JC2 The Raiders (34 page)

"If you think so. On both scores. I don't think he's capable of
either generosity or love."

"You're wrong. Anyway ... You want a job? Is that the point?"

"I want somebody to think I could
do
a
job," she said.

"I'll see what I can do. Now. Ben Parrish —"

"Why did you introduce me to him?" Jo-Ann asked.

"I thought —"

"If I marry him, you and Jonas both can go to hell."

Three hours later Bat and Glenda lay in bed together. Her hair was
not sprayed and spread softly over his shoulder. She was in a sleepy,
dreamy mood.

"Jo-Ann ... and Ben Parrish," she said quietly. "I
can't believe it."

"It was the Scotch talking," he said. "She couldn't be
thinking of marrying him."

"She had some more. Wine and Scotch. And
he
wasn't in good shape when they went to bed."

"Be lucky if they don't decide to go swimming in the purple dawn
and drown."

"Water's too cold to drown in," said Glenda. "When he
wades out deep enough for the water to reach his balls, he'll run
back to the beach."

When the bedroom was dark, as it was now, Bat touched the switch that
drew back the drapes. From the bed they could see the ocean and
tonight could see stars in an unusually clear sky, and could see the
odd luminescence of the breaking waves.

Glenda sighed. "The ocean is beautiful," she said. "But
I can remember being afraid of it. When I was twenty years old I
lived in an apartment with a girlfriend, on Nineteenth Avenue in
Bensonhurst. I was working clubs, and I'd come home at night, and out
there, just a little distance away, was the ocean. And out there ...
Who could tell? Fifty or sixty feet below the surface and only a mile
away, maybe a Nazi submarine. Maybe a whole wolf pack of them. An
armed force ... of the people who wanted to kill you. I suppose it
wasn't realistic. But the Nazis weren't so far away, you see. And if
you were a Jew —"

Bat interrupted her with a kiss. "Honey baby," he said
softly. "If any Nazis come ashore — There's a pistol in
the nightstand."

She sighed again, a noisy exhalation. "You protect Golda?"
she asked in the voice of a child.

He brushed back her soft blond hair and kissed her again. "Of
course I will, honey baby," he whispered.

"Uhmm ... You don't want to call me Golda, do you?"

"I think of you as Glenda."

"Golda Graustein. And Golda Graustein loves Bat Cord. It
promises disaster. Golda Graustein, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai
Graustein, is in love with the son of Jonas Cord, the grandson of
Jonas Cord. Love has never brought me anything but ... ill fortune.
It's never brought me anything but hurt. I'm hesitant to confess it,
for fear it will drive you away."

"Golda —"

"No. You must call me something else. Not
Glenda, either. I'm somebody else! Call me
Christy!
What could
be more Christian?"

"Who asked you to be a Christian?"

"But —"

"No, Golda. I don't ask you to be anything but what you are.
Hell, I'm what I am, and some people think that's not so great. Golda
... Golda ... Hey, I love you, Golda. You love me — Well ... I
love you, too. C'mere ... Christy, my achin' ass!"

Sponsorship and a network spot were the first big
problems for the
Glenda Grayson Show.
Cord Productions filmed
a pilot program on the Cord soundstages in March 1955, using the
format and plot Bat had suggested to his father when he first told
him about the idea.

Plot — A
Glenda Grayson Show
is in
rehearsal in a Broadway studio. The guest star is to be Danny Kaye,
but three days before the broadcast he is taken to the hospital for
an emergency appendectomy. Glenda's predicament comes to the
attention of her fellow nightclub performer Liberace, who rushes in
to help her. At home Glenda faces a personal crisis in the life of
her daughter Tess, played by Margit Little. Tess's prom date has
announced he has been grounded for knocking a fender off his father's
car. Glenda's call to the angry father doesn't help. Glenda consoles
Tess by letting her do something she has always wanted to do —
appear on the
Glenda Grayson Show
. Tess dances a solo number
to the music of Liberace, then joins her mother to dance in the
finale. The date calls to tell Tess his father saw her on television
and is so impressed by the idea of his son going to the prom with a
television star that he has relented.

