Mitla Pass (11 page)

“We’d be better off letting our option lapse.”

“A sad commentary from someone starting so promising a career.”

“Zadok is obviously turning into a junk writer.”

“He’ll never be heard from again.”

J. III wrote that despite these reports, he would publish
The Tenderloin
anyhow, when it was finished, because anything of mine would do fairly well after my first novel.

This was a pretty crude way for an editor-in-chief to behave, but he wanted to put me down for “going Hollywood” and he also wanted to be certain I only got a minimum contract.

I phoned for a week. He was either out to lunch or in conference or otherwise engaged, so I wrote him that I wanted out of Reaves Brothers, in my best Marine language.

Val was outraged. “They’ll know about your letter all up and down Madison Avenue. Haven’t we had enough trouble finding a publisher?”

“You’re asking me to stay with those sons of bitches after what they think of my new work!”

God damn, there were some things that Val just didn’t understand about me. Compromise, back down, keep quiet. God damn, Val! Don’t you ever get mad at anyone but me?

I put out a call for a literary agent, not really knowing one from another. I can’t say why I settled on F. Todd Wallace. He had a veddy/ veddy uptown manner and represented some good authors. He reminded me of those jerks at the Algonquin Round Table, but he obviously was one of them and knew his way around the literary scene. And that name, F. Todd Wallace—
INTEGRITY,
like the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Can’t go wrong with old Todd.”

As time unfolded I might as well have been represented by the Mother Superior at a Carmelite nunnery. Anyhow, I’d never have to deal with J. III or that bloody house again.

I left ahead of Val and the girls, to get set up at the studio and find a place for us to live. It was on a sour note. Things I always believed that Val would understand automatically—she didn’t understand at all.

Hollywood, 1954–1956

T
HE ACTUAL FILM DEAL
on
Of Men in Battle
had been made by my Hollywood literary agent, Sal Sensibar.

From our first meeting, I realized Sal was a back stabber who might well have been in the white slave traffic if he hadn’t been a literary agent. Sal had terminal cases of diarrhea of the mouth and megalomania. Nevertheless, I liked him. We came from the same side of the tracks, way back when. As long as I remained a marketable writer, Sal Sensibar would always find work for me. He liked
things,
lots of
things, things
with big engines,
things
that sparkled, furry
things
to drape on his tawdry wife and tawdry girlfriends, huge
things
to swim in.

When Sal dined me at Chasen’s and Scandia, back to back, I knew I was the bright new boy in town. The restaurant prices automatically signaled the value of the writer. Advice was doled out in huge globs. Some of it was even worth listening to.

Sal gave it to me straight. The studios usually pacified the author with four to six weeks’ work as a little icing on the cake in order to get his general ideas, nothing more. Few producers were ever serious about letting a novelist complete his own screenplay.

“Remember, Gideon, what you have written is preserved forever between the covers of a book.”

“Sal, I’m going to do this screenplay.”

“I’m not saying you’re not,” he said, “but you got to bear in mind a studio might buy a book for any number of reasons—as a star vehicle, because a director likes it, for its title value, or just as a rough outline for a film. They own it. You sold the rights to them. They’re not obliged to make a faithful rendition.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I like you, Gideon. Get through this alive and we’ll both make a lot of money together. But don’t go in there with any
farcockta
ideas of grandeur.”

T
HE FIRST DAY
at Pacific was awesome! I had passed through the gates of a place of glamour and power second only to the White House. I was assigned to an old-time staff producer, Kurt von Dortann, who had come over during the Lubitsch era when monocled Germans were all the rage.

Von Dortann had some great early successes. In a weak moment, after a big hit, the studio chief, Stanley Gold, gave him an ironclad ten-year contract worth millions, in order to keep him at Pacific.

When von Dortann started to bomb with one picture after another, Gold tried every which way to get rid of him. Von Dortann hung in there through public insults, humiliations, and degradations. Gold did everything but kick his shins and slap his face. Von Dortann would merely smile and bow crisply and pick up his paycheck.

