The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (14 page)

DEBLASIO:
When I was a new agent, Phil Weltman called me and said, “Listen, you do a good job with these guys.” He meant the trainees. He had one in mind that he wanted me to oversee: Barry Diller.

“I don’t want you to train him, but I want to give him an office near you and I want you to help him,” Weltman said.

I guess Diller went through the mailroom, but I never noticed. It must have been only for a minute and a half. Next thing I knew, he was up on the third floor with me pretty fast. Diller then was like Diller today. He spent an awful lot of time making sure he understood what was happening. He read a lot of files. He was very focused. He had definite likes and dislikes, but he didn’t voice them as much because he wasn’t that well established yet. He was a good, good judge of people. He did not suffer fools gladly at all, and there are a lot of fools out there. I liked Diller a lot. I was a big jazz fan; he introduced me to the Beatles.

BARRY DILLER: Phil Weltman was a direct and decent man who truly
enjoyed developing people, giving them discipline and order and a
sense of values—he was the best kind of teacher, and those who were
lucky enough to have him in their life at such a formative stage are
forever grateful. I was a bit more than that, as I’m sure were a few
others; I was one of his special charges, and his great expectations, and
eventual pride, both shaped and gave first confidence to my business
life. In addition to all that, he was loved because he had a great and
easy laugh, and beneath his outward drill-sergeant shield he was a
warm, kindhearted man.

PERKINS:
Before he died, Phil Weltman told me that somebody had once asked him, “Phil, do you know Barry Diller? Did you ever
talk
to him?”

“Well,” he said, “when I used to want to talk to him, I’d buzz him.”

PERKINS:
Frank Sinatra—like Peter Lawford, Milton Berle, and others—had offices at the William Morris building, on the third floor, with secretaries and private phone lines. Sometimes the occupants would even show up. Sinatra owned part of a restaurant called Puccini’s, on Beverly Drive. A phone line from his office went directly to the restaurant. Occasionally, when we’d saved some bucks, three or four of us would go to lunch there.

One day I picked up the Sinatra line to Puccini’s and said, “This is Mr. Perkins over at the William Morris Agency. There will be lunch for four at twelve-thirty.”

They said, “Yes, sir, fine. We’ll be waiting for you.”

The minute the maître d’ saw my friends and me, he knew the truth: I had nothing to do with Frank Sinatra. But he said, “Mr. Perkins! Come this way.” As he turned around, at the very first table I saw a girl I was going out with and her mother. Boy, did I feel good, because I knew they’d heard him say, “Mr. Perkins!” I stopped to greet them, and the maître d’—I love him to this day—came up and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Perkins. The other gentlemen would like a drink. Would you care for your usual?” I said, “Thank you, that would be nice.” He made me feel ten feet tall. I think my usual was a glass of water.

SHAPIRO:
I was in the mailroom for only five months when they decided they needed someone to take the vaunted position of head of the Transportation Department. In plain English that meant I was still in the mailroom but also the liaison to the Morris office’s travel agency. When Sam Weisbord wanted to fly to New York, rather than his secretary calling the agency, I’d call. The same with all the hotshot agents. I got on a first-name basis with everyone except Mr. Lastfogel.

In those days an ancillary benefit of flying first class from New York to Los Angeles, or vice versa, was that the airline would automatically give you a free first-class leg from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back. The agents would never use those, so they’d give them to me. I had a stack.

I made $37.50 a week, I was single, and I dated a lot. But I didn’t have enough money to take a woman to dinner. So when they’d ask, “Where are we going?” I’d say, “Don’t worry about it.” We’d drive to the airport and go on a first-class flight to San Francisco. I’d go under the name Mr. Lastfogel or Nat Lefkowitz or Lou Weiss, or whoever the executive was. (I’m very straightforward, and I always asked the agents, “Will you ever use this?”) I’d have another ticket for my date and find a way to change the name. In first class they’d give you lots of food, and we’d have more drinks than you should in an hour flight. We’d get there and I’d say, “San Francisco is so romantic, let’s just walk around.”

