Moving Pictures (34 page)

Branching out from our soft-drink business, Maurice and I next directed our multi-talents to the magazine field, pressing subscriptions to
The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies’ Home Journal,
and
The Country Gentleman
on our parents’ friends who were too embarrassed to refuse. When that guest list was exhausted, we took to the streets, hawking our wares on the bustling corner of Western Avenue near what was then the Fox Studio.

To commemorate a new contract bringing him more than half a million dollars a year, B.P. ordered a custom-made town car that became for many years the bane of his children’s existence. The body was a model of an 18
^th
-century coach, laced with gold bric-a-brac, incongruously placed on a Lincoln chassis with a 16-cylinder engine. On either side of the door to our royal coach were two genuine antique lanterns. The interior was a jewel box, large enough for three on the plush rear seat, with two small circular jump seats that folded into the carpeted floor. Over each of the small rear windows was a small cut-glass vase in which fresh tea roses were placed every morning. There was also a delicate telephone with which we could communicate with James, our liveried chauffeur, a lean, ruddy-faced English war veteran who carried himself with the dash of Errol Flynn and indeed bore some resemblance to that irrepressible Tasmanian.

That automotive hybrid with its powerful engine from Detroit and its Hollywood replica of an Empire coach was an unlikely vehicle from which to peddle magazines. But forbidden to drive my new Model A into the dangerous traffic of Western Avenue, and laden with my magazines, I had no choice but to be driven to my corner in that gaudy symbol of conspicuous consumption. I never sat in that car in an upright position. To avoid the humiliation of being seen by passengers in ordinary vehicles, I always traveled on the floor, folded more or less into the fetal position. “Dressed down” in old knickers and a worn shirt, I would huddle there clutching my bagful of magazines. Near Western Avenue, as James opened the door for me, I made my escape in a manner that Lon Chaney might have admired. From my prone position on the floor I would crawl out onto the curb, move away from the car as quickly as I could, and then suddenly rise from my knees and stride away rapidly as if I had nothing to do with that $18,000 monster.

Once I was out on that Western Avenue corner I became the typical small-fry solicitor. Only my vocal pitch sounded like this: “G-get your S-saturday Evening Post—C-country G-G-G [soft
g
was always one of my most difficult consonants] Gentle-man—L-Ladies’ Home J-J-Jour-nal?” Passersby must have felt pity for my affliction. Perhaps they
thought I was retarded or that I had a harelip and was saving my nickels for an operation, for I was able to lighten my load of magazines through the afternoon. But it was a nerve-wracking job, as I always had to keep an eye out for dirty Alex and his Wilton Place yahoos. Our little nemesis, Pancho Villa, Jr., he was my chief tormentor at the Wilton Place Grammar School. Here on the Avenue he led a small band of outlaws who frankly terrified me. Once I saw them coming, just as James was driving to get me. Tucking my bundle of unsold magazines under my arm, I ran for my life down Third Street toward Van Ness. James saw me, stopped, flung open the door of the town car, and I dove in, hugging the floor as he drove home.

I was not the only member of the family to be a floor-rider in this glorious carriage. Whenever my sister Sonya was sent off in that car she would also hide on the floor, as ashamed of its ostentation as was I.

One night, in the car with my parents, I was all dressed up and forced to sit on the jump seat. We were on our way to the opening of one of Dad’s pictures,
Old Ironsides,
at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater. The ornate entranceway on Hollywood Boulevard was jammed with frenzied fans pushing against the barricades for a glimpse of their idols—Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, Billie Dove, Jackie Coogan… Suddenly a young girl, breaking through the barricades, ran toward our car which was caught in the star-studded traffic. The fan jumped onto the single step beneath the carriage door. There I was, with parents in evening clothes, in a fabulous chauffeur-driven carriage of gold. That was all a star-blinded fanatic needed to see.

“Who are you? Who are you?” she shouted at me. “Are you a movie star?” I shook my head. A slight drizzle added an extra note of madness to this searchlight circus.

“Who are you!”

It was not a question but a command. For those timeless seconds I belonged to her.

“I-I’m n-nobody,” I stammered.

“Nobody?” She was moving along with us, her face peering over the half-lowered window, growing suspicious of elusive movie stars who high-hatted their fans.

“Are you sure? Do I know your name?”

