Inside, Outside, page 49
In such company Peter Quat tended to bait them, striking a Noël Coward pose of the amoral man of pleasure, bored by politics and cynical about ideologies. This went on for hours beside The Garden of Allah pool. Morrie and his sharp-tongued wife, and a woman called Sugar Gansfried, Lasser’s girl friend, kept trying to make Peter see the light. They would become terribly earnest, playing all the old Aunt Faiga records at him. Nobody could attend Columbia in the thirties without knowing the Marxist clichés by heart, and the arguments to oppose them if one wanted to bother. I stayed out of it, for Peter was matchless at this. Morrie finally lost his temper when Peter so tied him up in knots that even the women tittered at his discomfiture. “Shut up, I say,” he yelled at Peter. “You’re an ignorant kid. Just shut your mouth!” Morrie’s voice went soprano, and his face scarlet. Peter and I retired to our villa and rolled around on a sofa, laughing.
But Morrie got his revenge. A man named Fokety, with a slight European accent, one day telephoned our villa: a free-lance director who had heard that we were staying at The Garden of Allah. He had an idea for a movie, he said. The studio was hot for it, he needed writers, and he had heard that we were the brightest new writing team around, fresh out of Columbia College, the real writers of Goldhandler’s Panilas show. He made a date to meet us at a bar in Beverly Hills to get acquainted, and said he would bring along three showgirls for some laughs. Showgirls! Peter and I fell for it. Peter had been too long away from his receptionist, and the prospect had him dancing around the villa. Fokety never showed at the bar. Next day he called with some excuse, to make another date. We bit again. This happened several times. The cream of the jest for Morrie and the ladies was to hear us complain about this elusive Fokety, and to discuss the mystery at length with us. Morrie Abbott, of course, was Fokety.
He even took to letting us talk to the “showgirls.” Purring in bedroom tones, they would say they were dying to meet us. However, Sugar Gansfried and Morrie’s wife pressed us too much about whether the showgirls sounded real, and we caught on. When Fokety made a call at midnight, proposing we drive out to Malibu Beach to go wading by moonlight with three Goldwyn girls, Peter kept him on the line, while I crept through the darkness to Morrie’s villa. There I could hear “Fokety” nattering away, and the two women giggling. Peter and I never let on, but just let Fokety keep calling until Morrie tired of it. The residue of the episode was an on-going joke about the way “the boys” hotly hankered for showgirls.
***
Notwithstanding all that nonsense, how enchanting Hollywood was then! What a dream life it was, brief and transient as a dream! What you find out there now resembles what was once there, as a dead cat resembles a frolicking kitten. The green-brown hills stood out sharp and clear in translucent air, morning after morning. The word smog had not been coined. Everywhere there was the spicy smell of fresh grass and tropical flowers, and all the Beverly Hills mansions were new. I missed New York, but though I was so out of it in Hollywood, such a nobody, I loved this fabulously beautiful place. The film colony itself seemed to me (and for that matter still does) to be a rainbow-hued soap bubble, forever shimmering on the verge of bursting. In fact from time to time it does burst. They call that retrenchment. After a while one or another movie is a huge hit, and the bubble gets blown up again, and the whole magic scene springs into life, and so the crazy cycle goes. If a lawyer has author clients, he has to keep an eye on that cycle. Sometimes the turn can be startlingly swift.
We had been in Hollywood three weeks; Peter was off getting his morning tennis lesson, and I was alone in the villa, when the telephone woke me around noon.
“Hello?” I said sleepily.
“Hello, it’s Boyd. Goldhandler has been fired.”
And so it was. The producer had abruptly dropped the option, an event as inconceivable to all of us as the sky falling. Boyd had told us that Goldhandler was there on a thirteen-week contract. Not exactly, it now turned out; a three-week contract, renewable for ten more weeks. Goldhandler had not been able to put his cotton-candy improvisation on paper, so he had been writing something else; and at his price, the producer wasn’t amused. Morrie Abbott, no whit concerned, said that other studios would quickly be bidding for the gag czar’s services. “They’re desperate for comedy out here,” Morrie reassured us. “A blue chip like Goldhandler can choose his spot.”
