At Random, page 4
Rukeyser knew I had been one of the honor students up at the School of Journalism and was a reasonably smart kid. I was assigned to write a column called “Advice to Investors.” A lot of letters asking about investments, and so forth, came in from little old ladies and the like. All I had to do was run the ones I thought had the greatest general appeal, and my advice unerringly was to be, under strict instructions, “Buy Liberty Bonds,” the popular government bonds in those days. “Don’t you try being fancy,” I was warned. “What do you know about the market? You just tell people to invest in Liberty Bonds and print the letters that will lend themselves to that kind of answer. If it’s a specific stock they’re asking about, turn the letter over to somebody who knows what he’s talking about.” It was considered patriotic in those days to buy Liberty Bonds. The war was over, but it still had to be paid for.
I started the column and did just what I was told to, but after a couple of weeks that became rather boring, and I suddenly discovered that nobody on the paper was even looking at the darned column. So I began expanding a little bit, and when I’d write my answers I’d get in a few touches of my own ideas of finance. One day a little old lady wrote to say that she had ten thousand dollars to invest, and she had noticed a stock that had gone down from 76 to 2, so she thought this would be a very good time to buy five thousand shares at two dollars a share. This gave great financier Cerf—drunk with power—a chance to say, “Why do you think this stock went from 76 to 2? The fact that a stock has gone down to nothing or near nothing sometimes means that the company is completely kaput. As a matter of fact, this company happens to be bankrupt, so you’d be insane to buy the stock.”
When I got in the next day the financial editor was grimly waiting for me. As a matter of fact, the company in question was not bankrupt. It was busted higher than a kite, but it didn’t actually go bankrupt until about a week later. I almost saved it from bankruptcy! The editor said, “They’re going to sue us for a million dollars.” Then he added, “This will teach you two lessons, sir: one, when you’re given an explicit order, obey it; two, check your facts before you print a story. You’re fired.”
I bravely made my way to the men’s room and burst into tears. I’ll never forget my humiliation and downfall at the Tribune. Of course, I still had the job at the brokerage office.
That summer I went to a Fourth of July dance at a country club I belonged to in Woodmere, Long Island, and there I met an absolutely beautiful young girl named Marian Ansbacher, who was with some klunk. I started dancing with her, and finally persuaded her to drop her sad sack and let me take her home. Of course, I tried to kiss her the minute we got there, but she said she thought it wouldn’t be right because she was in love with a boy who was a counselor at an upstate camp. She began describing him, and for some reason or other (I’ll never know why), I said, “I bet I know him.” She said, “That’s ridiculous.” I said, “His name is Donald Klopfer.” I was right! There was something about her imperious manner that jibed with the way Donald had described her to me months before. She, of course, thought this was incredible. We laughed and talked a little bit about Donald, and as I left I said, “Well, that’s that, goodbye.” She said, “Wait! If I wasn’t in love with Donald, this is the way I would kiss you.” All the rest of that summer she was my girl while Donald was up in that camp. She was writing him every day, but she neglected to mention that she was seeing me.
When Donald came home he soon found out about me, and raised hell. She went off to Vassar, a freshman, with Donald and me both crazy about her. This suited her just fine, but for a while Donald refused to see me and I didn’t want to see him either.
Then Thanksgiving came along, and Marian brought down a Chicago girl she had met at Vassar. By this time she had such a complete hold on both of us and was so sure of herself that she demanded we take her and her roommate out for the Thanksgiving weekend. We were suckers enough to say yes. We went to a football game together, the four of us, and then we went dancing at the Plaza Grill, which was the place to go in those days. We ended up at the theater, and although Donald and I had started out glaring at each other, we found that we still liked each other very much. I suggested that it might be fun when he was in New York someday that we pay to go to an evening performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Marian was delighted she had brought us together; she now had her two flames right under her thumb, and she went happily back to Vassar. Donald came down from Williams one Tuesday and we went to the concert, as we had planned. When we left Carnegie Hall we decided to take a walk. Donald and I went all the way around Central Park—over to Fifth Avenue up to 110th Street, over to Central Park West and down to 59th Street, just talking. And when we finished that walk, we were friends for life, even though I was four years older than Donald, out of college and down in Wall Street.
When Donald left Williams he took a job at the brokerage office where I was. Sartorius, Smith and Loewi was at 20 Broad Street, right next to the Stock Exchange. I was working there in 1921 when the Wall Street explosion took place—across the street in front of the Morgan Building and the Subtreasury. I learned every job in the office, even worked on the floor of the Exchange for a while, taking the orders and giving them to brokers.
Donald soon left to join his family’s diamond business, but by that time we had become inseparable. Our friendship was stronger than our rivalry, and later on, when Donald and Marian were married, I was his best man. Before that marriage ended, they had a daughter, Lois, to whom Donald has always been devoted. A few years after the divorce he married Florence Selwyn, who is known to everyone as Pat, and this time it was for good.
