1952
I worked like a bastard on my three plays for Frank Brokaw. And with every page I learned a little more about myself as a writer, about what I could do well and what I had trouble doing at all. I continued to write the three plays simultaneously, jumping from one to another so that whenever I returned to any one of them it was newly fresh in my mind. It was a good way for me to work. It smacked of mass production but the plays were so different from one another that the designation could not properly be applied. I was, by then, typing fairly well. I still made mistakes but my work was comprehensible. I didn’t let it worry me because NBC would have it all multigraphed later on.
As to Ginnie Maitland, I was coming to terms with the idea that ours had been an affair of intense but short duration, a firecracker in a tin can—loud but quick, and with nobody getting hurt. It had been weird, Maggie and Ginnie, but it had to be taken in stride. To pursue it beyond its natural conclusion would be to ask too much of it. Stretching a crazy minute to an hour’s length would not multiply the craziness by sixty, it would only divide it by a million. All things have a beginning and an end, even though the geometry of it may not be immediately apparent.
I had loved my three stewardesses and Maggie and Pat, and I could see all those endings as clearly as if I had written them myself. I had loved Ginnie, and, though I had fought the ending of it kicking and screaming, the end had arrived all the same. The idea, then, was to not be bitter at the affair’s conclusion, but grateful that it had taken place at all. Nor should one look to place blame or seek exoneration when it all does fly apart and go boom. One must leave when it’s time. One must tip his hat and thank the lady for her time and her tears, knowing all the while that everything that goes up has to come down—that axiom applying to moods, stocks and elevators, balloons and passions, aviators and erections.
And yet, I continually asked Barry about Ginnie. Though he was reluctant to keep me plugged in, he did tell me about her upcoming appearances on The Joey Magnuson Show. I was pleased for Ginnie, truly, pleased that she had landed on her feet and had come out swinging. In a way I was also pleased that I had been spared having to explain that night in the St. Regis. It would not have been easy.
And, if Ginnie and I ever met again, I could be as annoyed with her for not having allowed me to explain as she might be with me for the incident’s ever happening at all. Things were evening out. Time was doing its job. It would take more time, to be sure, but the girl was fading. One day she would be part of the wallpaper of my life, occurring and recurring at specific and well-defined intervals, part of an overall pattern that I would learn to live with because, in the final analysis, I would have picked it out for myself.
I delivered all three of my scripts to Brokaw in one trip, ending my months of monastic living and stepping out into the world only to realize that all of the summer and much of fall had slid past me and that it was late October. So, like the pilgrim of old, I revisited the Museum of Modern Art, again studying the girls therein and wondering which of them might fall in love with me if I asked her to.
I went to Saks and bought some shirts, and in Dunhill’s I picked up three boxes of Monte Cristos plus another three of Uppmanns. I smoked one of them while walking down Sixth Avenue, half expecting to conjure up Don Cook and his magic nose. I went home and waited for Jerry Kaplan’s call—two days.
But he did call and he loved my plays, as had Brokaw, and he was sure that Jason Kimbrough would love them, too. I would not have been surprised if Kimbrough hadn’t wanted any of them, as I had caused a tiff in the Kimbrough family, albeit innocently, by having my picture in the paper with “the Mrs.” Kimbrough hadn’t much cared for it, he and his wife evidently juggling an uneasy marriage at the time the photo appeared in print. It was all easily explained but the man did look at me slightly sideways from then on, as did his wife, though, I suspected, for another reason. But I knew to steer a course wide of her—to Madagascar via the Cape of Good Hope—for I had had enough of women in their tardy thirties. I didn’t need another Maggie, especially if it turned out that the Kimbroughs had a daughter like Ginnie.
Ginnie. I had thought of Ginnie. Obliquely, offhandedly, but of Ginnie all the same. She was there faintly, lightly—still on my shoulder, still on my mind, but in silhouette, not solid. And further away. Each time further away.
“The Magic Horn” swung into rehearsals, Norman Felton directing. Sal Mineo was a nice kid, very young and into lifting weights, but decent and learning in every way he could. Ralph Meeker struggled to get to rehearsals on time. He always came in carrying a container of milk and looking as though he had slept under a bear. But he did a good job, as did the rest of the cast, all of them jazz musicians. I got some nice reviews and some more phone calls in which people on the other end hung up as soon as I answered. Jerry Kaplan told me that the stuff came with fame and that I should get an unlisted number. But I wasn’t quite ready for that because, who knew, maybe someone might call me from out of the past, someone I might like to speak to.
