Show Business Kills (33 page)

“Besides, Feinberg, my network’s known for nice juicy hot passion. Your studio makes movies that have guys’ brains blowing
out their ears. Why are you better than me?” Ellen was silent. “Listen, ladies… I’m not going to get into a pissing contest
with you three. I’m a good guy. I give money to the UJA, I support my parents. Remember Betty Norell? I even sat on the phone
with her daughter, who called my office in such a panic they put her through to me because the girl can’t locate her mother
and she thought maybe Betty was in L.A. Like I would know, or give a shit, where Betty Norell, who I haven’t seen in thirty
years, would be. But did I say I can’t take the call? No. I sat on the phone with the kid because I’m a good guy.”

“Shh,” Marly said, because at that instant she thought she caught sight of Jan seeming to have another one of those spasms,
a restless tossing movement that might signal her awakening. They all hurried to the door and waited to see if there was any
sign of her becoming conscious, but now only the blipping machines were active. Jan continued to lie still.

“Sometimes,” Jack said then, in a voice that sounded as if it might crack any second, “in my office during the day, I turn
on that soap of Jan’s and lock the door, and sit there with a boner just like I used to get when I sat in the dorms staring
at her. Because my whole life, Jan O’Malley was for me like that blonde in the white Thunderbird was for Richard Dreyfuss
in
American Graffiti
. The wet dream who always haunts your life. I loved her, I still love her. I watched those dailies of her flashing her boobs
in ‘Doctors On Call,’ and it
was all I could do to keep from doing a Pee-wee Herman imitation in my own screening room.”

“Mr. Class,” Ellen said, but Jack ignored her. Now he had one arm draped around Marly’s neck and another around Rose’s.

“I used to love those nights in the girls’ dorm on More-wood Avenue. It was Morewood Gardens, but remember how the boys used
to call it ‘The Cherry Orchard?’ And you four were gorgeous. You should have worn signs on your chests freshman year that
said ‘We’re Virgins, We’re Pretty, and We Know It.’ Hey, I’ll bet you ten million bucks I can describe the pajamas every one
of you wore, and it’s thirty years ago, for Christ’s sake.”

“We can’t handle that bet, Jack,” Ellen said. “You’re the one who makes the big bucks in this group.” Jack was still looking
into the room at Jan, deeply into his reverie of their youth.

“Janny had those slinky see-through pink baby dolls, and then when I wanted to grab her after I looked through them and saw
that killer body under there, she’d slap my hand. And Rose Morris, always a sex symbol, you had those green-and-black checked
flannel pajamas, and old Marly the WASP. Hah! You had the long-sleeved, high-neck Lanz nightgown. And Feinberg, what in the
hell did you have?” He thought for a minute, then lit up. “A Tech sweatshirt. Didn’t you always sleep in an extra-large Tech
sweatshirt?”

“I still do,” Ellen said. “Which may be why I’m still single.”

Marly was openmouthed. “My God. You were right about every one of our pajamas,” she said. It was obvious he had melted her
by recalling those details. Marly was a sucker for sentimentality. They all knew that, including Jack, who turned to her now
to play his vulnerable scene to the hilt.

His eyes filled, and he nodded a nod that said, And you thought I was heartless, as he put his hand on Marly’s face. “You
see, Mar,” he said, “you’re the ones who pin the idea of a power trip on me. You give it that spin because you have some fantasy
about my life that isn’t true. Because we all know that if I wanted to, in my position, I can see all the tits, excuse me,
ladies, breasts, in Hollywood all day and all night. So why would I ever humiliate someone I love? And you know what else?
Something really important?”

“What?” Marly asked, falling for it hook, line, and sinker.

“I hate hospitals, and I think I’m gonna vomit.”

Rose laughed out loud. “You do? Two of your shows take place mostly in hospitals.”

“I know, and it’s why I stay in the office instead of being on the sets of any of those shows. I get sick to my stomach. I
think I’m gonna go accept my award, and have one of you call my office tomorrow and leave a message about how Jan is coming
along.”

“What’s the award for, Jackie?” Ellen asked. “Sincerity?”

“Humanitarianism,” Jack Solomon said, then turned to her. “You ought to try it some time.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Jack,” Rose said as he walked toward the outer door.

“Hey, Morris,” he said, pointing at Rose. “You’re a good little writer. I’ll give you a job on any of my shows any time.”
He smiled his best and warmest smile before the door to the hall closed behind him, and the three friends stood near the nurses’
station looking at one another.

“He’s a piece of garbage,” Ellen said.

“Shh,” Marly said, “don’t forget that hearing is the last
sense to go. Besides, maybe he means it. I had no idea he loved Janny that much.”

“Neither did he, it was all an act,” Ellen said.

Rose sighed as they settled back into what were becoming the familiar plastic-and-metal chairs crammed into the cubicle around
the bed where Jan lay.

“If he lies and treats people badly, it will come back to him,” Marly said. “I really believe it. I think there’s a balance
out there, and you get what you give. Maybe not right away, but it happens.”

“I think about that all the time,” Rose said. “I did something awful once that I’m sure is coming back to haunt me now. And
I dream about it and worry about it, and I know I’ve never told any of you the story, because I was too ashamed.”

“I hope Marlon Brando’s in it,” Ellen said. “And I hope this time you actually had him.”

“Marlon Brando is not in this story… but close. This one is about Manny Birnbaum.”

