LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      I looked around in hopes that Goulding was calling somebody else.

      “Erlich, on the double.” Goulding was a little shorter than Papa but very thin, with a head of busy blond hair and a ruddy complexion to match. He was a regular Beau Brummel; everything the man wore matched. “Kid, today you’ll be filming a stunt.” Goulding said. I had no idea what a stunt was and I was too embarrassed to ask. “Four men playing the roles of detectives will boost you up to the open lintel so you can eavesdrop on the conversation between some bank robbers taking place inside a hotel room,” he said.

      Then he went on to tell me I was to squeeze myself through the tiny opening and fall to a mattress out of sight on the other side. Then the director would stop filming. A group of grips would hoist me up and I would do the same thing from the opposite direction, coming out of the opening over the door in the next room.

      “The bits sure to get a laugh,” Goulding insisted.

      When I heard his description of what I was supposed to do, I got nervous. Perspiration poured off of me. It was too late to run away. Soon, hoisted, squeezed, and contorted, I would be the center of attention.

      “I might not even fit through that tiny opening,” I muttered to Papa.

      “Okay boys, take your places for the scene in the hotel hallway,” the director ordered. I walked to the door with four large men. I thought I would throw up or crap in my pants. But as terrified as I was, my excitement soon took over.

      “Hold the hammers,” Fishbach commanded. The carpenters, who had been building sets on the soundstage, stopped what they were doing. “Ready, action, camera!”

      Wow, my first time in front of a movie camera, shooting the first scene in my very first picture! I want to remember this moment, I said to myself.

      Before I knew it, four actors grabbed my legs and boosted me up. They all appeared to be schtarkers, but they had misjudged my tonnage. Apparently crushed by the load, they started to sway to the right, then to the left, then to collapse backward. To avoid falling, I did the only thing I could. For dear life, I grabbed the outside of the scenery flat painted to look just like a hotel room door. In my death-grip struggle to hold on, I began to swing my feet. When my right foot slammed into the canvas-thin scenery, I booted a hole in it the size of a steer’s head.

      “What’s this?” I heard a banshee echoing across the room. “Have you forgotten? We have a budget! Do you think we’re full of money? Such a waste . . . a waste!” It was Stern, bellowing through a megaphone. “Erlich, I expect you to get it done in one take! Do you hear me? One take!”

      Terribly embarrassed yet again, and more afraid of my new boss than any plunge, I dropped back to earth. When I slunk back to Papa, I saw he was standing next to Kitty, who must have come on to the set while I was doing my scene. She looked at me with a smile. After our earlier interaction I would have never expected her kindness.

      She motioned for me to bend down. I did. She put her lips next to my ear and whispered softly. “If you wanna make it in pictures, kid, you need to toughen up. Sometimes Mr. Stern can be a real horse’s ass. You need to learn when to ignore what he says and when to take him seriously.”

      Stern worked us actors like dogs. On second thought, he was probably kinder to his dogs. Because he and his brother Julius were such slave drivers, Century Comedies was prolific and made a lot of money. We’d crank out a movie in less than a week. We called them “five-day-wonders.” They made Century Studios rich and the rest of us poor schleps exhausted.

      Each of our movies cost only about $3,000 to make, but the producers had taken in about $50,000 from investors to cover costs. Then Universal made $300,000 when they distributed our films. You can see there was a lot of money in the picture business. But contrary to what everybody and their cousin thinks, not for me. I started out earning forty dollars a week. Soon they raised me to seventy-five dollars a week. That was a good wage for a kid who was barely seventeen. But it didn’t make me rich and they made me earn every penny.

      By the time we wrapped that first day and I’d scrubbed the greasepaint off my face and changed back to my own clothes, it was past eight o’clock. Let me tell you, getting that makeup off was a royal pain. In all my time in Hollywood, I never got used to the theatrical cold cream we had to use for that chore. It got so I would dread the sight of the big blue cans of that foul-smelling goo.

      That night after work, I was a new kind of tired. I was sore. I mean I was bruised in places I didn’t know I had places. In retrospect, being so drained was a very good thing; a gift. When we got back to the apartment, I was so French-fried that I fell fast asleep before supper and before I could dre a kopf (worry) about my parents’ departure the next morning.

      CHAPTER 7

      Musso and Frank

      Bang, bang, bang.

      A jackhammer pounding on the apartment door woke me at five thirty a.m. “Wake up, Jake,” I heard Mrs. Scheiner, the landlady, holler. “It’s time to get ready for arbeiten.”

      I struggled to lift my hundred-pound eyelids. When I finally did, I felt like Hap Arnold flying in thick Atlantic fog. But I had no instruments, no plane, not even a damned map to guide me. When I rolled out of bed, it hit me hard: I was alone.

      An hour before, without making a sound, Mama and Papa had left for the train station. Lunatic-frantic, I searched the apartment for any traces of my parents: a piece of clothing in the closet, a suitcase under the bed, even a smell. I knew that they were going. We had talked about it since we arrived in town. We had already discussed the rent being paid for the next two months, about me writing to them and my brothers weekly, and how I would take a trip home in December for Myer’s Bar Mitzvah.

      But those memories didn’t soothe or even stop my rush to find clues of their departure. It made no sense, but still I searched. It was as if I believed that if I could figure out exactly where, how, and when they disappeared into the darkness, maybe I could will them back. But they were gone. The only evidence I found of them ever having been there was a note in my father’s handwriting and a twenty-dollar bill they left for me on the little table in the kitchenette.

      Dear Jakey,

      Be a good boy!

      We love you,

      Mama and Papa

      P.S. Remember, a good name is worth more than gold.

      I had never felt so alone. Luckily, my parents had raised me with a strong sense of responsibility and commitment. I’m sure you can tell from the little I’ve already shared that responsibility and commitment have always been both my anchor and my sail; they keep me stuck or they get me moving. That morning it was the latter.

      Within a few minutes, I was dressed and out the door. A moment later I was back in my room. I had forgotten my sweater; I promised Mama I would take in case it got chilly.

      XXXX

      By Thursday night, the end of my first week in Hollywood, I was banged, bruised, and bumped, but I had finished my first movie, A Corn-Fed Sleuth, the tale of a hayseed who came to the big city to seek fame and fortune. You might say it was autobiographical.

      What I remember most about that memorable week happened late on Friday afternoon. Archie, Century’s PR man, had just finished shooting some publicity pictures of me when I felt a tug on my pants leg. It was Kitty. Over the past week, my initial harsh judgment of her had begun to change.

      “Hiya, kid. How was your first week in pictures?” she asked.

      “Okay, I guess. I hope Mr. Stern, Fishbach, and the other fellows on the crew liked my work,” I said, searching for a compliment or some morsel of approval.

      You see, all week long I did the gags the gagmen wrote and followed the director’s instructions.

Скачать книгу