NBC, via Brokaw and Kaplan, had begun to make noises about a long-term contract, to which Barry was very receptive but on which no one had as yet asked for my signature. Another agent was seen hanging around. He was from William Morris—tall, bluesuited, grey at the temples, and very presidential. The few times we chatted he told me not to sign with anyone too hastily. His name was Vernon Stacey and he impressed me. Though I suspected that he was soliciting me, he was so low-key that I often was unaware that he’d been around until I saw him leave.
I watched the Pickering Trio on television. They were good enough in their first number but were fantastic in their second. The tall blonde in particular, naively sexy, was in such control of what she was all about that even Joey Magnuson and Mara-Jayne came close to dissolving in laughter. It was Ginnie, I could tell by the ponytail; but the old TV had seen better days, and its seven-inch screen was greying around the edges and the whole thing was coldly two-dimensional, whereas the girl I knew had been most decidedly three. When the show concluded, I suspected that I didn’t know her anymore. And when I turned the set off, I had to wonder if I’d ever known her at all.
“The Fair-Haired Boy” went on, directed deftly by David Greene, a Canadian. Jackie Cooper played me, and the nearest actor we could get who was large enough to play Sam Gaynor was a half-ape, half-Viking named Ulf Redmond. If Sam Gaynor had been an indifferent adversary before that play, he had to be a blood enemy after. Yet all I had done was to put him up there in all his boring splendor, designing his three longest monologues so that they were interrupted by commercials—and were still going on after the commercials had concluded. The effect was astounding, making the character look as though he never stopped talking, which was the essence of Sam Gaynor and was why I doubted if he’d heard the show, let alone seen it.
When I got back to the apartment that night after having chatted briefly with Vernon Stacey (who was about to make his move), I received another of those prank phone calls. It was unsettling because I knew who I wanted it to be. Anyway, on the following day I arranged to get an unlisted number. So ended an era, finally, and by my own hand.
The reviews were fine and Brokaw and Kaplan and two NBC vice-presidents came at me with visions of glory and offers of the moon. But Stacey had advised me not to commit, and, as nicely as I could, I didn’t.
The Pickering Trio did another Joey Magnuson Show and were once again funnily great. But someone in the control booth had chosen to train the camera almost exclusively on the blonde ponytail, superimposing her face over a full shot of all three of the dancers. It was a brilliant move, for the ponytail’s face was a perfect mirror of the trio’s dancing, reflecting innocence, then interest, then confidence, then bliss. And even when the whole number came apart at the seams, the ponytail never knew that it was she who had caused it. The camera work gave the choreography elements of Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Pearl White. And damned if that leggy blonde wasn’t Lombard incarnate.
My third and final play of my NBC contract was “The Lonely Look,” directed by Harvey “Slidey” Epstein. It could not have gone better. Though Janice Rule did not much look like Ginnie, she did have that dancer’s grace and a spooky kind of repose that made her wonderful in the role. As for Jack Lord’s playing me, that was a stretch. He was better-looking, more intelligent and less obtrusive. But, because he was also a helluvan actor, I could not object to his being cast as the writer. He gave the part a sympatico that even I hadn’t realized was a prerequisite to the play’s working. And I was pleased to see what a nice guy I actually was underneath all that sturm and drang. I had taken liberties in the scripting. It wasn’t exactly Ginnie and me. And it had a happy ending because, in the fifties, that was more often than not required. But in its own way it worked better than had any of my preceding plays.
We had our meeting in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel, Vernon Stacey and me. It was the first time we had really talked. All the other times we had merely touched elbows and grazed conversations. That night he was not one for beating around the bush. Even before our first drinks had arrived, Vernon Stacey had already come to grips with the reason for our being together.
“Barry Nadler is a nice man,” he said. “And NBC is a nice network. And Kemper is a nice aluminum company—but you’ve already outgrown all of them. And to saddle yourself with any of them would be to stunt your career before it had a chance to get properly started.”
“Barry’s been good to me.”
“Really? Did he waive his commission?”
“No.”
“Then he wasn’t being all that good.”
“Will the Morris office waive their commission?”
“No. Not because we’re not nice but because it will be too large a figure. If you were starting out, and we believed in you, and our commission was fifty dollars, we’d waive it if you asked us to. But you’re not starting out, you’re cresting. And you’re worth a lot more than NBC is offering.”
“Do you know what they’re offering?”
“I don’t have to. No matter what they’re offering, it would be wrong for you to accept. It’ll tie you up, keep you in the corral when you should be allowed to roam. I can get you more for one movie assignment than they can pay you for all five of those plays.”
“How do you know it’s five?”
“I guessed. Ben, NBC is hung with a weekly budget. If you want to limit yourself to television, stay with Barry Nadler and with Brokaw and be happy. But a film studio has a different budget for every film, and it’s big. And screenwriters get a big hunk of it. Warner Brothers has already called Barry Nadler. Twice. He’s turned them down.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Why would Barry turn them down?”