"A catalog of venerable showbiz cliches," Jonas grunted.
"Probably be a big success."

Glenda appeared in a variation on her signature
costume, that is in a black body stocking under a lace-trimmed black
corselette, with the black fedora atilt over her forehead. On that
show she used for the last time her line
"Change your name,
Golda. Please!"
It was worn out now, and she would not use
it again.

Sam Stein took a print of the show to New York and
offered it to a score of prospective sponsors. They liked it, but —
Combining situation comedy with a variety show was a bold idea, and
they were not sure audiences would like it. Glenda Grayson was too
... Well,
sophisticated
for television audiences. ("Y'
know, this gets beamed into people's
living rooms
.") Her
costume looked too much like underwear, even though the body stocking
covered everything. Anyway, no one had ever appeared on television in
a body stocking. Margit Little's leotards rode too high on her hips.
One of the lines suggested she had been
intimate
with this boy
she was dating. Some of Glenda's lines
could
be understood two
ways. Too many shows were set in New York. Would people buy a
refrigerator Glenda Grayson recommended — any more than they
would buy one Sophie Tucker recommended? American housewives would
not identify with Glenda Grayson.

And so on.

Without a sponsor, none of the networks could commit a time slot.
When Bat returned to California from Northampton, Sam had not yet
found a sponsor.

Jonas picked up a bottle of bourbon from the rolltop desk in his
office — his father's office — in the Cord Explosives
plant. He poured into a shot glass, then handed the bottle and a
glass to Bat. Bat took a splash, no more; he did not share his
grandfather's and father's taste for bourbon.

"We could back off, take the loss, and forget it," Jonas
said. He flipped over the pages on which Bat had brought him the
numbers. "I've lost more than this on dumb ideas."

"It's not a dumb idea," said Bat.

"Depends on how you define a dumb idea. If an
idea is supposed to make money and then can't, it's a dumb idea —
by one definition, anyway. The other definition is, it's too damned
good
an idea, too good for the market. I don't know which this
is, Bat. Maybe you misjudged it. The fact that you're screwin' the
star hasn't influenced your judgment, has it?"

"
Absolutely not
."

"Okay. I take your word on it. But be damned sure it doesn't."

"Liberace is a good showman, whatever else you may think of him.
He judged it was a good idea."

"Yeah, but he's been paid for his role. He doesn't have anything
invested."

"Danny Kaye agreed to allow his name to be used on the first
show," said Bat. "He's agreed to appear on a future show,
if there is a future show."

"Another guy with nothing invested," said Jonas. "So
what are you going to do?"

Bat shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Okay. I know. Your old man, who plunked seventeen million into
the Pacific, as you politely reminded me, will bail you out."

"I can't ask
you
to pour more money
into it."

"
You can't?
The hell you can't! If you
believe in the project you can ask for more money. If you don't
believe in it any more than that, then by God I don't believe in it
either. Which is it?"

Bat stiffened. "I believe in it," he said. "But I
don't know what we can do. If —"

"I know what we can do," said Jonas.

ABC broadcast
Cord Television Presents: The
Glenda Grayson Show
for the first time in August 1955 as a summer
special, filling a time slot that would be filled in the autumn by a
returning variety show. The notices were encouraging:

—"Miss Grayson's exuberant review was a
happy relief from bland television variety shows."
The New
York Times
.

—"The youthful cast, led by Glenda
Grayson herself, went all out to offer an hour of exciting
entertainment."
Newsweek
.

—"Nothing can rescue television's
so-called 'situation comedies' from their hackneyed, overworked
cliches, and
The Glenda Grayson Special
did not accomplish
that impossible task. The variety segment of her show is something
else again. Television variety may never be the same. Treacle is out!
Sophistication is in! Or so we may hope."

The second show aired two weeks later, with Danny Kaye as guest. It
drew twenty-two percent of the viewing audience.