I shook my head. “I-I’m not in the m-movies. I’m n-nobody j-just like you.”

She stared at me and then suddenly accepted me, with a kind of
ecstasy, as if miraculously the nobodies were inside this golden carriage riding with the greats. Still clinging to the coach, she turned around and shouted to the crowd pressing forward behind her. “He says he’s nobody!” Her voice rose triumphantly. “Just like us!”

That was as close as I ever came to egalitarianism in Father’s dream machine.

T
O COUNTERBALANCE OUR PRINCELY
position, Maurice and I found an outlet for our pent-up energies on Halloween. A favorite target was the large red-brick Edwardian home of the Listicos on the corner. Mr. Listico, constantly overseeing his beautifully manicured lawns and hedges, was on the lookout for us. “Hey, you kids, stay off my grass!” he was always shouting at us.

One Halloween we decided to get even. From a mansion going up on Wilshire Boulevard we carried a barrel of wet cement. Then we collected garbage from neighboring houses, dragged it up the bricked entrance-way to Mr. Listico’s front door, and covered it with the cement. Hearing sounds within, we turned and ran. Panting, I hurried into the house and turned on the player piano. Moments later came a knock on the door: the police, asking for my father. It was one of the nights he happened to be home. I ran up the stairs and hid under my bed. After a while, I crawled to the doorway to listen. Father was doing his best to save me from reform school. Creeping out into the hallway, I peered down the banister. Father was reaching into his pocket and handing the officers some money. Their tone softened. He offered them some of his blimp-sized Upmann cigars. I heard the mingled chuckling of grown men who understand each other. The best sound of all was the front door closing behind them. Then I heard Father’s footsteps coming up the stairs. I was more anxious than frightened because he had never struck me.

Perhaps because of his own human weaknesses he could not bring
himself to sit in judgment on me. His permissiveness was instinctive and emotional where Mother’s was theoretical and intellectual. Father simply explained to me that although he had managed to persuade the police not to arrest us, we would have to atone by removing the hardened cement and decaying garbage within, and by forfeiting next month’s allowance to pay for the damage.

I never forgot Father’s understanding, nor forgave Mr. Listico for calling the cops.

Another enemy was Rabbi Magnin, who presided over the local Temple B’nai B’rith, a position of grandeur he continues to enjoy an incredible half-century later. Today the Temple is a magnificent dome on Wilshire Boulevard, a monument to the affluent religiosity of Los Angeles. But in those days it was housed in an unprepossessing block-long two-story building in downtown Los Angeles. Instead of the traditional Hebrew school for youngsters, we had Sunday School, viewed as outright heresy by our Orthodox grandfathers.

But if the Rabbi’s Sunday activities scandalized the bearded fathers of the studio bosses, it had charms for the young bosses themselves. Louie Mayer, William Fox, and the other moguls were happy to contribute large sums for front-row pews, and Rabbi Magnin rewarded them with flattery that poured like honey, and with a sanctimonious air that played up to their image of a man of God. Magnin was the right rabbi in the right temple in the right city at the right moment in time. If he had not presided over our B’nai B’rith, God and Louie B. Mayer—whose overpowering presences tended to overlap—would have had to create him. Or maybe they did.

Since my father had inherited his father’s lack of interest in the religion of their ancestors, and since Mother gave lip service to the High Holy Days but had her head in other clouds, the teachings of Judaism meant little or nothing to me. Still, there was an irresistible force that drew me to B’nai B’rith every Sunday. Her name was Elsie Brick. Our Sunday School teacher. The first woman I was ever in love with. I should say
we
were ever in love with. Since Maurice and I were now accustomed to doing everything together, it followed that we should become mutually devoted to Elsie Brick. Still fearful of girls our own age—we would run from our houses to hide under a spreading evergreen whenever one appeared—and wary of those predatory little animals called starlets, in Elsie Brick we discovered an altogether different and superior female
specimen. She had about her a dark and intense yet ethereal Rebeccalike beauty. Looking back, I realize that she was in her early twenties. But she was old enough for us not to feel challenged in offering her our love. Thus an innocent
ménage à trois
formed in our heads. In some cloud-banked kingdom of youth the three of us would live happily ever after.

