Film producer, including the Academy Award–winning Dog Day Afternoon
(1926– )
In the basement of our apartment building there was what we called the club room. Maybe the room was ten by ten, with an old couch, a chair, and a bench. After school, when we were about fifteen or sixteen, we’d go down to the basement. What did we do there? Smoke. We crowded into this room and lit our cigarettes. We smoked until you couldn’t see. You could not see. You couldn’t breathe. Hey Solly, how’re you doin’ over there? I can’t see you.
At about that same age I had my first serious date. She was Italian and I was Jewish. In those days it wasn’t so easy for an Italian girl to bring a Jewish boy to meet her parents, so she wasn’t so sure about bringing me home. But finally she brought me home for dinner. We were supposed to go to the movies afterward. Her mother and father were pure Italian. You know, very, very strict and domineering. The father looked like he was connected.
I was dressed magnificently. A tie. A shirt. A jacket. I was fine. And during dinner I was trying to be charming. The mother took out a cigarette. She was looking for a match or something, and I, charmingly, reached into my front pocket and pulled out a pack. I was pure sophistication. I’m talking. I’m fumbling with opening it, without ever looking at the pack, while the father looks at me. This is his daughter. Italian. Pure. This is a mob guy too, or at least he looked like one to me. And as I’m talking I’m opening this packet of condoms. In those days, everybody my age carried them—just in case. You never knew when lightning would come down and strike you and you’d get lucky. And I feel the stare as he’s looking at me. The mother’s looking at me. The girlfriend-to-be is looking at me and I’m pulling out this condom. I wasn’t looking, but I felt it. I was mortified.
We didn’t go to the movies that night. The girl got sick and I got sicker. I never saw her again.
During those years, I was also looking for extra money and fun, so I hooked up with a kid I went to school with who said, “You wanna go into business? Let’s buy a car and then we can deliver some liquor.” So we bought a car, an early 1930-something Ford. The liquor we delivered was homemade, made in a still in the Bronx. We’d load the whole back of the car up with booze and then drive it like we were delivering bottles of milk. We worked for a “man.” We had no idea that we were doing something illegal.
We delivered the booze to the clubs on Fifty-Second Street and in Greenwich Village. There was one guy in the Village who looked like he was straight out of central casting. He was a huge man who liked me. After about two years, he said, “Whad’ya doin’ this for? You gonna deliver this shit for the rest of your life?” Then he says, “What would ya like to do? What would ya like to be?” And I said, “I’d like to get into the entertainment business.” He picked up the phone and in a week—I couldn’t believe it—I started working for a booking agent in the Borscht Belt. My job was to drive people up to the mountains, and that’s how I got my start in the entertainment business.