“Because he knows that once you leave New York you leave him. He can’t possibly handle your career from here. It’ll be but a matter of time before some big talent agency convinces you to join them. The Morris office thinks the time is now. We want you, Ben. We think we can help your career and make big money for ourselves in the process.”
“Does Helen McIninny still work for you?”
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
“She’s very good. Would you like her to be assigned to you?”
“I don’t know. I’m no Henry Denker.”
“You lost me.”
“No. I would not like Helen McIninny to be assigned to me.”
“Barry Nadler handles comics, acrobats, jugglers, and dance teams. He’s strictly Borscht Belt. How he talked you into signing with him—Are you signed?”
“No. It’s verbal.”
“And you feel you have to honor it.”
“To some degree, yes.”
“I’ll take a guess right now that it will cost you fifty thousand dollars this year to have Barry Nadler represent you instead of us. Ten percent of fifty thousand dollars is five thousand dollars. Give him the five thousand dollars and call it quits.”
“Where do I get the five thousand dollars?”
“From your first movie assignment.”
“I don’t have it yet.”
“You have it the minute you sign with us. Do we have a deal, Ben?”
“Can I take a couple of days to think about it?”
“Take all the time you want. Just don’t sign anything without letting me know what you’re signing. Even if you don’t sign with us, I’ll help you in your deal with them.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“To impress you. So that next time we come back at you to sign, you’ll think of us kindly and remember what a schmuck you once were—and you’ll sign.”
“I’d like to think about it.”
I thought about it. And while I was thinking about it I received a long distance call from Don. Said he was coming east and was there room in the old pad—for two more. I said yes but that he’d better hurry as I might be going west. He said he’d hurry.
Jerry Kaplan was being very solicitous of me. He asked if I’d like to join him and his wife for the opening of the new show at Bill Miller’s Riviera. He said I could bring a date but I simply couldn’t think of anyone so we went as a threesome. Karen Kaplan was a smashing-looking girl who just couldn’t bring herself to fawn over me as her husband was doing, and I liked her for it. Our table was not the best, about midway. But it was the center table of a dozen that sat on a one-foot-high raised landing, thus affording us an excellent if somewhat distant view of the stage.
The dinner was passable. The Don Arden Girls did a nice opening number, strutting about in floral array to a “Lady In The Dark” medley. Then—a big surprise to me because I hadn’t even looked to see who was on the bill—out came the Pickering Trio and it took me a few moments to accept that it all was happening. They did their first number straight, with Florrie’s replacement doing just fine. But it was the blonde ponytail who caught my eye, as she always had and always would.
They danced in meticulous synchronization, sort of a modern version of “In A Country Garden.” It was precise, stylish and clever and the audience ate it up. Their second number never got started, at least not the way I thought they must have intended it. Because out came Normie Birch, on point (on ankles would have been more correct), in some frilly ballet get-up—and it was mayhem. Everyone knew that it was ad lib because it was a show-wise audience and they knew what could happen on opening night with Howard and Birch. But I don’t think they knew how funny it was going to be until that leggy blonde stood up there with Gary Howard, feeding him straight-lines and often topping him. By the time it was over, some guy was pulling the other dancer off a ringside table where a drunk had already begun to dig his way into her with a spoon. The rest of it segued into a kind of pandemonium that hadn’t been since Olsen and Johnson’s last production of “Hellzapoppin’.”
I looked over at the Kaplans and they were as out-of-their-minds hysterical as everyone else. I scrawled a hurried note on a cocktail napkin, and gave a waiter five bucks for making sure that the blonde dancer got it. Unfortunately, I gave him that fiver before I’d signed my name, and the oaf took off with both, practically tearing the napkin out from under my autographing fingers.
The Kaplans dropped me off at my building. I thanked them and then proceeded to fake the next few days, avoiding everyone and gathering my courage so that I could tell NBC and Barry that I’d be going with the Morris office. Barry took it very well. He also took the five thousand dollars I offered him to break my nonexistent contract. Jerry Kaplan sighed and said he hoped I was ready.
Don called again. He and his girl were flying in the next day. There was a cover story in Life magazine entitled “The Riviera Rowdies.” The photo on the cover was of Gary Howard, Normie Birch and the Pickering Trio. And inside there was one of Ginnie alone that looked so good that I almost ate the page. In the text was a passing reference to the fact that “Miss Maitland and Mr. Pickering, long an item, are to be married in the spring.”
I called Pat Jarvas but she was no longer at that number. I called a spade a spade, consumed half a fifth of Scotch and fell asleep on Ginnie’s bed. I didn’t dream. I didn’t dare.