The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (4 page)

The Mailroom
is also in motion.

When I invited mailroom graduates to be a part of this book, they didn’t ask me what it was about—that much was obvious—but how I hoped to cover the vast territory that lay ahead. After all, no one had tried to gather so many mailroom stories in one place before, and there were many I’d have to leave out. I said that reading the book would be like jumping from lily pad to lily pad to get a pretty damn good sense of the pond. Also, like starting at the bottom yourself, with hundreds of characters as your proxies. But privately another metaphor felt just as apt. Doing the book was a mystery drive along an endless highway; there was no map, only horizon and hitchhikers, none alike. I picked up one to get started, and listened to a story. I picked up another because the first one knew him. I picked up a third because he dressed funny; a fourth because she had an interesting smile and a provocative way of crooking her thumb. Soon I had to trade in my car for an SUV, then a mobile home, then a semi, and finally a fleet of tour buses full of people all talking at once.

Eventually my passengers coalesced into smaller groups—the “classes” you will read about—and I began to make sense of the noise. This is what they had to say.

Tell
you
the
truth,
I’m
not
nuts
about
our
particular
mailroom
system;
I
think
it
needs
to
be
a
bit
harsher.
I
would
crank
up
the
boot-camp
element
and
I
would
let
people
know
that
it’s
really
serious.
Now,
when
somebody
in
the
mailroom
really
goofs
up,
I just
want
to
shave
their
head.
Most
of
the
time
I
don’t
even
want
to
give
them
a
second
chance,
because
it’s
usually just
laziness.
In
my
day
that’s
the
one
thing
I
never
was.
You
always
have
to
say,
“Yessir,
how
high?”
In
the
end,
to
be
the
best
at
it,
you
have
to
be
humble.
I
mean,
you’re
an
agent,
not
a
principal.
If
somebody
in
the
mailroom
is
already giving
you
attitude,
that
shows
at
the
very
least
that
they’re
not
going
to
go
the
extra
mile,
which
is
what
every good
agent
must
always
do.
It shows
that
if
they
ever
actually got
real
power,
they’re
going
to
be
arrogant
as
hell.
I’d
just
as
soon
put
a
bullet
in
the
head
of
that
real
early.

—Creative Artists agent, 2000

KIDS AT WORK

KIDS AT WORK

William Morris Agency, New York, 1937–1951

LOU WEISS, 1937 • SOL LEON, 1938 • LARRY AUERBACH, 1944 •
HILLY ELKINS, 1950 • LEONARD HIRSHAN, 1951

My sense
of
what
I
had
to
do
was
simple:
get
out
of
the
mailroom
as
fast
as
I
could.

—Hilly Elkins

LOU WEISS:
My recollection of all this is unfortunately perfect.

I was interested in the entertainment business because my uncle was George Burns. My mother was one of his seven sisters, and whenever he was in town, we’d all go to see him perform. I loved being backstage near talented people.

My mother wanted me to go to college. I’d rather have hung out with the guys and played ball, or gone to a poolroom, or chased the girls, but school is what she wanted. When she died young, in July 1937, I immediately dropped out of school and went to work. Another uncle, Willie Burns—George’s manager and writer—called Abe Lastfogel, the boss at the William Morris Agency, and asked him to give me a job of any sort. Nat Lefkowitz and Morris Stoller interviewed me, and in August 1937, when I was nineteen, I got a job as an office boy at twelve dollars a week.

SOL LEON:
I grew up in Brooklyn. My father was in the women’s coats and suits business. He was able to put me through the first year of college at NYU-Heights, but when the Depression hit he said, “Sorry. I can’t afford to send you back.”

I got a job and went to Brooklyn Law at night. I sat next to Nat Lefkowitz in class for four years; it was alphabetical. Morris Stoller was also there. Lefkowitz and Stoller worked at William Morris; Nat practically ran the place under Bill Morris Jr. When I became disenchanted with the law, I asked him to find a place for me.

I started October 1, 1938; I was twenty-five. Nat made me head of the mailroom, while Stoller trained me in business affairs. I had nothing directly to do with handling mail. My job was to tear off the Teletypes and distribute them. Get theater tickets. Get train tickets for Mr. Lastfogel; he didn’t fly to California then. Anything that had to be delivered or sorted, I’d delegate. I just told the kids what to do.

WEISS:
Before Sol Leon came to oversee the mailroom, “Uncle Henry”—Bill Morris Sr.’s wife’s cousin—supervised the office boys. He was an elderly guy who didn’t hesitate to crack the whip and make sure we weren’t off playing cards someplace. I wish now that I had behaved myself better. I wasted a lot of time. I’d rather have gone dancing than deliver a script, listen to great bands and vocalists in Harlem than sort mail. I hung out at the Savoy Ballroom and watched Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and Ellington. I was also hooked on comics and comedy writers. I loved to go to Lindy’s and hang around, try to get myself recognized.

