What Makes Sammy Run? (36 page)

As I was going out, Rita Royce and her party blew in.

“This is one of my writers,” Sammy introduced me. “I’m bringing him back to the Coast with me. He’s going to do my first picture,
Deadline.
”

While my hand was making the rounds, Sammy said, “Better call the Stork, Sheik, and tell them to hold that table for us—we’ll be ready for dinner in about an hour.”

At the door Sammy punched my arm twice in rapid succession, Jimmy Cagney fashion. “Well, I’m tickled to death to have you with me, kid. I know we’re going to knock them for a row of Academy Awards. I’ll have Sheik get a lower for you—right next to my drawing room—so if you get any great ideas in the middle of the night you can run right in and spill ’em, sweetheart.”

That night I sat in Bleeck’s wondering if I was a heel. Manheim, confess, I thought. The moment you heard that name you thought of Hollywood again. You thought what that name could do for you. You thought of all that Hollywood dough. You thought of getting back to Kit.

I gave myself five minutes for rebuttal.

The trouble with Hollywood is that too many people who won’t leave are ashamed to be there. But when a moving picture is right, it socks the eye and the ear and the solar plexus all at once and
that is a hell of a temptation for any writer. I felt that when I went back for the fourth time to see
The Informer
. And one afternoon when I happened to catch a revival of the Murnau-Jannings masterpiece,
The Last Laugh
. And even when I saw one of my own jobs, a stinker if there ever was one, but with one scene in it that sang because I happened to stumble onto real picture technique. That is what held Kit there. Hollywood may be full of phonies, mediocrities, dictators and good men who have lost their way, but there is something that draws you there that you should not be ashamed of.

CHAPTER 11     

A
s Kit and I came out of the preview we could see Sammy leaning against the lamppost with his hands in his pockets and his long cigar blowing triumphant puffs like a Roman candle.

“Well, what do you think?” he said with a grin that told you what he expected to hear.

“That’s a pretty good movie,” Kit said.

“When a sourpuss like you says pretty good, it must really be terrific,” Sammy said.

Sheik sailed over, making that circle of approval with his thumb and forefinger as he came. “Well, sweetheart,” he said, “it’s a killer. Even tops
Deadline
for my dough.”

Sheik was still Sammy’s shadow but he had been promoted. He
was an agent now. He had just sort of drifted into it by going up to an ingénue he knew Sammy was signing and telling her he would use his influence to have Sammy take her. Other clients followed until now Sheik was clearing around three or four hundred a week. Still in the small-fry class, but between his firm grip on Sammy’s coattails and his increasing popularity as a ladies’ man, Sheik was definitely on his way.

Word had gotten around that Sheik was an ex-mobster and soon, with Hollywood’s talent for self-dramatization, Sheik had become a famous gunman, in fact, Capone’s right-hand man. A killer whom Sammy Glick and Hollywood had regenerated. This, along with his other social attributes, had begun to make him a celebrity’s celebrity.

“After
Deadline
the second-guessers were saying I could only make mellers,” Sammy said. “Now they’ll be saying I can only make comedies. It’s got a million laughs, hasn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” said Sheik. “You should have saved a few of ’em for some of World-Wide’s other pictures. Outside of your two, this year’s program is stinking up the studio so bad you have to have a gas mask to go through the halls.”

As Sammy laughed, I noticed that his face was puffing out a little bit. The lean ferret look wasn’t gone—it was just beginning to be framed with a fleshy border. Sheik watched Sammy’s face too, joining in his laughter like the background people at a cue from the director.

The leading lady knifed her way through, leaving a wake of panicky autograph hounds.

“You were O.K.,” Sammy told her.

She made a little curtsy and told him it had been a pleasure to work for him.

“O.K.,” Sammy said. “So next time don’t try to tell me you don’t like the part. Doesn’t this prove that we always know what’s best for you?”

As her public swallowed her up again, Sammy gave us a wink. “When those babies go soft on you—that’s the time to sock it home.”

Sidney Fineman came out of the crowd. The herringbone design under his eyes seemed more noticeable these days. His posture was still erect and dignified but you could feel him making the effort to keep it that way.

“That’s a good solid writing job, Manheim,” he said to me, and then he turned to Sammy with a tired, brave smile.

“Well, my boy, looks like you’ve done it again.”

