Hollywood (32 page)

“Listen,” said Irving, “you want that book, don’t you?
From Here to Eternity
?”

“What do you mean, want it?” said Cohn. “I’ve got it.”

“No, you haven’t,” said Lazar. “Don’t bull me, nobody’s got it. Yet.”

“Well, I’m
going
to get it,” said Cohn.

“Not if you’re outbid, you’re not.”

“What the hell have
you
got to do with it?” asked Cohn. “You don’t represent that book, do you?”

“Never mind that,” said Lazar. “Let me ask you something. If I can get it for you, will you pay me my commission?”

Cohn was flabbergasted and saw the whole business collapsing about him.

“I should pay you for
buying
it?”

“That’s it,” said Lazar. “What do you care? You’re not paying the ten per cent that Jones is going to pay his agent. And if I can guarantee to get it for you, and if I
do
get it for you, I think it’s worth it.”

“Ten per cent of what I pay for it plus?”

“That’s it exactly,” said Lazar.

Cohn could not understand this concept. It was probably for that reason that he agreed.

Lazar then went to Jones and his agent, explained that he was representing Harry Cohn and Columbia Pictures, and that they were prepared to top any offer made by anyone else.

“Besides,” Lazar argued, “it’s not only the money, it’s the setup. Cohn sees this as his big one for the year. He’ll probably put Fred Zinnemann on it. He knows how to do this kind of a picture and how to sell it. You guys’re nuts to take it anywhere else.”

The property was acquired by Columbia and commissions were paid at both ends. It was a great day for agents. With one stroke, they had doubled their take.

One of the functions of an agent, by no means the most important, is to sell. Selling requires force of personality, subliminal communication, imagery, fantasy, persuasion, and an occasional fact. The great salesmen also add timing.

Irving Paul Lazar was once anxious to sell Jack L. Warner a play.

“I had a long meeting with him today,” Lazar explained, “but I didn’t mention it, I didn’t even bring it up.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I’m going to wait until the weekend after next, when I go to Palm Springs.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t? I go to Palm Springs every weekend, but Warner isn’t going this weekend. He’s got a preview or something. So he’s not coming down till the
next
weekend, so that’s when I’m going to bring it up.”

“Irving, I’m more and more confused.”

“Look,” said Irving impatiently, “I know what I’m doing. I know how to sell Warner. This is a type of material that he’s uneasy with, so I have to hit him with it hard and suddenly to get an okay.”

“But why Palm Springs?”

“Because in Palm Springs, every day he goes to the baths at The Spa. And that’s where I’m going to be when he’s there. Now there’s a thing about Jack, he’s eighty, you know, and he’s very vain, and he doesn’t like people to see him naked. So when I walk up to him naked at The Spa—I mean, he’s
naked
—well, I’m naked, too, but I don’t care who sees me.
He does
. And I walk up to him naked, and I start to talk to him about this thing, he’ll be very embarrassed. And he’ll want to get away from me, and the easiest way is to say, ‘Yes,’ because he knows if he says, ‘No,’ then I’m going to stick with him, and stay right on it, and not give up. So to get rid of me, he’ll probably say, ‘Yes.’”

Two weeks later, I read the acquisition of this particular property by Warner Brothers. I phoned Lazar and asked how it had been accomplished.

“How do you think?” he said. “In the buff, that’s how. In the altogether, just the way I told you it was going to work. Well, that’s the way it worked.”

Edward J. Mannix of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was an executive who reached his position in an unusual way.

When the Schenck Brothers owned Palisades Amusement Park, they were plagued by gangs of toughs who lived in the surrounding New Jersey area and would come into the park—swiping, stealing, or often simply disrupting the place for the hell of it. One of the ringleaders was a stocky little pug-nosed Irishman, named Eddie Mannix. The Schencks attempted to buy him off, without success. They tried to discipline him, but to no avail. When they threatened him, he made things hotter for them.

They decided to hire him, and gave him a job at the Palisades Amusement Park, where he became a security officer, charged with keeping the peace. He went from this job to others and, after a few years, became the manager of the whole enterprise.

