There Should Have Been Castles Page 7

  On our nights off from work we still managed to carouse, in our fashion, which meant that Big Al went home to his wife and his efforts to make her pregnant because there was a war brewing in Korea and he desperately wanted an heir and an exemption, while Arnie Felsen went home to the Bronx where his mother was making him diabetic with Jewish cooking so heavy that to lift it from the stove was to risk a displaced disc. This left, for the carousing, Don, Bob Steinman and myself. Or, as we referred to ourselves, “King Kock and the Nuts.” Bob was, as I said, a good guy. Also, he wasn’t stupid. He knew that 20th would fire Skouras before they’d fire him for he was a bona fide war hero, and a Jew. And that, in the movie business, was like having the first four draft picks on Nympho Night in the Cat-skills. Not that Bob needed any help in that area, he didn’t. He had such an overflow of willing women that Don and I, like jackals in the wake of a lion, had much to dine on if such was our desire.

  Unfortunately for me I found there to be an unbridgeable chasm between “flesh” and “carrion”; and though Don was not too choosy whose hind quarters he’d sink his canines into, I found that I was developing tastes that were unfulfillingly epicurean. Such being the case, and for the longest time, I feasted only with my eyes, filling them with unattainable quarry, spending my evenings alone with the hunger of abstinence and the writings of Twain.

  For lunch we dined at Killerman’s Bakery on Tenth Avenue, choosing from any one of a dozen huge rectangular cakes at ten cents a four-inch square. A container of coffee was another dime, as was tea, though milk was fifteen cents. We sat at two little tables because Killer-man’s had no luncheon trade. They set up the tables to accommodate us because they knew we were Jewish and because they were German—and maybe mankind could get together again one day, over a strudel and a two cents plain.

  On rare occasions we’d hit the Stage Delicatessen, just to see the waiters on parade. Bombastic, mercurial, short-tempered and hilarious, they’d argue with us, tell us what to order, spill mustard in our soup, make fun of our ties. It was all a show, of course, with the food the best kosher fare in town. And old Max Asnas, the proprietor, took great pride in knowing every customer’s name. What matter that he called me “Hymie” or greeted Don as “Sol”?

  On even rarer occasions we’d go to Lindy’s, where you had better have a reservation and three bucks to squander. Everybody who was anybody ate at Lindy’s. It was the land of Damon Runyon, his favorite haunt, where the strawberry cheesecake was immortal and men had been known to kill for the corned beef on rye.

  Wherever you sat at Lindy’s it was Magic Time. It was where Ed Sullivan held court and where Danny Kaye dropped down from heaven for stuffed derma. Sid Caesar, at the top of his game, showed up with his retinue of young writers, among whom were Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, only nobody much gave a damn for them at the time.

  Show people, pony-tailed dancers in pink and blue makeup and rehearsal clothes, actors with scripts, agents with deals—they all hit Lindy’s. The place was alive with theatre, movies and TV, and it whetted my desire to be a bigger part of it than, as Arnie so poetically put it, “a schlepper and a schlemiel.”

  Things began to happen just at about the time I thought they never would. Unbeknownst to me, Roland Jessup had put in a good word for me with Josh Meyerberg. More than that, Roland had encouraged me to take home some scenarios of upcoming 20th Century-Fox films. He told me to read them and rough out some advertising lines that he would then show to Meyerberg.

  I had no way of knowing whether my work was good or bad. I had never really tried to write anything until then except phony excuses that would get me out of high school assignments (and those I forged my mother’s name to). So I read some scripts, came up with some copy lines and accompanying layouts, and gave them to Roland each morning as I went past the Advertising department on my way to Publicity. For three weeks I did that, feeling as though I was making ransom drops to kidnappers who had already killed my child. Then I received a phone call from Josh Meyerberg’s secretary. Could I find the time to stop by his office? Yes. How was three o’clock? I’ll be there.

  Willa Nichols, Josh Meyerberg’s secretary, looked down her perfect nose at me for five seconds. Had it been her old nose it would have taken a half hour. “Yes?” she said finally. She was about thirty and lumpy, and it occurred to me that, as long as she was having her nose redone, she should have had her body smashed and made over also. Even if she came out as William Bendix it would have been an improvement. She was superior without cause, a quality I’ve never been able to tolerate in women, cats, and quiche Lorraine. “Whom do you wish to see?”

  “President Truman, but I’ll settle for Josh Meyerberg.”

  “Is he expecting you?” She only asked questions. Many people do that. Even their declarative statements go uphill and have question marks hung on the ends of them.

  “Yes. He’s expecting me.”

  “And you are—?”

  “Spotty Ginsburg.”

  She was confused at the inconsistency between name and note pad and ran her finger up and down the page in her appointment book as if she were goosing a moving bug. “Do I have your name here?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Ginsburg?”

  “Yes. Spotty.”

  “Spotty?”

  “As in Spofford.”

  “Spofford Ginsburg?”

  “I also use the name Webber.”

  “Ben Webber?”

  “Yes. Maybe that’s it.”

