Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (3 page)

The way that guy knocked back two double shots showed me he'd had a lot of practice. Still, Johnny had no trouble standing up or doing stand-up, whereas I, on one simple, well-nursed glass of wine, would fall down. Sadly, when the show was canceled at the end of the season, so was I.

This experience reinforced something I already knew, something that has been true since the beginning of time: Being attractive helps. I wasn't totally dim. I always knew I could count on my appearance to some extent. But I also understood from the get-go that competence and intelligence matter more.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Can I Tell You About “Menial”?

How I wish my mom had hung around long enough to see how things worked out. She was, however, only there at the start, and it was a slow start. I didn't actually get my foot on the first rung of the success ladder until I got a job at the hugely successful agency called MCA (Music Corporation of America). I wanted a permanent job there, and I had no idea if they were hiring when I popped in to Personnel to fill out an application. The reason I found MCA so appealing is that it was across the street from my husband's first private office.

As a young lawyer with his own practice, he couldn't afford a secretary. I could type up his few letters on my lunch break and then again at night after work. As well, an agency represented another area of show business that I was curious about, one that I thought might lead to something. MCA hired me on the spot because I was a college graduate. Most of the other secretaries were not.

I had no difficulty doing whatever jobs MCA gave me while also doing my husband's work. And he was totally grateful. Our marriage projected the appearance of picture-book perfection, but it was a lie. All of it. I liked him, but when we had sex I lay in bed feeling nothing even though he was such a considerate lover, always eager to please me. Our lovemaking was not unpleasant but far from exciting, and I faked my responses. In that as in everything else, creating a great impression was always easy, and it saved me from embarrassing honesty. I was totally disingenuous, clearly not the doting helpmate and sweet little wife. My ambition far exceeded the feelings I had for him. I was selfish and self-involved, thinking exclusively of number one. I felt guilty even thinking about home and hearth because he was so kind and generous, so anxious to make it work.

As my career progressed and he saw less of me, he never raised an objection. He wanted to have children; I did not. I knew from day one that one day I would leave him, and children would complicate it. I hung in far longer than I should have. I knew it was over for me the first year. Guilt kept me there for five. But the bottom line is that he was the keeper, and I blew it. There were so many wonderful things about him to love—his thoughtfulness, kindheartedness, honesty, and loyalty, just to name a few—and I was too young and stupid to realize it.

Given the marriages that followed, I can now say he was the only decent man I married, and he was much more than simply decent. It no longer embarrasses me to talk about it because as I matured I developed enough grace to apologize to him, and we became good friends.

*   *   *

MCA was a class operation, and its overall appearance reflected that. The halls were paneled in mahogany throughout, and, hanging everywhere one looked, were antique equestrian prints matted exquisitely in matching black-and-gold frames. There was a lot of French country furniture, much of it the real deal. The heavy doors with their beautiful brass hardware matched the paneling, and I mention the doors specifically because many, many years later, when I'd become the occupant of one of those grand offices, the little Boston terrier I took to the office daily missed me so much during my lunch dates that he eventually gnawed his way through my door. One morning when I came to work, I found a sweet note on my secretary's typewriter from Lew Wasserman, the great gray eminence himself, asking me to replace the door. And I did—at no small expense.

“Uncle Lew” to some, “Mr. Wasserman” to me, he was the mastermind who built MCA into
the
studio conglomerate that dominated Hollywood. What started out as a company that booked musicians and bands grew, under his management, into a megamonster agency that represented singers, dancers, producers and directors, writers of screenplays and books, and famous actors and actresses of the day, including such legendary stars as Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and, of course, Ronald Reagan, whom this kingmaker would later help become president of the Screen Actors Guild. A dealer of unmatched stature, Wasserman alone was responsible for installing his candidate as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

His influence extended well beyond the Sunset Strip into governors' mansions, Senate chambers, international boardrooms, and the White House. He held sway over dozens of labor unions, and he became the cultural statesman for the entire entertainment industry. He and his wife, Edie, whom I met only once, brought glamour to Las Vegas by lending the city their stature and bringing along their friends. Maneuvering together, they helped shape the television industry into the business we know today.

Additionally Wasserman found time to pioneer the blockbuster film, and with his golden touch was responsible in large part for the successes of
Psycho, Jaws,
and
E.T.
And, as noted, he also found time to charge me for the door my dog ate. I am grateful to be able to boast that many years down the road we became buddies of a sort when he inadvertently discovered, through an offhand remark I made, that I was interested in current affairs. After that I looked forward to his New York visits because I would be invited into his palatial office suite to discuss party politics. The Iran hostage crisis was in the headlines, and it amused me that Uncle Lew asked me what I thought President Carter should do. I knew he was toying with me, and I loved it. On a more serious level he encouraged me to become more involved in the Democratic Party, in which I was a card-carrying member and he an important fund-raiser. At that point I was a Broadway producer working under one of Uncle Lew's corporate banners. But—back to beginnings!

I didn't mind the awful low-man-on-the-totem-pole job that MCA gave me: something called “floating secretary,” which paid $69.50 a week, even less than the starvation wages I'd received at temp jobs. At first it was not at all different from the temp jobs; Personnel had me replacing secretaries who were ill or on vacation.

The upside was that I got to work for all the important agents in the organization: vice presidents like Sonny Werblin, who a few years later went on to buy the Titans, the team he renamed the Jets. I was now on my best behavior, for I was a permanent employee who I felt would soon be placed in an office that suited me. Part of that choice, I was encouraged to believe, would be mine, pending availabilities, of course. I read everything I was allowed to see, and at Mr. Werblin's desk (though there only briefly). I started to learn what “tough” meant. Old Sonny didn't mince words. “Shut the door, you idiot. I don't want anyone to hear me,” he told one of the younger guys. I wanted to hear him.