Later, the Schencks went into the film business. Still later, they went to Hollywood, and Mannix came along with them as one of their strong and able people.

When I first met him, he was a solid, immovable fixture in the M-G-M front office. I liked him. He was extremely tough but eminently fair. He said what he thought to everyone, including Nicholas Schenck and L.B. Mayer.

He once expressed himself as troubled about the human situation. “You know,” he said to me, “I went around the world last year. And you want to know something? It
hates
each other!”

On another occasion, he said, “It’s no good. The whole everything. There’s somethin’ wrong with the way things’ve turned out. See, everything’s too
easy
for people. When I was a kid, if I wanted a baseball bat, or a glove, I had to sweat for it. I had to work for it.”

“I heard sometimes you used to steal it,” I said.

“Sure. An’ you think
that
was easy? That was hard. But what I was sayin’ was things just don’t come to me.
Now
the trouble is people are all soft; they’re soft because things’re too easy. Lemme give you a for instance. I’m ridin’ along in my car the other day, one of my cars. The Cadillac, and it starts in to knock. And I thought to myself, Well, when I get to the studio, I’ll have the secretary call up the garage. They’ll come and get it and see what’s a matter. And then I started in to think. What the hell? A car starts to knock, it’s like somebody starts to get sick. From that time on, it’s all downhill. I’ll fix the knock and somethin’ else’ll go on the blink, so I thought what the hell? The thing to do is trade it in, get a new one. Y’know what I mean? Start from scratch. So when I got in, I called up the Cadillac place and I said to the guy, ‘I need a new car. How soon can I get it?’ He said, ‘What color you want?’ I said, ‘The same color I got.’ He said, ‘What color is that?’ I said, ‘Maroon.’ He said, ‘You’re in luck. I happen to have a maroon right here.’ I said, ‘When can I get it?’ He said, ‘Where’s your old car right now, Mr. Mannix?’ I said, ‘It’s in my parking spot, at Metro, where do you think?’ He says, ‘I’ll
take care of the whole thing.’ An’ you know that at the end of the day, when I went downstairs, my old car was gone, and the new car was there, and that’s the way I drove home. Y’understand now, what I mean when I say things are too easy for people? That
that’s
what’s makin’ ’em soft?”

Writers were not often invited to the M-G-M executive dining room, nor were directors, except important directors on special occasions.

Since my wife and I were not part of the studio setup, or of the community, we came under the heading of “Special Visitors” and frequently, when we were working at M-GM, we were taken by Dore Schary or Lawrence Weingarten or L.B. Mayer to lunch in the executive dining room. It was located on the top floor of the Thalberg Building; one long table, set with fine linen and beautiful silver, china, and crystal. The food was excellent, but the conversation erratic.

Each executive had his own seat. In front of each place was a collection of pill bottles. No executive had less than a dozen. Some had as many as twenty or thirty. Various pills and capsules and drops to be taken with various types of foods, for all sorts of ailments, some real and some imagined. Whenever a new bottle appeared on the table, it was subject to scrutiny, sometimes caused by envy. The owner of the new bottle would explain its contents, generally a new and expensive wonder drug.

One day, Benny Thau, a vice-president, took his seat, swept all his pill bottles and boxes into a manila envelope and said, grandly, to one of the waitresses, “Throw all this away, Amelia. I’m not going to need it anymore.”

His announcement caused a stir.

“What happened, Benny?”

“You all right?”

“You’re not allowed to take medications anymore?”

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Ben?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and ordered knockwurst and sauerkraut. When he had finished his lunch, he took his watch from his wrist, put it on the table, and studied it carefully. Then, in the middle of someone’s analysis of the current political situation in France, Thau said, “Excuse me, please.”

He unbuttoned his vest, leaned back in his chair. Conversation continued. Thau took no part in it. He remained in his strange, withdrawn position for five minutes, then sat up brightly, and said, “I swear to God, it works.”

