His apparent aversion to other people started out when he was pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty young.
Larry David — whose character on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” declared that he finds “human contact repulsive” — revealed Tuesday that his mother once wrote to a longtime New York Post columnist and psychologist over concerns about her then-12-year-old son’s dislike for people.
David, who created the hit HBO show in which he plays an exaggerated version of himself, said he was reading the column by Dr. Rose Franzblau one day and clearly recognized himself as the anonymous letter-writer’s son, he told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.”
The 76-year-old comic said his mother was a fan of the “Human Relations” advice column that Franzblau wrote for 25 years, until 1976, and would often talk about it — which led 12-year-old David to read it from time to time.
“She wrote a letter to the psychiatrist who had a column in the New York Post, Dr. Franzblau. She wrote a letter to Dr. Franzblau and I read it … and I recognized that this was my mother writing to the psychiatrist,” David said on the late-night talk show. “It was my mother, I know it.”
The psychologist would answer reader’s questions about sex, marriage, parenting and other relationship dynamics in the daily column that was syndicated in dozens of other newspapers across the country.
The “Seinfeld” co-creator’s mom apparently had questions about parenting her alleged anti-social child.
“She was saying that, ‘My son — he’s 12 years old. He hates people. He’s morose. He’s taciturn,” David said, laughing.
“And what really gave it away — ‘He doesn’t trick-or-treat. He doesn’t go out trick-or-treating.’ That’s me! I didn’t trick or treat. I knew it was me,” he exclaimed.
David said he wished he saved the newspaper clipping but without a doubt knew that the question was written about his preteen self.
His mother was always worried about her younger son and urged him to see a psychiatrist, offering to pay for it, according to a 2015 Vulture profile of the star.
And to this day, he still stands by his dislike of the Halloween candy-collecting tradition.
“Trick-or-treating: It’s stupid,” he said. “You’re dealing with strangers all over the place. Every apartment is a stranger. It’s rude to [be] banging on someone’s door. It’s stupid.”
“And at 12 years old, you thought this?” Fallon asked incredulously.
“Yeah, I knew that at 12,” David replied. “I don’t want to see all those people. And then the costume?! The costume! You gotta put a costume on? Come on.”
A search of The Post archives didn’t immediately turn up the anonymous column entry.
The Columbia University Libraries, which keeps a physical collection of Franzblau’s “Human Relations” column entries and other writings, notes that its archivists “have not identified the column that Franzblau wrote in response to Larry David’s mother,” noting its mention in a 2020 New York Times article.