  
25
  

The Invisible
Man

R
ight after graduation, I went back to Cleveland to pack up my things and move here, and before I left, everyone told me that
the first thing I should do when I was settled was to call Manny Birnbaum. Manny was the best writer in television, with a
list of credits that would make your mouth hang open. And in the forties, when I was a toddler, he was a close friend of my
Dad’s from their high school days. I remember hearing all the stories about how Manny moved to New York to “seek his fortune,”
and when he made it big, all the friends at home were as proud as if they’d done it themselves.

He wrote “The Garry Moore Show,” and “The Jack Paar Show,” and “The Dick Cavett Show.” My father, who in those days had a
little hardware store and appliance repair, and drudged away there making keys and taking apart toasters, felt touched by
the glamour every time Manny’s name went by on the television screen.

He would always call me in to watch the credits on a Manny-written show and say, “Here it comes! Manny Birnbaum. There it
goes! Did you see it, Rose?” My father liked to brag that he could tell which shows Manny worked on
without even seeing Manny’s name at the end, because he could recognize Manny’s slam-bang sense of humor anywhere just by
hearing it.

Eventually Manny found his way from New York to Hollywood, and of course, much later, I did, too. When we all first got out
here in sixty-six, Manny was already a veteran writer, and his career was blazing. I was intimidated and afraid to call him,
but my father kept sending me notes telling me I was crazy not to, so finally, after I’d been in town for a few weeks, I nervously
dialed Manny’s home phone number, hoping he wouldn’t be there. But he was.

When he heard it was Harry Morris’s daughter calling, “little Roselah,” he invited me out to what was to be the first of our
traditional monthly lunches, at Jerry’s Deli in Studio City. In those days I think he was working on “The Andy Williams Show.”

He was a cute little round man with a cloud of black hair around the edges of a bald head, and he had a great nice-uncle sweetness
to him. I jabbered about my life, and what I wanted to do with it, and I remember before we parted that day, Manny said for
the first time something he was to tell me at least a hundred more times, which was: “A writer is a person on whom nothing
is lost.”

Over the years he attributed that quote to Robert Frost, Edna Ferber, James Thurber, Roy Gerber, and maybe even Thomas Jefferson.
“And you, maidelah,” he always added, “are going to be a good one. Just from talking to you, I can tell that you see stories
everywhere.”

He encouraged me and helped me as patiently as a saint, reading my first feeble pages while we waited for our orders to come,
and he and I both munched on the crunchy kosher
“new” pickles Jerry’s Deli always had sitting in plastic bowls on every table. Sometimes he’d still be reading over the soup
and bagel chips, and I had trouble eating because my stomach was flipping around nervously while I watched his face for a
reaction to my work.

Eventually he’d put the papers down on the table and gently tell me, first of all, the things that were good about what he
read; and even more gently, not what was bad, but how I could make it better. Then he’d bring a little comedy relief to the
moment, by dazzling me with the funny material he was working on for George Burns or Bob Hope.

And I felt so lucky that he was taking the time. I knew what a genius he was. In a writing class I was taking at UCLA Extension,
my teacher was talking about some television show and spoke in awed tones about a certain quirky brand of comedy scene he
referred to as “a perfect Birnbaum.” Manny was a legend in television comedy.

In nineteen sixty-eight, when I married Allan, Manny and his wife were at the wedding. Remember? He was the one who stood
up and made that hilarious toast that everyone was quoting for months afterwards. Manny is one of those people who can be
funny about anything. He can pick up the telephone book and improvise a hunk of material for twenty minutes that will have
you gasping for breath and wiping away tears of laughter from your eyes. He’s what a producer I once worked for called “a
comic entity.”

As you know, I’m not a comic entity. I write drama, stories about human frailty, stories about pain. And there weren’t a lot
of jobs for twenty-two-year-old women in television in those days, not on the writing staffs. So I took a lot of writing classes,
and while Allan was going to graduate
school, I worked as a hostess at the International House of Pancakes while I wrote at night. Finally after a million false
starts and a number of years, I sold an episode of a television show called “Cimarron Strip.”

Which was pretty funny, considering my only experience with anything Western before that was when I was five, and some guy
with a flea-bitten pony came around to my neighborhood and took pictures of the kids, wearing the photographer’s sweaty cowboy
hat, sitting on the pony. Then he sold the pictures to our parents for too much money. Which is to say, I was not exactly
Louis L’Amour.

My dad still has the picture of me on that pony on the wall. Anyway, that episode got me more jobs in television, and then
you remember I got an assignment to write a feature film for Universal, and my name was in the trades all the time. I had
enough money of my own so that once I made the mistake of trying to pick up the check when I went to lunch with Manny, who
gave me a little slap on the hand and said, “Don’t insult me.”

By now it was the early seventies, and Manny was skinny from working out at Gold’s Gym, which he had started doing at the
advice of his doctor, after he had what he called a “squeezing” in his chest that scared him into getting into shape. And
the cloud of hair had not only turned white, but now it was down to his shoulders, and he wore it in a ponytail, which he
pulled through a hole in the back of a cap with the words Writers’ Guild on it. But these days, instead of regaling me with
the funny stories, Manny was complaining a lot.

I remember coming home one day and telling Allan how I figured Manny’s curmudgeonly attitude probably was due to
old age. He was, after all, in his sixties. But Manny said it was because he was feeling victimized by the prejudice he was
starting to feel in the business, which he couldn’t name.