“What works?”

“This new short-wave radio treatment I’m on. There’s this doctor and I’m on a shortwave with him. After every meal, he sends out these short-waves and they completely digest my food.”

All at once, I realized that my wife and I were the only ones in the room laughing. The others took it in dead earnest.

We were to learn later that it was so meant. There was, indeed, such a doctor and such a treatment. In the months to come, Benny Thau was not the only executive who unbuttoned his vest, leaned back, and had his food digested by short-wave.

Joe Pasternak is an energetic, enthusiastic, laughing Hungarian who, in the 1930s, produced films in Budapest. Later, he went to Germany and encountered a bright young
director named Hermann Kosterlitz. They made a number of arresting pictures and were brought to Hollywood by Universal. Joe continued to call himself Pasternak, but Hermann Kosterlitz became Henry Koster.

At Universal, they began with a remake of one of their German pictures,
Three
Smart Girls
. The following year, they made
One Hundred Men and a Girl
, one of the outstanding successes of the year.

It was an idea that met its time and triumphed. A Depression story. Adolphe Menjou played an unemployed violinist who was growing more shabby by the minute. He organizes an orchestra of unemployed musicians. They play beautifully but cannot manage a livelihood. Here comes Deanna Durbin as Adolphe Menjou’s young daughter. She breaks in on Leopold Stokowski. With youthful fervor and charm, she convinces him to do something about it. She leads him to the ragged musicians in the rehearsal hall. They begin to play. Stokowski sits up and listens. Then—
the magic moment
! One hand comes up, then his other hand. Now he is on his feet and begins to conduct. A dissolve, and they are playing in Carnegie Hall, conducted by Stokowski. They are a smash. Fade-out. The end.

Pasternak and Koster were in business. They were offered everything on the lot.

One day in a story conference, Pasternak began to outline an idea. The writer said, “I don’t know. It’s just another Cinderella story.”

Pasternak said, “Just a moment. It seems to me I hear that word over and over again here. And how do you say? ‘Cinderella’?”

“Yes. Cinderella.”

“Spell it,” said Pasternak. It was spelled. He wrote it down.

“But what does it mean?” asked Pasternak.

The writer told him the story of Cinderella. The wicked sisters, the fairy godmother, Cinderella at the ball, the glass slipper, the search, the prince, the pumpkin coach, the happy ending.

When he finished, he looked over at Joe Pasternak, who sat behind his desk, tears streaming out of his eyes.

“Why, that’s the greatest goddamn story I ever heard in my whole life,” said Joe. “My
God
, what a story! Why don’t we make
that
?”

Everyone in the room was astounded.

“Why don’t we make that?” repeated the writer. “It’s been made a hundred times.”

“I’ve never even
heard
of it,” said Joe. “And I’ve certainly never seen it. Have you?”

The writer had to admit that he had not, not in the original form.

“We’ll make it,” said Pasternak. “With Deanna. My God, it will be
fantastic
!”

They began to prepare it. Alas for them, Walt Disney decided to do it in animation, and in those days, no one tangled with Disney.

Joe Pasternak regretted it always and would frequently bring it up in conversation. Cinderella—the plain, unadulterated Cinderella—was a dream of his life that went unrealized.

The literary appreciation of the executive mind often gave me pause.

In 1937, along with millions of other Americans, I had a profound literary experience. A friend of mine who worked as an editor at The Viking Press in New York sent me an
advance copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck. I read it through the night in a single sitting. I was moved, shaken, overwhelmed. I could think of nothing else for days.

At the end of that week, I was spending an evening at the home of Pandro Berman, the head of RKO.

“Pan,” I said, “there’s a book you must read. I don’t consider myself a literary expert, but I’m willing to say that it is, without question, the greatest American novel I’ve ever read. I’m sure it will live forever.”

“Send it to me,” said Berman.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve loaned my copy to a friend.”