A church in Mississippi published a "protest
resolution," complaining that Glenda Grayson was indecent and a
threat to the nation's morality. "What does it say to our young
people when they see this woman cavorting on their television screens
in clothing decent women wear
under
their clothing?" A
few editorials laughed at that and won the show more public notice.

A third show was broadcast as a special in November. Two more
specials were broadcast in the spring season 1956. The ratings were
not spectacular but were not disastrous either. The network decided
it had a time slot for the show.

For the 1956-57 season, ABC slotted the show at
nine o'clock on alternate Wednesday evenings. American Motors came
aboard as a co-sponsor, so the show was no longer
Cord Television
Presents
but
The Glenda Grayson Show
.

The sun rose late in winter, so only a little gray light had entered
the bedroom when the telephone rang. Glenda woke and stared at the
ceiling as Bat took the call.

It was from Angie, calling from the Waldorf Towers apartment in New
York.

"Your father has been taken to the hospital. I don't know if it
was a stroke or a heart attack, but he was unconscious when they put
him in the emergency-squad ambulance. I'm leaving here now to go to
the hospital. I can't reach Jo-Ann. Try to do that, will you, Bat?
Then I think you'd better come here."

Reaching Jo-Ann was a matter of knocking on her bedroom door. An hour
and a half later the two of them were aboard a plane on their way to
New York.

Jonas was in a cardiac unit at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Bat
and Jo-Ann were allowed five minutes with him but found him so
heavily sedated he could not talk. They found Angie waiting in a
solarium. She said the cardiologist would talk with them and went to
a telephone to call him. The doctor joined them in a coffee shop.

"He'll make it," the doctor said, "but he's lost about
a third of his heart capacity. He'll have to take it easy from now
on."

Bat smiled. "What chance do you think there is he will ever slow
down?"

Angie shook her head. "He dictated a letter to you. He did it
when he began to feel the symptoms and after I'd called an ambulance.
I borrowed a typewriter here in the hospital and typed it out. It
isn't signed, but it's what he wants, and I think you will be
justified in acting on it."

The letter read:

It appears likely that I will be some time recovering from the flu.
You will have to take on some additional responsibility for a while.
That being the case, increase your salary to $125,000. Take it from
Cord Explosives.

I authorize you to act as my surrogate in all corporate matters for
such time as may be necessary. Don't overlook Cord Explosives or Cord
Plastics. They are more secure sources of revenue than the airline,
the hotels, or TV production.

You may require some assistance. See if you can get your friend David
Amory to leave his firm and become full-time counsel to us —
that is, if you want him. Having a lawyer you trust is very
important.

You'll have to tend to business for a while. Consider living in New
York. I urge you to come here alone. You know what I mean.

Give me complete reports as often as you can, as soon as I am able to
receive them.

As Bat read the letter, he lowered his chin slowly to his chest, and
his eyes flooded with tears.

Not until two days later was Jonas able to communicate in anything
but an incoherent mumble. He smiled on Jo-Ann and Angie and thanked
them for their concern, then said he wanted to talk with Bat alone,
about business.

Bat drew a chair up to the bed. "I'm sorry about this," he
said. "The doctor says you're going to be okay."

"Cut the shit and listen to me," said Jonas. "Lean
over this way, so I don't have to yell. Now listen. Morris Chandler
is talking to guys he shouldn't be talking to. Carlo Vulcano, Pietro
Gibellina, and John Stefano."

"How do you know?"

"When I was living on the fifth floor. Chandler hooked me into
his private telephone system. I didn't trust him, so I had my people
rewire the whole system, unbeknownst to him. He routes his calls
through a telephone drop in San Diego, so FBI types tapping those
guys' phones won't figure it out they're talking to a hotel in Vegas.
Of course, they never use names. They talk in codes. Chandler's code
name is Maurie. Nevada called him that, so it's got some kind of
meaning."

"What do you think they're doing?"

"They want to block us from putting up the Intercontinental
Vegas. They don't want the competition. They want to use the casinos
their way, and we're an embarrassment to them."