The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (18 page)

The Colonel had a bicycle-type horn on his desk. When he squeezed it, we’d all come running and line up in front of him. He’d say, “I’ve got Mr. So-and-So on the phone, and it’s his birthday today, so we’re going to sing him ‘Happy Birthday.’ ” Then we’d sing into a microphone while he held up the receiver to a speaker.

My position was flunky. I aimed to please, and I did. I had to go to all the studios where Elvis had made pictures, pick up his fan mail, bring it back, read it. If there was anything unusual, I told the Colonel’s secretary, Jim O’Brien, then packed up the letters and sent them to a warehouse in Madison, Tennessee. I also had to buy every newspaper and magazine and cut out anything written about Elvis and send it to the warehouse, where it was put into big scrapbooks that ultimately became a show that the Colonel toured through convention centers.

When my two weeks were up, I thanked the Colonel and said, “Irv will be back on Monday. Thank you for the opportunity. I hope to see you again someday.”

He said, “Oh, no, Johnny. No, no. You can’t leave.”

I said, “Colonel, they’re expecting me back.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

That was it. No more discussion. I was eager to return to the career I’d planned out for myself, but I wasn’t able to debate the issue. Now the Colonel had
two guys
paid for by William Morris.

The Colonel played the game of celebrity like a magician. Every day he’d say to Jim O’Brien, “Give me the list,” meaning the list with everyone’s birthday on it. He also had a deal with RCA to get anything they manufactured for free, and he’d send radios, TVs, fridges to placate the nerve center of not just Hollywood but politicians, senators, governors, sports celebrities. Anybody who was a star of any sort got this treatment. It was a lot of work.

Each year the Colonel also sent a Christmas greeting from him and Elvis. And he was big on calendars because he knew people kept them all year. As Christmas approached we had to address manila envelopes to all the celebrities and politicians, and the Colonel filled them with goodies. But we kept having to reopen the envelopes because he kept adding things, like one of those little sticks that you rub with another stick and the propeller goes around.

The envelopes were saved in big trunks. Just before Christmas we had to deliver them all at once to the Paramount mailroom. To the Colonel it was a big joke: “The mailroom guys are gonna shit when all this stuff gets down there!”

I was more or less the Colonel’s slave. When he moved homes but wouldn’t hire professional movers, Irv and I had to cart everything out of the apartment except the furniture—but only because the place had come furnished. The highlight was finding a gold lamé jacket in his closet. I put it on for a thrill.

The Colonel also had a house in Palm Springs, where his wife lived. She was bored, especially when he went to Las Vegas to gamble. He’d make Irv and me go to Palm Springs and play Parcheesi with his wife on the weekend.

I wanted to go back to William Morris before I had no career. I told Tom Diskin, the Colonel’s longtime associate from his carny days, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Eventually the Colonel called me in and said, “Thank you” and “Good job.” Because I was leaving, I mustered some courage and said, “So, if you’re the Colonel, are we privates?”

“No,” he said. “You guys are nothing.”

NANAS:
When Barry Diller moved from Weltman’s desk to Joe Wizan’s, Weltman had a woman secretary for two or three months, then me. Weltman had a special thing for me. I always believed I was a winner, and he made me feel that even more. So I did a great double cross to show him how I felt.

Ron Mardigian was a terrific agent; he was mellow and always had great clients. He worked for Mike Zimmering, the head of the Literary Department. Mardigian walked by my desk one night and said, “We had a meeting, and we’re either gonna bring in someone from outside, or if we go inside, we want to bring you in as a junior agent.”

I didn’t realize then that Literary was the basis of all of show business. No script, no movie—no nothing. I still wanted to handle the biggest star in the world. I said nothing. Mardigian said, “Just think about it.” I waited a day, then said, “I’m in.” He asked me to meet with Zimmering, who asked, “Do you like to read?”

I said, “Yes.” In truth I don’t think I’d read my first book until I was in my thirties. I read screenplays before I read books. Mardigian and Zimmering were all excited. A week later Zimmering went into Weltman’s office to say, “Phil, I know you love this kid, but let me have him in the Literary Department.”

