CHAUTAUQUA – “Laughter is a kind of social grooming we pick the fleas off one another with jokes,” Alan Alda said, grinning.

Laughter rolled across the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater as Alda and his wife, Arlene Alda joined Roger Rosenblatt for the final installment of Rosenblatt’s lecture series on Friday morning.

The pair gave a glimpse into their minds, pasts and hearts that brought laughter, admiration and everything in between.

Rosenblatt announced this interview would be his last, and said it was a great note to end on.

“All good things have to come to an end, and this has been one of the very best things for me and for Ginny,” he said. “I’m especially pleased that I can wind up with Arlene and Alan who are dearest friends. They are, to me, examples of how to live.”

Rosenblatt delved into the interview by asking Arlene Alda, noted author and photographer, about her book, “Just Kids From The Bronx.”

“I met a man called Mickey Drexler, and he owns J. Crew. I met him at a dinner party, and lo and behold, he grew up in my building,” Arlene Alda said, explaining she grew up in the Bronx.

Arlene said they went back to the building together with a group, and reminisced about their childhood.

“There was something there that really excited me. His childhood and his exhiliration in talking about it was really different than mine,” she said. “I lived in the same building actually with windows facing each other. Long story short, that was the beginning of the idea to interview, talk with and converse with other people from the Bronx.”

She said she spoke with more than 60 people for the book and their tales spanned over six decades.

Alan Alda then discussed his memoir, “Never Stuff Your Dog,” and how he balanced the darker material and tone.

“I think that mix that you’re talking about to the extent that I was successful with it came from my appreciation of old literature and theater which recognizes both that we’re going to die, and before we die we have to find a way to laugh,” he said.

Rosenblatt prompted Alda to tell the story that inspired the title of the book.

“Well, the title and the theme of the book comes from what happened to me when I was eight-years-old. I had a dog that I adored, he was my companion (and) he was a black cocker spaniel with long droopy ears,” Alda said. “He was so patient he used to let me tie his ears in knots on the top of his head. We used to give him leftovers to eat, and one night, unfortunately we gave him some Chinese food and I think he choked on a bone in the food.”

He said he was horribly upset, but his father thought of a way to help him grieve.

“The next day, my father showed up with two shovels and a blanket. I think he read this in some magazine that if you involved a child in the burial of the pet, it will help with the grieving,” Alda said. “We started digging a hole, and with every shovel full, I was crying harder until finally I was sobbing. Now, my father thinks, ‘Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.'”

Alda’s father said to him, “Maybe we should have him stuffed.”

“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Alda said, looking up at a pretend father figure with alarm. “(He said) ‘You know, we’ll take him to a taxidermist, he’ll stuff him and you’ll always be able to keep him.’ I’m sobbing, and I said ‘Oh sure, that sounds good.'”

He said they put the dog in the car, and took the dog to a taxidermist on Hollywood Boulevard.

“A Hollywood taxidermist,” Alda said, dead-pan. “Now, he’s a cosmetic surgeon.”

He said they put the dog up on the counter in the middle of a shop filled with stuffed squirrels on branches.

“This very studious taxidermist says, ‘What kind of expression did he have on his face?'” Alda said. “I said, ‘I don’t know, he was a nice dog.'”

Six weeks later, the dog arrived back at the house.

“By now, I’d forgotten all about it, and he’s wrapped up in butcher paper. We take the paper off and there sitting on this blue velvet board is my dog with this horrifying expression,” Alda said, baring his teeth in a display of the dog’s face. “It was really frightening. We put him in the living room next to the fireplace, and this is true, I swear to God when guests came to the house if you didn’t warn them about the dog half way into the living room they’d stop dead because out of the corner of their eye, they’d see this animal with a wild look in his glass eyes.”

He said he saw a couple back out of the room, drawing enormous laughs from the audience.

“I realized as my life went on that it really was deeply meaningful to me because you can’t hang on to something that goes,” Alda said. “When it goes, it’s gone. We can’t hang on to the people in our lives who die, we have to let success go, failures go it just happens and you move on.”

Rosenblatt asked Alda if he thought more creativity was needed for acting or writing.

Alda said he didn’t think more creativity was needed for one over the other.

“In acting, you have to put it through the filter of who you are, what you know and what your insights are and what leaps of imagination you can make,” he said. “If you don’t do that, you might as well just pass the script out to the public and let them read it. It’s a creative act to take something and make something of it.”

Alda then shared a story about his character, Hawkeye, on the hit television show “M*A*S*H.”

“I had no idea how I was going to play Hawkeye when it began. I felt I was very different from him,” he said. “I was standing in the shed waiting to go out for the first shot of the show. I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got my boots on, my clothes on, I’ve got my uniform when am I going to be Hawkeye?'”

Alda said he had to come up with something because the call came, “Take one, scene one!”

“All I have to do is walk across the compound, but I’m thinking, ‘I’m not him,'” he said. “There’s a nurse coming toward me and she gets close enough to me, (so) I grab her around the waist and give her a hug. Then, I’m Hawkeye.”