What I met was a rag of a man, completely broken, in a haze of memories. Von Dortann still ripped around in a Porsche, but his old Spanish-style estate in Tarzana was like a haunted house, where he would get into his cups every night and bemoan the wife and daughter who had abandoned him. On weekends the place looked like a hookers’ convention.

At our first meeting von Dortann confirmed Sal’s warning that I was there for a long walk off a short pier.

“No hurry. Don’t rush,” he assured me. “Just write a treatment of what you think should go from the book into the film. An outline. Forget about the screenplay.”

Bullshit, little Eva.
I was ready.
Not that I was planning a Hollywood career, but after a lifetime in cheap sneakers the money, the office, the secretary, the new car, the power, the beautiful little home I was able to lease were like a stroll on the glory road.

You know what the hell it’s like taking your wife into a dress shop on Rodeo Drive and peeling off eighty dollars, cold cash, and not feel like you’ve been hit in the stomach? And not have to say for the first time in your life, “How much is this going to cost?”

I knew all about this place being a writers’ graveyard when I came. But dammit, as a poor boy, I wouldn’t have been human if I didn’t think I’d died and gone to heaven.

So, from day one, excuse me for repeating,
I was ready.

“Can I get a film run for me?” I asked von Dortann.

“Surely.”

“I’d like to see
High Noon
and I want the final script as well.”

High Noon,
for me, was the ultimate motion picture. It had a perfect, miraculous blend of script, acting, direction, music, art, sound, every element of film. As I watched the picture, I read the script simultaneously. Every few minutes I’d signal for the projectionist to stop and I’d dictate to my secretary the type of shot, what the camera was doing, how the film was scored and cut, sound effects, stunts. I broke it down almost frame by frame.

That was my entire schooling on film writing.

I knocked off a two-page treatment in twenty minutes and then went immediately into a first-draft screenplay. Von Dortann didn’t ask to see pages for the four weeks of my employment contract. When he did, I handed him a two-hundred-and-fifty-page screenplay. He gaped in disbelief.

Most of the other writers dragged ass to prolong their weekly salaries. They hated my guts. Tough shit, gentlemen; you sink, I swim. In the history of Pacific Studios they had never seen a novel of this size and scope turned into a screenplay so fast.

The golden moment arrived! I was summoned to the office of the head of the studio and its founder, the almighty Colonel Stanley Gold. My secretary cleaned some spots off my shirt and borrowed a necktie and jacket for me.

The opulence of Gold’s office was staggering. The array of “yes” men seemed like something out of a really bad movie. Gold had earned his rank during the war when patriotic fever swept the town.

“Find out what rank they gave Zanuck and Jack Warner.”

Thus, Colonel Gold.

“Hell of a piece of work, Zadok. We’d like you to carry on with a second-draft screenplay.”

Bingo! I was counting the money. Val! We’re rich!

“Cut this thing down to two pounds,” Gold continued, pointing to the screenplay. On cue laughter broke out, led by von Dortann.

Stanley Gold was in a folksy mood, retelling a story to me about how his family ran a butcher shop in Chicago and how they cheated their “colored” customers by putting their thumb on the scale when they weighed the meat. More laughter.

He cleared his throat and the entourage leaped to its collective feet. The audience with his eminence was over.

“It’s been a real pleasure meeting you, Colonel,” I said, “but the next time you buy one of my books, keep your fucking thumb off the scale.”

Everyone turned a pale shade of green in unison, while the Colonel mulled that one over. He finally decided it was funny and burst into laughter, at which time the ten others present also burst into laughter.

I
HAD A
strange, wild, and unique situation working for me at Pacific. For a number of years after the war, many military films had been uncomplimentary to the services.
From Here to Eternity, The Caine Mutiny,
and a number of others stuck in the craw of the Defense Department. It all came to a boil when Metro did a picture called
Take the High Ground.
The Defense Department found it too anti-Army and stopped all further cooperation with the studios.

Unless the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force provided masses of men, guns, tanks, ships, planes, and equipment, the cost of the big war film was too much for the studios to bear.