LEON:
I wanted to fire Lou Weiss, but I couldn’t because he was George Burns’s nephew.

WEISS:
Maybe because I always dressed better than Sol Leon [
laughs
]. He’d get very upset.

LARRY AUERBACH:
My father was in the dairy restaurant business in Brooklyn. After the stock market crashed, he opened a smaller place but he didn’t own the building, and when the city built a new highway, they tore it down, leaving him to sell off his tables and chairs. He was dejected and sad, and the pain of watching him spend more than a year looking for another situation is still vivid.

I had a work ethic early. When school let out for the summer, I’d always find a job. At twelve I helped my grandparents at their cleaning store, making deliveries. At thirteen I worked for a friend of the family, stacking cans neatly in the Epicurean Department of Gimbel’s. The next summer a friend to whom my uncle sold stationery asked me, “Would you like to work in a theatrical agency?”

I had no idea what that was, so he told me a little bit about it, and I said, “Yeah, it sounds better than delivering suits.”

I got the job at William Morris in June 1944. It was just for the summer, running things around town, mimeographing. I didn’t care. It was New York, the big city, exciting and glamorous. I was just shy of fifteen, a little younger than most people in the mailroom. A few years later I was also the youngest ever made an agent at William Morris—to my knowledge. Norman Brokaw claims he was, but what’s the difference now?

HILLY ELKINS:
I went to the theater often and from the first was attracted to the idea of putting together what I saw on the stage. When I was fifteen I auditioned for a radio program at WNYC and got in. I ran the sound board, produced, directed, wrote, acted.

At Brooklyn College my drama coach was Gordon Davidson’s dad. Gordon—who has for years been artistic director of the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum of Los Angeles—and I were friends and opened a tent theater in Belle Harbor. I had a combination job: producer, star, and janitor. It didn’t lose too much money, but we ran it into the ground.

I thought maybe learning the agency business would be a good way of getting a rounded entertainment education. People were in either the theater, nightclubs, or motion pictures. But now it was the beginning of television. Milton Berle and the
Colgate Comedy Hour
. The only players were William Morris and what was then MCA. I thought it was an interesting opportunity.

I came in cold. Sid Feinberg interviewed me. I was eighteen; I already had my college degree and was starting law school. I gave it up for a job in the mailroom.

LEONARD HIRSHAN:
I could say I loved movies and went all the time when I was ten years old, and knew about directors and scripts, and loved the actors, and said to my father that one day I would grow up and be an agent—but that’s not true. No one tells their parents they want to grow up to be an agent. Until I applied for a job at William Morris, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what the agency business was, or any desire to be in show business. The fates pushed me there.

I got out of the navy in December 1947 and applied to NYU. I’m a very compulsive person, so I went to school
all year long
and graduated in about half the normal time, in August 1950, on a Friday. Having been accepted at NYU law school, I started the next Monday, but after a few months I burned out. I decided to take a leave of absence after the first semester, get a job for a while, and then go back.

I asked my uncle, who had booked shows at the Temple Emmanuel, what kind of temporary situations I could find. He lived in the same building as Nat Kalcheim, an important agent at the Morris office, who told him to have me call Sid Feinberg.

WEISS:
We called the boss Mr. Lastfogel, never Abe. Years later I was sitting with him and Elvis’s manager, Colonel Parker, at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles, and Colonel Parker said, “Abe, why don’t you let Lou call you Abe?”

Mr. Lastfogel said, “He can call me Abe.”

I said, “I don’t call my father Sam. I’m not going to call you Abe.”

It was automatic with all of us.

HIRSHAN:
There was a Nedicks stand in the lobby of our building, 1270 Sixth Avenue, where they sold hot dogs and orange drinks. Whenever I walked by, I’d want something to eat and drink, but I wouldn’t do it because I didn’t want anyone from the office to think that’s where I got my food—until the day I saw Mr. Lastfogel standing there with a hot dog and drink. That’s when I realized the democracy of William Morris and dropped all my airs.

WEISS:
Mrs. Lastfogel—Frances Arms—was a comic and a performer, and it was rare that she’d ever come up to the office. But one day she did and said, “Get Lou Weiss out of the stockroom.” I couldn’t imagine what she wanted. To my surprise she said, “Lou, let me see the new dance steps.” We put on a record and I danced with the boss’s wife. I couldn’t say no. Even after I became an agent, whenever she and the boss were in town, she’d say, “Lou, hang around.”