  She seemed cross with me and her voice dropped. And even though it was a question, it was also an invitation for me to stop the shit. “Are you Ben Webber?”

  “My God, yes! Are you Josh Meyerberg’s secretary?”

  “Am I?”

  “Then will you please tell President Truman that I’m here and do not wish to be kept waiting?”

  “President Truman?”

  “Jesus Christ!” I slumped into a chair. She inhaled as she stood, so strongly that both nostrils pinched together as if someone had clamped a clothespin over them. She disappeared into the office beyond—and returned as Josh Meyerberg.

  “Ben?” He shot the word at me as one might say “duck!”

  I stood up quickly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on in.” He turned and went in and I followed. As I went in, Willa Nichols went out. By the tilt of her perfect nose I knew that I had lost a friend. Either that or her nose was still setting and she couldn’t put it down.

  “Sit down.” Meyerberg was to the point. No time to waste. He walked fast, talked fast, and, judging from the Alka-Seltzer on his desk, ate fast. But he also was pleasant, a handsome, black-haired man of thirty-eight or so who worked with loosened tie and rolled-up shirtsleeves. He had my advertising suggestions on his desk, a pile of them. I had no idea I had turned in so many. “Who told you you could write advertising?”

  “Nobody.”

  “He was right. Most of these are awful, but so are most of the ads we turn out.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what the hell else to say.

  “Therefore, you could slot in here very easily. However, a couple of these are almost good. Which can only mean that you’re liable to upset our whole operation if you’re not careful.”

  “I’ll try to be careful.”

  “This stuff you did on ‘Fireball’—” He read my copy aloud. The picture would star Mickey Rooney and was about the Roller Derby. “‘Rooney runs riot on the Roller Raceway’—that’s so bad, it’s good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This line of dialogue you have him saying—’Nobody’s throwing rose petals on the road to success’—does he say that in the film?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you have him saying it in the ad?”

  “Because that’s his attitude in the film.”

  “There is no film. Not yet. Just the script.”

  “Well, that’s his attitude in the script”

  “There’s
still time. Do you think we ought to call Darryl and tell him to put the line in the script?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not dialogue. I mean, as dialogue it would be lousy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the character he plays would never say it.”

  “Then why would you have him say it in an ad?”

  “Because, in the ad, we’re saying it and it’s all right if we say it but it’s lousy if he says it.” I was enjoying the exchange and every fiber of me told me that he was enjoying it, too. He was taking my measure and I felt up to it.

  “Roland Jessup is a good copywriter.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “A lousy office boy but a good copywriter. That’s why he’s being moved up. What I need now is a good office boy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But not one who’ll develop into a lousy copywriter.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’d rather have another lousy office boy who’ll develop into a good copywriter, rather than the other way around. What do you think?”

  “I think I can be a lousy office boy.”

  He pressed the button on his intercom. “Willa, see if Charlie’s in his office.”

  W. Charles Gruber was in the steam room so I waited until 5:30 to see him. Where Josh Meyerberg’s office was Spartan and open, Gruber’s was all cushy and tucked away, guarded by a secretary somewhat more attractive than Willa Nicholas—Patricia Jarvas, a skinny redhead, about nineteen or twenty, whose face was dotted with greenish freckles and whose nose was so snub that it was hardly there at all. She had a nose that Willa Nichols would have killed for and, the more I looked at her, the more I liked her. Skinny she was, and pale and ill-at-ease and annoyed, but there was something there. Beneath that flat chest something was lurking, something sensual and untapped, a mother lode just waiting for some prospector’s pick-axe.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” she asked, in an accent so indelicately Brooklyn that I thought perhaps she was kidding.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re starin’ at me. I can’t help it. I gotta sit here. Do I stare at you?”

  “No.”

  “So cut it out, all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll be back soon. You gotta be patient.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “And I can do without being ogled, will ya?” She picked up whatever magazine she had been reading, answered a few phone calls and continued to be uncomfortable in my presence. I couldn’t help but wonder why Gruber would have a secretary like Pat Jarvas. Either she was very good at her job or he was banging her. But why would anyone like W. Charles Gruber want to bang anyone like Pat Jarvas? Maybe he wasn’t banging her. Maybe someone simply left her on his doorstep with a note to please take care of her and hide her if the dog catcher comes. And yet, by God, there was something about the girl that was downright sensual. Must’ve been her elbows.

  W. Charles Gruber swept so quickly past that I didn’t even see him. But I smelled him. He was wearing Guerlain, the same cologne that Alice had me wearing. Could it be Alice and W. Charles Gruber? Never. I believed in coincidence but not in the supernatural. “Bring your pad.” He was obviously talking to his secretary, which was just as well as I had no pad. She took her pad and went in, closing the door as quietly as death.