The next evening, Goldhandler and his wife dropped in at our villa, on their way to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the grand opening of a new Joan Crawford film. The boss made no reference to losing his film job, and pretended to talk about the Panilas script, but they were obviously showing off their finery. “Joan” had invited them, Mrs. Goldhandler said, to the private party at Ciro’s after the premiere. Goldhandler had on a white dinner jacket, and she wore a new evening dress with masses of glittery sequins. Off they went, buoyed by our compliments. They were back a couple of hours later, banging at our door. “We’re famished,” bellowed Goldhandler. “Any food in this joint?”
We ordered sandwiches from an all-night delicatessen and listened to their wrathful tale. They had been turned away from the party! The door attendant had said they were not on the guest list, and had rudely refused to let Mrs. Goldhandler talk to “Joan.” Goldhandler made us guffaw with his angry description of the attendant, an old waiter with false teeth who spit copiously as he argued. Our laughter relaxed him. He wolfed a sandwich and recounted the soggy plot of the film with caustic exaggeration, making us laugh so hard we couldn’t eat. He had come for just this, to cheer himself up by playing to his sure audience. Mrs. Goldhandler also laughed, but she did look forlorn in all those sequins. I had never seen her painted before, and the makeup was a garish sight. She was much prettier without it.
***
At this juncture, when Harry Goldhandler didn’t need more trouble, I did a bad thing.
There was this dark attractive girl with whom I got friendly at the poolside; a petite, sleekly groomed graduate of Smith, with an endless wardrobe and a silver Lincoln convertible. She was a stockbroker’s daughter, she told me; her brother had a job at a studio, and he was angling for a part for her in a movie. She and I hit it off marvellously well. At least, I thought so. I made her laugh. When we went dancing her eyes would sexily flash at me. She even began cooking for the two of us in her villa. There was a strange remoteness about this girl, all the same. I was soon head over ears infatuated with her, yet much as she seemed to like me, I couldn’t break through the girl’s cold crystal envelope. I decided drastic measures were called for, and I took her to Don the Beachcomber’s.
Don’s was then something new, and the specialty was an enormous drink served in a whole fresh coconut, called—I think I’m right about this—King Kong’s Downfall. It was a mixture of several rums, coconut milk, crushed ice, and spices. It tasted like coconut ice cream, and the coconut was real, green husk and all. It was usually a mistake to have more than one King Kong’s Downfall. You were apt to lose interest in the food, or to injure yourself by falling off your chair unconscious.
But this girl’s capacity was phenomenal. On her third King Kong’s Downfall, she finally did crack, and blurrily admitted that yes, she supposed she might strike me as a bit distant and odd. She was having an affair with her brother, she explained, and actually was a couple of months pregnant by him, so she had a thing or two on her mind. Hollywood was and is quite a saloon. Zaideh was right about that.
Well, all this is by way of accounting for the bad thing I did. It happened next day, when I was recovering from those Downfalls and that disclosure, and was scarcely compos mentis. At about four that afternoon, the telephone rang. I was lying in a darkened bedroom, still nursing a rough headache. Peter was in the pool. I stumbled to my desk. “Hello?” I moaned.
“FINKELSTEIN!” Goldhandler, a maddened bellow. “What script did you send to Nicholas Panilas?”
“Why, why, the script Peter and I finished yesterday.”
“You did? Take another look at your desk!”
I obeyed. Oops. There lay the Panilas script, cleanly retyped by the stenographic service, ready to go. Then what script, I foggily wondered, could I have sent him? I remembered staggering out of bed around noon, my head pounding, when the bell rang. I remembered taking a script off the desk, slipping it into an envelope, and handing it to the messenger sent by Panilas to pick it up. Then I had gone back to sleep.
“Oh, my God!” A horrified gasp, as I realized what I had done. There had been only one other script in my room: the old German show, on mimeograph paper yellowing with age, from which we had copied the Panilas program. That script had gone to Nicholas Panilas. “Kee-rist,” I groaned. “I’m sorry, boss—”
“Never mind. Is Liebowitz there?” asked Goldhandler, anger gone, all business.
“In the pool.”
“Get him out.”