Someone who played a big part in my later life was Charles Allen, who was with me in the brokerage office. We were the two mavericks, because both of us had as much interest in what was going on outside the office as within, and we used to sneak down to the Battery, which was only three or four blocks away, and sit there watching the boats go in and out. And we’d go over to the Statue of Liberty on a little steamer and wander around or climb up to the top, or explore the wharves on South Street up to the fish market. This was during office hours, of course.
There was a German member of the firm, Mr. Heimerdinger, whom I can still remember yelling, “Where’s that veesil Bennett?” He called me “veesil” because he often couldn’t find me, since I was out prowling half the time. But I was also studying the history of listed stocks, and both Charlie and I did our work. There was no question that we were somewhat favored; after all, my uncle was the firm’s best customer, and Charlie Allen was a charming young man—and we were in. We were paid somewhere around twenty to thirty dollars a week. That was the usual starting salary, but we soon got quite a bit more.
Charlie Allen is today one of the most successful men in the United States. In those days, if anybody down there had asked, “Which two members around here are least likely to get very rich?” I’m sure they would have nominated Charlie and me, because we were less interested in details or “meetings” than we were in the world around us. There’s a moral in this. I think even the most ambitious young man should not be so engrossed in the particular thing he’s doing that he doesn’t know what else is going on. The two of us had a wide interest in everything.
Since I was working in Wall Street, I began to speculate a little bit on my own. The market was pretty good; it was starting to head up. The war was behind us, things had gotten settled and the country was beginning to expand at a great clip. There was no great art to making money in the market when you were right down there and could move fast. I got to the point where I was seriously thinking of buying a seat on the Stock Exchange so that I would be made a junior partner. In those days a seat was selling for around a hundred thousand dollars, but I had made quite a little money on the side, and I also had the nest egg that I’d inherited, so I began investing some of it, always in very small amounts, but getting my fingers wet. I was just learning about the market and I made a few terrible mistakes.
Richard Simon (5.1 illustration credit)
At this point, in 1923, my friend from college, Richard Simon, called me. When I had finished Columbia, though I was the one who loved books, I had gone to Wall Street, and Dick Simon, who primarily loved music, had gotten a job with a publisher. I don’t know how it came about, but suddenly he was working for Boni and Liveright as a book salesman learning the business. Every time I met him I would rage at him and say, “You, you dumb cluck, you don’t open three books a year, and you’re working for a publisher! That is my dream. And what am I doing? I’m working in Wall Street.” Of course, it had been my own choice.
Then, on that memorable day, Dick said, “You’re always moaning about wanting to go into the publishing business. If you want to, I’m handing it to you on a silver platter. I’ve decided to go in business for myself with Max Schuster. When I told my boss, Horace Liveright, I was leaving, he said it was a terrible time to walk out on him, with the fall season coming up. He asked if I could suggest anybody to replace me.” Dick said he told Liveright I would be perfect—editor of the college paper, Phi Beta Kappa, columnist on the Tribune. He didn’t tell Liveright how I had ended my career there, of course, and Liveright said he’d certainly like to meet me.
Dick said, “When can you come up?”
I said, “Anytime.”
Meeting Horace Liveright, a publisher! I’d never met one in my life. So the very next day I went uptown for lunch with Dick and Liveright—and never went back to Wall Street.
We went to the Algonquin, and Liveright pointed out the famous Round Table—the table where a group of bright young literary people met for lunch—and for the first time I cast my eyes on a lot of people who were going to be very closely associated with my life: Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, Marc Connelly, Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley. I was delighted! Liveright looked like John Barrymore and was quite vain, but he had a flair, and when he wanted to be, he was a very charming man. He sure charmed the hell out of me. He said, “We’re a small, very individual firm. I have my own ideas of publishing.” And added, “You can go up very quickly if you’ve got the stuff. I hear you’ve got some money, and I need money very much. If you’d like to start with style, you could put a little money into the business.”
So I asked how much, and he said that if I would lend him twenty-five thousand dollars, which he needed very badly (I found out why later), I could come in as vice-president.
That was very interesting to me, so I said, “Let me give it some thought.”
He said, “No, I’ve got to know pretty quickly. I have to get back to the office now, because I promised to take Theodore Dreiser to the baseball game this afternoon. I’m bored to death by baseball. Bennett, if you want to get in good with me quick, how about taking Dreiser up to the ball game?”
I’d never met an important author, and at this time Theodore Dreiser was a giant. He hadn’t written An American Tragedy yet, but he had long ago published Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt.
Well, that’s when I went to the telephone and called downtown and said, “I won’t be back this afternoon. As a matter of fact, I might not be back at all. I’m thinking of going into the publishing business. Goodbye, everybody.”
The Liveright offices were in a private house, and I can still remember walking into that building at 61 West 48th Street, the exact spot where later the Twelve Caesars restaurant opened. It’s part of Radio City now, but then it was all brownstones. On the ground floor of the house there were little windows with books behind them, and as I went inside with Horace Liveright, I knew this was where I wanted to be.
I didn’t give Liveright a final answer right away because I had to think about that twenty-five thousand dollars. My money was invested and I wanted to talk the deal over with my uncle, and just to please him, with my father too. They were fascinated by the idea of publishing. They said, “Twenty-five thousand dollars—you’ll probably end up losing it, but it will be good experience for you.”
