Robert: It was hard to keep a straight face in almost any scene with Leslie, but especially in our first.
Lorna Patterson, who was wonderful, comes up to me and says, “There’s a problem in the cockpit.” And we do the “Cockpit, what is it? It’s a little room where the pilot sits, but that’s unimportant right now.” So I go into the cockpit for the first time, and Leslie says, “Mr. Striker, can you fly this plane?” And I say, “Surely can’t be serious!” That’s the first time I say that, and then Leslie delivers the other half of the famous exchange: “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
Leslie had a little “machine” — nobody really knew about it in Hollywood then, but now everyone does. It became legendary. It was a little thing he put in his hand and squeezed, and it was basically a fart machine. It was like a handheld whoopee cushion, and he just played it like a maestro. Your eyes would be watering, you’re laughing so hard.
Well, when I was doing my closeups, Leslie would make these fart noises off-camera, and I had to keep a straight face. It would sound like, “Mr. Striker [fart] can [fart] you land this plane?”
I’d come from the theater, and sometimes people pull stunts on you when you’re doing something that goes on for months, and you have to learn to keep a straight face. (Laughs) So I guess I was trained my whole life for that moment, and I was able to keep a straight face.