Weltman would think it was what I wanted, because every day I pestered him, “Hey, Phil, when you gonna make me a fucking agent? I’m a better salesman than all these guys.” Years later he used to say to Meyer and Ovitz, “This stupid kid always had to do it his way, but he was a better agent than all you fucking guys ever were.”

Weltman called me in. He gave me the speech: “The Literary Department likes you a lot. I think it’s a great opportunity. I think you’d be sensational. You should take some time to think about it.”

“I don’t need to,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what, Phil?” I said. “You brought me into the business. You’ve been a talent guy all your life. You’re my guy. Do I want to be an agent tomorrow? Yes. But I’ll wait and I’ll sacrifice until I can be an agent in your department, not Mike Zimmering’s department.”

The next morning Sam Saks, the head attorney, walked by my desk. He said, “Good move.” Sam Weisbord walked in, put his arm on me, and said, “I’m glad you’re not in Literary.” Mardigian came by and said, “You fucking set me up, you little cocksucker.”

I did. I did set him up. It was a perfect play.

Working the system from the bottom up was all about those moves. When you’re a secretary on the first floor and you look at the players, you realize that’s where the power is. These guys decide when you get paid, when you don’t get paid, how you get your raises, where your career goes. That’s when I realized that the only power in Hollywood is money and the talent you control.

FITZGERALD:
After the mailroom and Dispatch, I floated for a while, hoping to work for one of the movie guys. Instead I was assigned to Milton Berle, who had an office in the building. He and his cronies were in there all the time, smoking cigars. He wasn’t a real pleasant guy, and I was treated like a schmuck kid. Then they put me with Marshall Berle, his nephew. Marshall was a music agent. I’ll never forget him pleading with Morris Stoller to send him to London. He’d heard about a band there that was making everyone berserk. He wanted to try and sign them to William Morris, but the company wouldn’t let him fly to London. For the Beatles.

EBBINS:
Unfortunately, the Morris office said no too many times. When John Hartmann became an agent, he went to San Francisco and came back on fire. He said the next big music explosion would come from Haight-Ashbury. “We should open a Morris office there now.” He was right on the money. And they said no, just like they said no to the Beatles.

HARTMANN:
By the time I came back from the Colonel, I had learned speed writing and taught myself how to type. I ended up temping for Sy Marsh, a movie agent. His big client was Sammy Davis Jr. at the height of the Rat Pack. Marsh was kind of a frustrated comedian, and I was his best audience. He decided I should stay permanently. I did, for several months, but eventually everyone realized we were having far too much fun. I went back into the floating pool, and Sy took a girl. I had an affair with that girl.

Next I floated for Jules Sharr, head of the Variety TV Department. It was a huge business. The guys who worked there were George Shapiro, Elliot Wax, and Fred Apollo. Sharr was a terror. He yelled and screamed and threw stuff, and lived on the edge of anger all the time, meticulously clean, and very precise. He’d come around the corner every day at the same time, and I had to have coffee and a bran muffin ready. Then I’d pull the phone sheet out of the typewriter. If there were more than two calls there, he’d go, “Oh, fuck, it’s one of those days!” His big clients were George Chakiris, Jane Powell, Burl Ives—actor-singer-dancer types. He’d go into his office, drink his coffee and eat his muffin, and read the trades,
Variety
and
Hollywood Reporter
. Every time a call came in, he’d make a note of how many times the phone rang.

After a couple days of this I told Ed Levy in Personnel that I wanted to work for Sharr permanently. He said, “Are you kidding? Everybody who works for him leaves crying.” Sharr also found it hard to believe, but I started the next day, a full-time secretary again, with a desk of my own. For six months the guy tried everything to break me. I met him at the line every time. Once, I had to yell at him, and that seemed to earn his respect. From then on we were more like partners.