“All right then,” said Pan. “Write down the title and I’ll get it.” I did so. He glanced at it. “Oh,” he said. “
The Grapes of Wrath
. Steinbeck. Sure, I’ve heard about that. I hear it’s great.” He crumpled the piece of paper I had given him and dropped it into an ashtray.

“Aren’t you going to get it?” I asked.

“No,” he replied sadly. “And damn it, I wanted to
read
that book. From what I hear, it’s the kind of book I’d go for, so I
wanted
to read it and then—damn it—Twentieth
bought
it!”

Darryl Francis Zanuck, former head of Twentieth Century-Fox, is the very definition of the word executive. He was, and as far as I know, still is, a dynamo. A small man who thinks big. If there is such a thing as the Napoleonic complex, Zanuck possesses it in full measure.

Energy is the key to his progress and to his success. He has suffered many reverses, any
one
of which could have sunk a lesser man; but Zanuck, in addition to everything else, possesses resilience.

He came to California in the early 1920s, a young and ambitious writer. He wrote anything and everything. Articles, stories, plays, novels, and scripts for Rin-Tin-Tin. He worked his way into production and in 1931, at the age of twenty-nine, became head of production for Warner Brothers. This job lasted only two years. He was not meant to be an employee. He was meant to be a boss. With Joseph M. Schenck, he founded Twentieth Century Productions. Two years later, when it merged with Fox, he became vice-president in charge of production for Twentieth Century-Fox.

No one who ever ran a studio was as completely involved as Darryl F. Zanuck. No detail of any one of the many productions made at the studio escaped his notice. The purchase of stories, the development of treatments, the writing of the screenplay. Casting. Designing. Direction. Cutting. Scoring. Dubbing. Advertising and promotion. He had his hand in everything.

He has always had passionately loyal advocates and bitter detractors. Clearly, when a man works in contact with so many others, on so many different projects, there is going to be a fluctuation of efficiency.

I worked with him, or rather, for him on several occasions, never with much joy. Still, I could appreciate the energy, the enthusiasm, and the driving force he represented.

I once tried to sell him an original screenplay. A comedy.

“I’ve read it,” he said. “I like it. But I don’t know much about comedy. Comedy’s not what I do best. So you’ll have to give me a couple, three days to let a few people around here read it who know about comedy. Because frankly, I don’t. I want to tell you I’ve had strange experiences with comedy. I’ve read comedy scripts, been crazy about them,
watched the rushes every day. Loved them. Taken the picture out and previewed it and laughed. And heard the audience laugh. Brought it back here to the studio. Recut it, fixed it, scored it, sent it out, and you know, in many cases—they’ve turned out to be my
worst
successes
!”

Stories were told about his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. He was an able polo player. Frequently, he would stride up and down his spacious office, swinging a polo mallet as he talked, improvised, invented.

A member of his staff was the former flyweight champion of the world, Fidel La Barba. He was called a production assistant, but in fact, acted mainly as Zanuck’s trainer. He would exercise with Zanuck, box with him, give him rubdowns, and generally help keep Zanuck in shape. He would also sit in on production meetings.

One evening, as Zanuck was striding up and down the office, swinging his polo mallet, Fidel took an olive from a plate on the buffet table (late-conference food had been brought in) and tossed it in Zanuck’s direction. Zanuck swung his mallet, caught the olive neatly. It went sailing across the room. Fidel repeated the action, time and time again. The other conferees found it necessary to duck, to shield themselves, and to be alert at every moment as the olives went careening around the room, ricocheting off the walls.

A friend dropped into Fidel La Barba’s office one morning and was surprised to find him packing his things.

“I’m through,” said La Barba.

“What happened?” asked his friend.

“I struck him out,” said La Barba.

Darryl Zanuck bought an original screenplay from me, called
Come What May
. It had to do with a meeting at the New York Foundling Hospital, eighty or ninety years ago, in which there are three sets of applicants, each of whom wants to adopt a baby girl. The film was to consist of a projection of what her life might be in each of the cases. In one, she dies in her early twenties. In the second, she lives to be a great old lady. In the third, she ends badly in middle age.