Before I left him, Liveright had said, “I’ve got to check up on you. Whom do we know in common I can talk to about you?” We exchanged a few names, and suddenly he said, “I have a friend down in Wall Street.” He mentioned a Mr. Lowenstein, who was a prominent broker. I said, “I happen to know him.” So Liveright said, “Fine, I’ll speak to him about you.”
Horace was naïve. I immediately called up Mr. Lowenstein and said, “Horace Liveright is going to call and ask you about me, and this is what I’d like you to tell him.” He was a friend of mine and knew I was an honest, decent boy, and he told Liveright just what I wanted him to hear: that I’d be perfect for the publishing business.
We went to the baseball game, Dreiser and I. He was a dour, sulky, unpleasant man. He got bored about the fifth or sixth inning and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here,” so I had to leave. I remember it was a close game and I was outraged, but I had to go with him.
When I went back to see Liveright the following day, I told him I had made my mind up, and he said, “You sound great. What Lowenstein told me about you was very impressive.” I said, “Well, I hope it was, because I told him just what to say.” Liveright said, “Wasn’t I a fool to tell you I was going to call him?”
We both laughed. We started off right, and I became sort of a protégé of Horace’s. He always needed an audience, and suddenly here was a young man who thought everything he did was glamorous and exciting. So he would show off for me because I was a perfect stooge for him. He would sort of bounce things off me. Of course, starting off as a vice-president was ridiculous, but there I was. Later I realized that some people resented my coming in at that high level. They knew why.
The first thing I had to learn was how to sell books in New York City, Boston, Springfield, New Haven, Hartford, Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore—the most lucrative territory in the country. Dick Simon agreed to stay on for a month and break me in. He was a superb salesman, and the very fact that he hadn’t read the books made him able to sell them that much better. Some of the best Hollywood agents, for instance, are the same. They can sell movie rights for much more when they haven’t read a book than if they have.
After I had toured the New York stores with him, Dick took me to New England. We drove up in my car and planned everything to coincide with the Harvard-Yale football game up in Boston. That first trip was very instructive. Liveright had just published Hendrik Van Loon’s The Story of the Bible. Because of the success of The Story of Mankind, Liveright thought this new one was going to be a great best seller, and Dick had loaded all his accounts with huge piles of The Story of the Bible. But when the book came out, it was clobbered. The religious people were especially outraged that Van Loon had written a sort of jazz Bible. Today books are sold on a fully returnable basis, but then a bookseller had to get permission to turn them back. So everywhere we went, the first cry was: “Hey, what are we going to do about this disaster?”
That was my introduction to the publishing business, finding out what to do with a flop. Most of the time the stores had the upper hand, because if books weren’t taken back, they wouldn’t pay for them anyhow. They’d say, “Well, we want to send these books back. You stuck us with them.” In those days a salesman tried to sell as many copies as possible; the trick was to oversell. That was what made a good salesman—if a bookseller wanted to take ten copies and he could make him take twenty-five, he was a hero. Today this would be ridiculous, since the books would come bouncing back.
On that trip all I did was watch Dick, and it was a great lesson. The way he had gotten people to order extra copies of The Story of the Bible! Those who took a hundred copies had been given a little platform with wheels under it on which they could pile books and then roll the whole display from one side of the store to the other, so a lot of fools who should have bought ten copies had taken a hundred to get this thing that cost about three dollars. And of course, when we got there, they were wheeling whole piles back and forth. Nobody was buying it. Eventually, Liveright had to take back thousands of copies, and these were stored in our basement. One day a fire broke out in the storage room. There were screams of joy, but they didn’t last long. The fire burned up a lot of good books, but just as it reached the huge pile of The Story of the Bible, the firemen came and put it out. Luckily, though, a few thousand copies were destroyed by water.
At the time I went to work for Boni and Liveright, Albert Boni, Horace’s original partner, had already left the firm. He and Horace had started it together, but shortly before my arrival they had had a great argument. And this was typical: they tossed a coin to decide which one would buy out the other for a price they had settled in advance. Liveright won, and Boni went away and started his own firm with his brother, Charles.
Horace’s staff was outstanding. One of the editorial readers was Beatrice Kaufman—Mrs. George S. Kaufman. She was up on the top floor. The manufacturing man, Manuel Komroff, later became quite a well-known author. One of the assistants downstairs was a girl named Lillian Hellman. What a group! Sitting at a desk next to me was Ted Weeks, who was to become editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Liveright’s sales manager was Julian Messner, who started his own publishing house in 1933.
The Liveright list was impressive. They’d just had a big, big season. The Story of Mankind by Hendrick Van Loon; so Van Loon was hanging around the office—a fascinating fellow—very gregarious. Upstream by Ludwig Lewisohn. Ludwig Lewisohn also hung around the office. Tramping on Life by Harry Kemp—a tramp, a wonderfully interesting character. Also on the list was one of the biggest best sellers in the United States—Gertrude Atherton’s Black Oxen, about rejuvenation by monkey glands. It was the talk of the town. Some Viennese doctor had promoted the idea, and presumably a withered old woman could become a sex queen again!