  I waited. Another half hour. Looking at the autographed photos on the wall. Linda Darnell. Susan Hayward. Betty Grable. All of them dedicated “to Charlie” with love, or devotion, or everlasting affection. The phone rang a couple times but was answered inside. I waited some more. He was making me wait. It was exactly what I had expected and I immediately grew comfortable with the situation, like an actor familiar with a script the very first time he picks it up. And it struck me that everyone I had met since coming to 20th acted as though he or she were in a movie. I attached no significance to it because, after all, any large company and its people were but a microcosm of the rest of the world and Pat Jarvas was standing there, looking at me as if I were crazy. “Hey?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I said you could go in.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “And watch out. He’s in a lousy mood.”

  “So am I.” That made her wonder. I had her respect. What I’d ever do with it was up for grabs. I went into Gruber’s office, feeling as though I should be doing it in a tumbril. But I wasn’t scared. If anything, I felt just the opposite. He was just one more bully I was picking a fight with in Carmody’s junkyard. And goddamnit, after waiting so long to see the sonofabitch, I’d be fucked if I’d back off or knuckle under.

  W. Charles Gruber was round. Round body, round head, round hair (what there was of it). And he had squinty eyes that made him look like a dimpled dumpling. So this was the scourge of 20th Century-Fox, I thought. This was the ogre who made men quake. I have many recollections of that man but the strongest, most all-prevailing one is that there was no way for anyone to have liked him at first sight.

  “What is it?” he asked as though he’d rather not, as though he had a million things to do but was seeing me because, as King, he had to set aside thirty seconds a day to hear the problems of the peons.

  “Mr. Meyerberg asked me to see you.”

  “I know.” He leaned back in his chair, his belly going up so high that it just about obscured his chin. “You want to be transferred to Advertising.”

  “Yes, sir.” He didn’t invite me to sit down. He just had me standing there—some kind of perverted psychological ploy calculated to break me down.

  “So why do I have to see you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And so he told me. “I have to see you because I am responsible for all personnel in this office. No one transfers, or is fired, or goes to the crapper without seeing me first.”

  I nodded my comprehension of his powers. Then I sat down and crossed my legs and got comfortable because fuck it.

  “I didn’t ask you to sit down.”

  So I stood up.

  “Sit down.”

  So I sat down. And I had the weird feeling that the sonofabitch liked my style. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if I was wrong because I liked my style.

  “I can quash your transfer, you realize that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Usually we keep messengers in Publicity until they either quit or die. Why should you be transferred? Why not somebody else?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Josh says you’ve written some copy, that some of it is good, and that he’s moving his office boy up to apprentice copywriter, and that he wants you to take over with the ink wells and the pencils and the paper baskets and all that shit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He can’t have you unless I approve it. Why should I approve it?”

  “Because you respect Josh and he thinks I can do it.”

  “What do you really think?”

  “I think you’re a tub of shit.”

  He leaned forward, his smile vanishing, and he took a few seconds to try to wither me with his fierce squint. When that failed, he said the obligatory words. “You’re fired. Get out.”

  “Fuck you. You can’t fire me.”

  “Why can’t I fire you?”

  “Because you have no reason to.”

  “You just called me a tub of shit.”

  “You are a tub of shit. But nobody’d believe that a guy up for advancement would say that to your face.”

  “So what?”

  “So the Guild will pull a strike. They all know it’s going to come to that anyway one day. They’d be happy to go out fighting.”

  “The SPG is full of communists.”

  “So is Russia, but they can’t fire me either.”

  “How come you’re so brave? You got a lot of money?”

  “Yeah. I own a hotel on Boardwalk.” I was going full tilt. I had shot off my mouth and had survived. Better
than that, I was gaining ground, making points in whatever moronic game we were playing.

  “Where’d you go to school?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “It says here University of Pittsburgh.”

  “I deny it.”

  “Says you played football.”

  “I did. Under the name Marshall Goldberg.”

  “You Jewish?”

  “You?”

  He laughed so hard that his chair went all the way back, causing his head to bong against the wall. It didn’t bother him, he just kept on laughing, his feet seeming to pop out from under him, kicking at the ceiling like a mindless slut trying to rid herself of her panties.

  I will never know why I was so brave or if it was bravery at all and not some other madness. Certainly it wasn’t smart. But I learned something about myself that day. I had a thermostat, a setting, call it a “bullshit setting.” I could tolerate anything this side of the bullshit line, but go beyond it and my balls would clang and I’d come out swinging. I think I got it from my father. He had it but it never served him well. Anyway, I got the job.

  Though hardly a job for royalty, it was at least four castes above the pariahs who labored in Publicity. I was encouraged to write copy, not that any of it would be used. It was like being a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, ready in case I was called in but knowing that if I was called in the game was already lost.

  There were three real copywriters. There was Roland, newly raised to forty-five dollars a week. There was Mickey Green, a thin lunatic of a man with only a fragile connection with reality. And there was Dora Leindorf, a small lady whose husband was a junior partner in some seventeen-name law firm, a fact that Dora used as an excuse to never attend union meetings though no one ever truly saw the connection. Dora paid her union dues, wrote tidy copy, was always a lady, but remained premeditatedly apart from the rest of us, coming and going like a sanitized society girl, even though all three writers and the new office boy worked in a green glass-walled fishbowl where you couldn’t pick your nose without someone saying, “Ha! Caught ya!”