While Peter was dressing, Boyd arrived with three men carrying typewriters. The men left. Working at frantic speed, Boyd, Peter and I doctored up another of the old programs, and commenced typing like fury. All three typewriters had the identical typeface that the stenographic service used. Within the hour, we batted out a new Panilas show, looking exactly like every other script we had sent him.
Boyd telephoned Goldhandler. “Is he still there?” he asked, sotto voce. Then, loud and cheery, “Oh, hello, Nick. Yes, they just got back five minutes ago from the beach. The script’s been sitting here on the desk all day. Isn’t it ridiculous? Sure, I’ll bring it over right away.”
Boyd hung up, lit one of his strong-smelling Turkish cigarettes, and sighed. “He’s drunk as a pig. Let me have a scotch and water. Jesus, the boss was magnificent. He’s a giant, a genius. Nobody else could have pulled this thing out.”
He told us the story while he sipped the drink. Panilas had burst in on Goldhandler, brandishing the old script, a red-eyed foaming maniac, threatening a lawsuit, threatening to beat Goldhandler up, threatening to take a full-page ad in Variety exposing him as a fraud, a crook, a pirate, a bandit, and a plagiarist. Passing off old programs on him! Taking money that he had earned with his blood, with his health! Goldhandler let him rave himself out, then gave him a whiskey. He said he would explain, and then would accept Panilas’s apology.
The explanation: “the boys,” meaning Peter and me, were new to script writing. We had brought out a few old scripts to study the technique of dialect comedy—of which, by the by, Goldhandler declared, Panilas was the greatest master alive. All other dialect comics would be forgotten once Nicholas Panilas broke into network radio. Goldhandler would be glad to show him all the old scripts the boys had. If he found a single joke that had actually been used in a Panilas show, even one joke, Goldhandler would refund all the money Panilas had paid him to date. As for this week’s show, it was all written, and it had nothing to do with the old script Panilas had received by mistake. It was the funniest Panilas program yet, nothing but yocks and boffs. He would send Boyd over right away to The Garden of Allah to get it. If there was the slightest resemblance to the old script, Goldhandler would write for him gratis hereafter. He wouldn’t even mind that, because it was an honor for him to be writing for the greatest dialect comedian in the world.
“Actors are all born idiots,” Boyd said. “Panilas fell down on his knees to apologize. He kissed the boss’s hands. It was sort of pathetic, the way he slobbered on his hands, slurp slurp. He said he wouldn’t dream of checking on the scripts. He loved and trusted Goldhandler like a brother. But of course, he’s dying to see the script, so I’d better get it over there.” And Boyd steamed off.
I was never penalized for what I did, never even called on the carpet. The next time I saw Goldhandler he shook his head at me, and said in a tone of amused paternal reproach, “Oy, Liebowitz!” That was all. Maybe that helps you understand my affection for the man.
***
Skip Lasser showed up in The Garden of Allah a day or two after the Panilas crisis, dressed much like Bob Greaves. He was a grayish stocky Jew of forty or so, not a tall lean blond Deke of twenty, so the effect wasn’t the same. But it was all right: tweed sports jacket, gray slacks, button-down shirt, figured tie. All the Hollywood revolutionaries dressed so, more or less; but Lasser brought it off better, with his British-cut cashmere jacket and flannel slacks, and calm superior air, based quite justly on his Broadway hits and money-making films. When Morrie Abbott introduced us, Lasser grinned impishly, almost boyishly. “Ah, yes, the boys who are dying to meet showgirls.”
“We wouldn’t mind,” said Peter.
“That shouldn’t be hard. When I get back to New York, I’ll introduce you to showgirls.”
Lasser had returned to Hollywood to polish a screenplay he had written for Fred Astaire; and Goldhandler, through Morrie Abbott’s mediation, accepted the job of doctoring the script with jokes. It paid less than his MGM employment, and was quite a fall in status, but it was an eight-week contract, and he had the summer lease on that big house to pay for. He and Boyd took over the Panilas scripts, and he paid our fares back to New York. If business picked up in the fall, he said, he would be in touch with us.