In the wake of the MCA breakup Sharr was offered a job as head of all variety at IFA, the company created from the merger of Famous Artists and International Artists Agency. He took it. Fred Apollo and George Shapiro became the coheads of the department. Shapiro brought in his boyhood friend Howard West. Before he left, Sharr told Phil Weltman, “Promote the kid, he’s ready.” Weltman called me in and interviewed me. He was probably only vaguely aware of who I was, but when I walked out that night, I was a junior agent. It was the biggest achievement of my life.

DILLER:
I was an assistant agent, but since I had never had or signed a client, I doubt any halfway self-respecting agent would say I passed the bar. In fact, I can’t say I really
wanted
to become an agent. I was only after the education.

I left in 1965 to join ABC as assistant to the head of programming. But the years at William Morris gave me my beginning, and every day at the beginning remains a vital and enduring lesson.

EBBINS:
I was in the mailroom for so long that the running joke was that I was the only mailboy with profit sharing. I never became an assistant. Part of me wanted to be an agent, part didn’t. But the idea of being a secretary for a few
more
years didn’t appeal at all. Plus, the Morris office had been so much a part of my life that I felt I could never become my own person in that environment. Unless I got out of there, I was going to be Milt’s kid forever.

MCLEAN:
I left William Morris when I was still in the mailroom to take a job in casting. I don’t think they missed me. I was just another body, and after the incident where we hired the Red Arrow Messenger Service and went to the beach, they were probably going, “Oh, good, we got rid of Owen McLean’s son without having to fire him!”

I later discovered I got the casting job because the head of the department didn’t like children. They were about to do
The Sound of Music,
and he didn’t want to interview the kids for the von Trapp family, so he hired me to find the seven singing, dancing von Trapps.

Gary Ebbins became a manager. He handled Chad and Jeremy and the Buckinghams. When I cast the
Batman
TV show, I hired Chad and Jeremy to be guest stars. There was always a crossover between us.

My whole life has been that way. Somebody says, “You want to try something? I think you might like this . . . ,” and I’ve just very successfully fallen into things.

ROSENFIELD:
When the new “black tower” office building at Universal Studios was going up, you couldn’t get on the lot to deliver mail. So we took our stuff to the Universal mailroom, and they would distribute it for us. We didn’t tell Ed Levy or the Fly that was the deal; they wouldn’t have understood.

One Friday the thirteenth I had the San Fernando Valley run. The Fly said I had to see an agent, Joe Schoenfeld, before I left, because he had an urgent letter he needed delivered to Universal. The studio was to be my first stop. When I got there, I told the mailroom guy, “This is
really
important, can you take care of it?” Yes, okay. Got to the next stop, Disney, and they said to call my dispatcher. It was the Fly, and she said, “We’re pulling you off the run. Come back right away.” I knew I was in trouble, and I knew why. I figured I’d get a ten-minute ass chewing and then go back to business at usual.

Ed Levy started in on his lecture, and I had answers for everything. He got really pissed off and finally said, “It doesn’t really matter, because you’re through. You’re outta here.”

I was devastated—and did a dumb thing: I left the building. By the time I thought to call anyone to appeal, it was too late. Schoenfeld had gotten his ounce of flesh, and that was that.

The next day I ran into Barry Diller at Ben’s of Hollywood, the hair-stylist we all went to. Ben Ogus, the owner, gave trainees a special rate, knowing that when we started to make money, we’d come back and generate new business. Diller said, “I heard what happened. It’s too bad.”

I said, “Yeah, it is. And what really hurts is that not one guy came to my defense.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You’re out of the way. Now everybody is one step closer to getting out of the mailroom.”

He was right, and it pissed me off. I wrote a letter to Mr. Lastfogel and copied Morris Stoller, Doris Levitt, Stan Kamen, and the head of the New York office. I said that I had been fired without being heard and that I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. I said I’d like them to hear my story. The letter created so much intraoffice turmoil that any chance I’d ever had of being hired back evaporated. The weekly memo of staff additions and deletions didn’t even list my name.