Sammy shook his hand with a straight face. “Thank you, Mr. Fineman,” he said, “let’s hope so.”

He had learned how to be polite to his superiors now but it would never really become him. He called Fineman Grandma behind his back, when he wasn’t being more vivid.

We stood on the curb talking cutting and last-minute story points as the crowd drifted away.

“I have only one real objection,” Fineman said mildly. “The action seems to get started too quickly. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to plant the characters and the situation. What do you think, Sammy?”

Kit and I looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Sidney Fineman had his own studio in Hollywood when Sammy was still hawking papers on 14th Street. He had been the first one with enough daring to make a classic like
Helen of Troy
when everyone else was making two-reel horse operas. He never asked questions then.

When I first started writing the screenplay, Sammy had told me specifically that you never have to sell your characters or your plot in a farce comedy. For a moment I thought he was going to tell Fineman off about that. But apparently he had decided the time wasn’t ripe yet. For all he said was:

“Maybe you’re right. Let’s have another look at it in the morning.”

“Fine,” Fineman said. “Perhaps it will look better when we’re fresh.”

Sammy smiled at him as if to say, Speak for yourself, pal, I never felt fresher. “That’s right,” he said, “maybe it will.”

There was something in Sammy’s voice that cut the conference
short. Sammy watched Fineman’s chauffeur help him into his big black limousine.

“The corpse is climbing back into his hearse,” Sammy cracked.

Only Sheik laughed.

“Well, where do we go from here?” Sammy said.

“Sunset Club,” Sheik said. “They’ve got a new dinge band there that’ll kill ya.”

“What did you get for me?” Sammy said.

“Some brand-new stuff,” Sheik said. “Punkins Weaver.”

“Is she O.K.?” Sammy said.

“Until the real thing comes along,” Sheik sang. “Blonde. Willing. Cute kid.”

Kit and I stopped in at one of the little bars on Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Boulevard. All along the sidewalk were little knots of poolroom characters who always seemed to be there, holding mysterious conferences. Down the street the playboys were getting out of red Cadillac phaetons or monogrammed town cars at La Conga. There was something savage and tense about that street. Autograph hunters prowled it, and ambitious young ladies in fancy hair-dos and slacks.

“God, this is a tough town,” Kit said.

“Why is it tougher than anywhere else?” I said.

“Because it still has the gold-rush feeling,” she said. “The gold rush was probably the only other set-up where so many people could hit the jackpot and the skids this close together. It’s become a major industry without losing the crazy fever of a gold-boom town.”

“What made you think of that? Fineman?”

She nodded. “Sometimes I think the three chief products this town turns out are moving pictures, ambition and fear.”

“I felt sorry for Fineman too,” I said. “For all his fame and his dough, I still wouldn’t like to be in his shoes right now.”

“Something tells me there’s going to be a lot of traffic in those shoes.”

“I don’t think Sammy’s ready to try them on yet,” I said. “Don’t forget Sammy likes to have his shoes fit.”

I sat in while they looked at the picture with the cutter again next morning, stopping it reel by reel to talk it over.

“I guess you’re right about the opening at that,” Fineman said. “Any more footage would make it drag.”

“I’m glad you see it my way,” Sammy said.

I don’t think Fineman saw anything more to it than that; an older man and his younger assistant working together to tighten up their picture. But I knew that tone in Sammy’s voice, the warning rattle. It was like reading a Fu Manchu book and wondering how and when the hand will strike.

After the picture had been run off, the cutter said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about that one. I’ll run it through again this afternoon and clean it up a little bit. If I nip a couple more hundred feet out of it it’ll be tight as a drum.”

Fineman seemed to be thinking of something else.

“Sammy, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said. “Walk back to my office with me.”

“What’s the matter with right here?” Sammy said. “We’d save a couple of minutes.”

“No,” Fineman said, not quite as soft-spoken as usual. “It’s a rather delicate matter.”

That night I had to go over to Sammy’s for a conference on the next picture. Sammy had moved from his apartment to one of those Hollywood Colonial manors in upper Beverly Hills.

The first thing he did was show me through every room, rattling off the names of all the celebrities who had lived there before him and the marquee names he had for neighbors.

“I tell you, there’s nothing like having a house of your own,” he said. “I get up in the morning and look out at those palm trees and the other big houses and I say to myself, Sammy, how did it all happen?”

I have a couple of ideas on it, I thought, if you really want to know.