Peter said to me as we boarded the train—not the Superchief—“I’m glad to be getting away from this creepy place and those goddamned old jokes. We’ll write a farce, Davey, and clean up. You’ll see.”
***
“Liebowitz! I need you. I am in the ground.”
Goldhandler on the telephone, on a sizzling day late in August; the first I had heard from him since our long hot sad ride back from Hollywood, sleeping in upper berths. On my desk, in an airless room of the small flat Mom and Pop had taken off Riverside Drive, lay a pile of first-year law books, and two acts of the farce Peter and I had been sedulously cooking up. The books depressed me; to think that my classmates had absorbed them and pulled ahead of me by a year! The farce depressed me: a hollow echo of the Kaufman and Hart style.
“I’m planning on law school, boss,” I said. “I can still get in.”
“Why, sure. This won’t interfere. A quick two-week job. Where the hell is Finkelstein? Boyd’s been trying to call him. Get over here as soon as you can.”
When I walked into Goldhandler’s office again, and saw the vista of the park, and the rivers, and the skyscrapers, and that ever-haunting April House sign, and smelled the stale effluvium of cigars soaked into the curtains and carpet, and he tiredly hailed me, “Hiya, Liebowitz,” I sensed that I was back for more than two weeks. And whatever regrets I have on looking back over my patchwork existence, I have no regrets about the years of Goldhandler and Bobbie Webb that followed. Certain cups must be drunk to the bottom, whether to taste sugar or lees. In this case, both.
63
Sandra’s Letter
September 1973
Sandra’s letter arrived yesterday, and my first coherent thought after reading it was that I had better resign from this White House job at once. I am clipping her letter to these yellow scrawls exactly as it came: four long, coarse blue sheets of messy single-spaced typing, all spotty with inked-in letters.
Kibbutz Sde Shalom
September something
Dear Dad
I don’t know where the kibbutz got hold of this decrepit Underwood with two keys missing, but it’ll have to do. Zeh mah she-yaish. Israeli byword, “That’s what there is.” Time is short. Dudu Barkai is going up north in an hour or so, to report to his unit for thirty-day reserve duty. He’s a tank captain, as well as a laundryman, kibbutz leader, and violinist. Dudu will give my letter to a man who’s flying to Washington. This is Mom’s idea, that I explain myself to you direct. It took me a couple of days to get through to her, and I don’t know how I’ll do with you in a couple of typed pages, but all right, I’ll try.
I put off my return, as you know, to hear Professor Landau lecture, and to finish some kibbutz work. When the two weeks were up I travelled by bus to the airport, all set to go home, but feeling rotten about it. When I walked into the terminal, I decided—or rather, realized—that I wasn’t going to leave. So I asked a girl at an El Al desk where I could cash in my ticket. She advised me to hang on to it and keep the return date open. When I told her that I was staying indefinitely, making aliya, she gave me the kind of smile you’ve never seen on the face of an Israeli, old Dad, and she directed me to the refund office on the mezzanine.
I have to tell you what followed, because it’s another face of Israel. The girl in that office wouldn’t give me the refund. Said it was too close to plane departure time, or something. Her English wasn’t very good, but her obstinacy was Class A. She kept saying, “Ain lee somchoot.” When I got mad and hollered at her to translate, she hollered back, “I dunt hev somchoot,” which wasn’t much help. We got into a real shouting match, I yelling at her that I wanted to make aliya, and she screeching that she didn’t have somchoot.
Then in walked this dark lean young Israeli guy and asked what the problem was. I explained, and he gave me that special smile, and said, “Come with me.” I turned in the ticket for a fistful of Israeli money. “You really want to make aliya?” he asked. “Are you crazy?” And then he inquired where I was staying, and what I was doing that night. He looked sad when I said I was returning to Sde Shalom. He said that was very far, and everybody was crazy there, but it was a nice place.
Abe Herz says somchoot means authorization. He says this country is infested with creatures in offices who “don’t have somchoot.” These are called pakidim, office-holders, and the whole bureaucracy is in fact wryly known as Pakidstan. It is the curse of Israel, he said. It has worn him down. It almost drove him back to the States. The only hope, according to Abe, is if enough Americans come here, stick it out, and change things.
