizing the potential of books, Mr. Gethers replied, “It’s not a slam dunk, there is some risk involved. It’s taken us six years to get to this point. Also, a publisher would have to have someone in place with the experience of being a bridge between the written word and what works on the big or little screen.”

Somehow, Mr. Gethers had to shoehorn “Old Jews Telling Jokes” into his schedule. Step one: Learn how to be a stage producer.

“Dan, being Dan, did all this research. When I found out all that was involved, my attitude was there has to be somebody I can pay to do all this so I don’t have to do any work,” he said. “I had just done these books with Stephen Sondheim, so I called him up and he said you need a general manager and to call his, Richard Frankel. I called him. He was at first dismissive, then asked what the idea was, and when I told him it was old Jews telling jokes, he immediately said, ‘I’m in.’ A few days later he called to say his producing partners want in on this, and suddenly we had a team. Next, we needed an actual show to produce.”

That meant writing, and more writing, and then doing a lot of rewriting when the director Marc Bruni came aboard.

“It took three years, with ups and downs, but it was a lot of fun,” said Mr. Gethers. “We brought on Jack Viertel, a supremely talented and nice guy, and the writing really began to click. We emailed all our friends asking for their favorite jokes, so there was no lack of material. We had to shape it right. We didn’t just want to do the web site, which is wonderful but literally is only old Jews telling jokes. We wanted the jokes to go from birth to death, have some poignancy, and illustrate our concept of life sucks, but the way to get through it is to wind up being an old Jew telling jokes. And the worse life is, the funnier you have to make it.”

The play, with professional actors, opened to excellent reviews.

“The show, whose title has as firm a grasp on its audience’s desires as ‘Girls Gone Wild,’ is a winning concept executed deftly with affection,” pronounced the New York Times. “Would it kill you to pay a visit?”

Obviously not, because audiences have been packing the Westside Theatre. And those audiences are undergoing a change.

“When we first opened we did get our target audience, a lot of older Jewish people,” Mr. Gethers said. “The longer it’s running, though, the audiences keep getting younger and younger, really a diverse group.”

As one would expect, given significant Jewish populations in many places, this is a show that can go on the road, Mr. Gethers said.

“It’s amazing, we’re already starting to get offers from London, Los Angeles, Chicago, and certainly we should open in Florida in the winter. A lot of regional theaters will be doing it too because it’s a relatively low-overhead stage production,” he said.

To keep it fresh, jokes are replaced regularly with new ones. Well, maybe new to the play but not so much elsewhere.

Have you heard this one?

Goldstein walks into a restaurant and asks a waiter, “Pardon me, how do you prepare your chicken?”

The waiter replies, “We tell them right up front they’re not gonna make it.”