Our Sunday School lessons began with the creation of the Earth, according to the Hebrews. I don’t think we yet knew the difference between fact and fancy, law and legend. There was, for instance, something about Miss Brick’s account of the origin of man that struck us as a little fishy. The Lord created Adam in His image, the lonely Adam gave up one of his ribs to form Eve, and the two of them gave birth to Cain and Abel. So far so good. But after Cain killed his brother, there should have been only three people left on earth. Yet Cain goes forth to the land of Nod and finds a wife, from whom came Enoch who begat Irad who begat Mehujael who begat Methushael, who begat Lamech, who took unto himself two wives, Adah and Zillah.

Well, we asked our divine Elsie, if Adam and Eve were the first two people on earth, where could Cain’s wife possibly have come from? Why weren’t her parents as famous as Adam and Eve? Why did our Bible ignore them? And later, if Lamech was a descendent of the original Adam and Eve, where did he find Adah and Zillah? Who were
their
ancestors, and why weren’t they mentioned in the opening chapter? Where were they during all those goings-on in the Garden of Eden?

Miss Brick did her sweet, vague best to explain away these discrepancies, but each Sunday Maurice and I pressed on with our questions. We never did understand—if Adam, Eve, and Cain were the only three people on earth—what was meant by the biblical threat to Cain: “Whoever finds him shall kill him”? Where would the avengers come from in an unpeopled world?

Sunday after Sunday we laid intellectual siege to the biblical loyalty of Elsie Brick. No fact in Deuteronomy or Joshua or Judges was accepted on face value. Why, we demanded, did the walls of Jericho come tumbling down on the seventh day of the siege by Joshua and his forty thousand nomadic troops? Was the sound of Jewish trumpets and the shouts of Joshua’s legions sufficient to bring down those walls thirty feet high and six to twelve feet thick? Was God really staging these miracles so that the Jews could conquer their enemies and occupy the Promised Land as prophesied on the eve of their exodus from Egypt? Or was this
simply a Jewish folktale written after the fact to justify the conquests of the children of Judah?

While we constantly challenged Elsie Brick’s biblical teachings we tried to think of new ways to express our devotion. One Sunday morning we decided to pick flowers from our gardens and to present them to her before the class would assemble. We were so eager for precious minutes of privacy with Elsie that we arrived fully half an hour before class was to begin.

Depositing our bouquet on Miss Brick’s desk, we waited impatiently for her arrival. With nothing to do but inspect the empty classroom, we noticed for the first time a trapdoor in the floor. Finally managing to pry it open, we discovered beneath our feet an underground world—not a basement but a crawl-space, typical of southern Californian construction, about three feet deep. In our Sunday best we lowered ourselves down and pulled the trapdoor shut behind us. Around us spread a labyrinth of pipes and cobwebs that only boys could love. It was dark and we had to crawl over and under the pipes, along the dirt on which the temple had been built years before. Preoccupied with our explorations, we lost track of time until suddenly we became aware of footsteps above our heads as our classmates took their seats. We had hoped to resurface before their arrival. Now we were trapped. As we huddled down there in indecision, Miss Brick began to call the roll. When she got to “Rapf,” Maurice cupped his hands to his mouth and called up through the floor, “Here.” A murmur ran through the classroom. After a pause, Miss Brick continued. At “Schulberg,” I also raised my head to the dark underside of the classroom floor: “Here.” Again a murmur of surprise and confusion ran through the class. “Maurice …? Buddy …? Where are you?”

We heard the voice of our beloved but remained silent. After a minute or two of mystified speculation, Miss Brick took up the morning lesson. As she was reminding us of the moral leadership of the Chosen People, somehow we found the courage to dramatize, under the floor of the temple, the laws that came down to us from the Lord at Mount Sinai. “This is the voice of Moses,” I began, in my best ghostly tone, “bringing you the Ten Commandments….” My speech teacher would have been interested to hear that; assuming a new personality, impersonating Moses himself, I found my words flowed easily, without hesitation.

Then Maurice took over and intoned through the cracks in the floor: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me…” and right on through all those fearful “Thou shalt not’s …” It was not exactly
applause that we heard from the other side of the floor but a collective murmur of approval that encouraged us to go on. Unmindful of the dirt and the cobwebbed darkness, we were exhilarated with the prospects that lay before us. For our underground crawl-space extended the length and breadth of the building. Before us lay new worlds, or classrooms, to conquer. So we crawled to a new position under the adjoining classroom and again went into our brother act on Moses and the Ten Commandments.