Some of the agents I temporarily worked for seemed overwhelmed, and some dazed and confused as they wandered around the halls seeking information, but not Sonny Werblin. I admired his take-no-prisoners approach: Deal with what you're supposed to know, and take responsibility for it. After working for him, I looked for the tough guys. I asked for the difficult jobs on the music side, where the agents were frantic. I stayed late. I worked insanely hard, which attracted attention. I attracted attention. I knew how to subtly size up the powerful men. And they knew the look. Suddenly Sonny Werblin and Larry Rosenthal—the two top guys in New York—started to notice me, and the next thing I knew, Personnel was asking me what I wanted to do. When they ask you what you want to do at an agency, you say: “I want to be an agent”—unless you're a complete dummy. And so I did. I became an agent-in-training.

What that means is four things: You get a raise (totally modest), you get to sit inside your boss's office and listen in on his calls on an extension (except when the calls are personal), you get to be the gatekeeper and custodian of the calendar (which starts to put you on the shit lists of people who can't get in the door), and you get watched by those who make decisions—which is the only part that really matters. As far as I know, I was the only young woman accorded this privilege.

My “takeaway” from my early days at MCA has also been true since the dark ages: Hard work matters. When I looked at a ton of papers that had been piling up, I didn't wait to be asked, I made the pile go away. I didn't ask if I could finish the long memo in the morning. I made sure it was on “his” desk by the time he came in even if it meant staying late. I was efficient, organized, and as mistake-proof as possible. I knew that if I did a good job, I would be rewarded, and I was, for when I was called in to my first closed-door meeting, it was to discuss what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

The New Kids on the Block

I had been an agent-in-training only a few months when something unexpected happened. MCA was brought up on antitrust charges in Washington, DC. The government accused the agency of taking commissions from performers more than once for the same job, and Lew Wasserman was forced to choose between staying in the agency business or holding on to his new acquisition, Universal Pictures. Mr. Wasserman, whom I remember back then only as the man in the midnight-blue suit whose forbidding presence silenced all elevator chatter, decided in his infinite wisdom to keep the more profitable Universal. The agency doors were closing immediately. In one day all the lovely accessories that graced the offices and corridors of MCA vanished. It happened so fast it was as if a magician came through the halls and waved a wand that made things disappear. Neither a magician nor thieves in the night were responsible: It was the agents who ran through the halls grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down. Expensive lamps, blotters, trash baskets, leather pencil boxes and desk sets, some of the horsey prints, and the extant office supplies all left through the front door. Just about everything, short of the wall paneling and the largest pieces of furniture, was carried off.

A few days before MCA's doors closed for good, Personnel sent me as a floater into a double-office suite shared by Freddie Fields and David Begelman. Of all the guys I'd worked for, these two were the hippest, the coolest, and the most exciting. Freddie was the nattily sport-coated wisecracker; David, the very model of sartorial elegance—turned out every day in one of the dozen or more that he owned of the same exact suit; blue shirt by day, white by night—was the brilliant raconteur. Both were in their late thirties; both were sharp-witted, smart, flamboyant hotshots. They could call Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Ronnie Reagan, and Marilyn Monroe and get their calls picked up, but they had not signed these West Coast clients. Freddie had brought Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis with him from his prior job, and they were his ticket of admission to MCA. He was the agent responsible for Phil Silvers, who was a big Broadway, Hollywood, and TV star at the time, and he was married to the singer-actress Polly Bergen, who was also in great demand.

Freddie got his pal Begelman into the company, and together they were trying to hustle comedians popular in the Borscht belt. They always brought me into their inner offices for dictation when calling someone impressive so that I could be impressed. Seemed to me they spoke to the A-list only when I was around. They were show-offs in the most charming way, full of themselves and aware of it, keeping things light all the time. When we left the building together they did their “crowded-elevator shtick,” which never failed to delight me. David might say something like: “She was so sick: sneezing, coughing, running a high fever. I tried desperately to keep away from her, but she was crawling all over me.” And then he would let out a huge fake sneeze, and I would watch as everyone in the elevator shrank into the corners, backing into one another to gain as much distance as possible from him. Or Freddie would do the one about the rash and then just happen to notice it on his hand. “Omigod, David!” he'd say, feigning abject horror. “What's this? Do you think I caught it?” Nobody in the elevator had the slightest idea what “it” was, but from the horror etched on all the faces, you knew they thought “it” was at least as awful as the bubonic plague and clearly not worth catching. I would be giddy with laughter, trying my hardest not to give it up. They were both the most amusing men I'd ever met, and they liked that I liked them.

Actually, at the start I had a crush on them both, but it wasn't a physical thing; it was about their style. I loved their act, their two-man vaudeville show. They may have borrowed their shtick from the Borscht belt comedians they hung with, but I didn't know that then. I simply thought they were hilarious. Sadly, I found myself comparing my husband with these two characters. He was so much kinder and sweeter, but he couldn't make me laugh like they did. He didn't have this pizzazz. On the other hand, he was real, while all the pizzazz was phony baloney. That I understood this didn't matter.

So when these two colorful characters told me they were going to open their own office, asking if I wanted to come along with them, I jumped all over it. Both their secretaries opted to stay with Universal because each, having been with the parent company more than ten years, was fully vested in the rich MCA pension plan. I heard the universe speaking loud and clear, telling me that Freddie and David would get to the top, telling me to bet on them, and if I was clever I could ride their coattails to success. Of all the agents that were flushed out into the larger world the day MCA's doors closed, these were the two that would make it big-time.