Thus far Pacific Studios had been clean and everyone was keeping an eye on
Of Men in Battle.
I was sent back to Washington to go over the script with the Marine Corps and take out the objectionable parts.

The Corps didn’t find a hell of a lot wrong. At the end of an easy week, I was ushered into the commandant’s office. It was down to PFC Zadok and a four-star general.

“My first duty is to the Corps, sir,” I told him. “If the studio gets out of line, I’ll let you know immediately.”

The Marines had benefited greatly from the novel. I was one of theirs and they trusted me. I returned to Pacific with a golden club to hold over the Colonel’s head.

At one point the studio tried to deviate from my screenplay by secretly putting on another writer. I walked out of the studio, leaving a two-word letter on my desk; namely, “I quit.” The next day I was implored to return. The Corps had expressed its displeasure.

“We feel that it is in everyone’s best interest to keep Zadok on through the filming.”

What the hell. The Corps was allowing Pacific to have eight cameras film their maneuvers and landing on Vieques Island in the Caribbean.

Colonel Gold got the message. I don’t know whether von Dortann had hired another writer on his own volition or on orders from the studio. I do know he was removed from the film and I suddenly functioned as a part-time producer, in on everything from casting to the final cut. That’s the way it goes in this town. When you fly, you fly.

While the picture was being filmed, the studio pulled out several shelved screenplays for me to putter around with. Two dead projects were revived and one of them made it to the cameras and gained me a reputation as a script doctor.

Then came my ultimate coup. I was working late in one of the cutting rooms with the Colonel and we both got blasted and I conned him into a world premiere in my hometown, Baltimore.

“You’re the God-damnedest hustler I’ve ever seen, Zadok.”

“I take that as a compliment, Colonel. Baltimore is going to love you.”

“I’ve got nothing against a hustler, as long as he’s doing it on my behalf,” he said.

I was kept on as a script doctor until the film was released.
Of Men in Battle
went on to become one of a half-dozen great films of World War II and made a bundle for the studio.

As my time was running out I began thinking hard about my next novel. How do I break loose from Val to do my research? Or, was I really using Val as a crutch for my own indecision?

Then came a famous “summons” to Colonel Gold’s office. This could cause mere writers to shake, rattle, and roll. What was more, Sal Sensibar had been “summoned” as well. Gold had set the stage for something big.

“I like you, Zadok!” he said after wearing us out with a couple of his cornball jokes. “I like you big!” Sensibar began levitating right there in the office.

The Colonel then offered me a three-year writer/producer contract starting at two thousand dollars a week and ending at four thousand. Jaysus! Jaysus! Valhalla! He had made damned sure Sal was present, in case I had any ideas of rejecting his offer.

Sal retreated, groveling out backward, which was no easy trick.

“You’ve got me, Zadok,” Gold said as a parting shot. “See, I took my thumb off the scale.”

Does all this shit sound like dream stuff? Well, I left all the rotten parts on the cutting-room floor. I was a fool to think I was going to be the first golden boy who drifted into town, made a killing, and drifted out without getting my hands bloody. My thirtieth birthday was coming up and I had a lot to think over.

A
S WE LEFT
the Colonel’s office, Sal Sensibar was breathing orgasmically. By the time we reached the parking lot he was having hot flashes, groaning, and his eyes were wild like he’d just seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

“Romanoff’s tonight,” Sal said, “eight-thirty.” Sal was a toucher, a knee slapper. He gazed into my eyes with all the pathos of a pleading German shepherd and pinched my cheek. “
Bubele,
” he said. That’s all he could say, “
Bubele, bubele.
” Sal had a stable of over twenty writers, most of them working. I had just replaced the reigning king.

As Sal reached his car, he was hit with a sudden gas attack and doused the fire with an antacid. “Romanoff’s, eight-thirty, and don’t be late,
bubele,
we’ve some heavy celebrating to do. Tonight with the wives. Tomorrow, who knows?”

“Aren’t you celebrating a little early, Sal?”

“No jokes, no fucking jokes, Gideon.”