Sometimes I would save my money and we’d stay over at some rat-trap place that I said Hemingway had slept at—to make it sound a little more romantic—but the joy and the excitement was usually going up and back in one night. These girls were young actresses and models, and they’d never gone first class. I never dated a secretary. I never dated a client.

Well . . . I say I never dated a client—until I dated a woman who was flown out here to test for the series
Gidget
. She was a dancer for Jerry Robbins, for
West Side Story
. I married her, and we’ve been together for thirty-seven years.

MARDIGIAN:
The big competition was to get on a desk. Phil Kellogg, a big-time movie agent, wanted me to work for him. I turned it down because I didn’t want to get into actors. Writers were more interesting. I loved the creativity of making those deals. Plus, the literary side was much less competitive and in the spotlight. That appealed to my personality; I don’t seek attention. Dick Patterson was head of Literary, and I waited for his desk to open. Unbeknownst to me, that turned out to be a gutsy move.

Patterson had a sense of humor, which I played into. We even socialized. But then he was hired by Paramount, to work in their European office, so I moved to Arthur Kramer’s desk. He had recently come from Columbia Pictures, was there about ten minutes, and then died.

When Mike Zimmering got the Literary Department, I worked for him. After a couple months he promoted me to junior agent. I had moved ahead rather quickly, but some assistants don’t because they don’t really understand the trick of getting ahead: Don’t make yourself invaluable as a secretary—because then you’re invaluable as a
secretary
. The better you are, the longer you stay on the desk and perhaps die there. I’d be helpful in certain areas and fuck up in others, especially clerking skills. I realized it wasn’t a great idea to spell too well. Guys too obedient to authority succeeded more slowly. If you were slightly incompetent, it was, well, “Get outta here.” The tradition passed down to me was, “Don’t get too serious.”

DEBLASIO:
I finally got promoted out of the mailroom to Shelly Wild’s desk in the Literary Department. Shelly was a nice guy, a New Yorker, a liberal, a Stevenson Democrat, a Jewish intellectual, and I really liked him a lot. But politically speaking, he was the odd man out because, interestingly enough, the Morris office hierarchy was mostly Republican.

I know “Republican Jew” sounds like an oxymoron, but I think the reason was that Mr. Lastfogel had done so much work for the military. He was a founder of the USO, and his best friend was General Omar Bradley. Many of the Jews in the motion picture industry were Republicans. Some even wanted to be gentiles.

The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential race presented an interesting complication for the Morris office hierarchy. I overheard Mr. Lastfogel say about Kennedy, “We must support this man.” Morris Stoller said, “You know, if a Catholic can get in, it may not be that long before a Jew can get in.” With classic agent-think, they recognized the opportunities and they wanted a new spirit.

I wanted to be promoted to junior agent off Shelly’s desk, but one day one of the partners’ sons—Sid Kalcheim—showed up and needed a job, so they put him in the Literary Department. The vacancy that might have been mine was taken. I was despondent. I couldn’t get over the idea that I was totally dispensable. I thought I was used to it; in the army they never stopped telling us how low we were. But at least in the army they had to feed me and clothe me. This was lower than that. Finally, as a compromise, the company agreed to float me. I’d move from desk to desk, where needed. That’s when I worked for Mr. Lastfogel.

I ended up on Elliot Wax’s desk. Elliot was a TV agent, newly arrived from the New York office. He was trying to fit in but ran into a bit of a stone wall because he did it the New York way. I worked for Wax for about a year. He was a good salesman. I listened in on his phone conversations and learned how fast you can tap-dance out of something:

One afternoon about two o’clock the studio had some script pages for Tony Franciosa. I had to get them to him or at least tell him about the call. I phoned his house—I think he was married to Shelley Winters, or they were living together—and I got Shelley. I said I needed to have something delivered to Tony, and since he wasn’t working that day, I wanted to make sure he got the message. She said, “What the hell are you talking about, not working today? He left this house this morning and went to the studio. He
is
working. Did that son of a bitch lie to me?”

When Wax came back from lunch, I said, “Elliot, I think I erred.” Sure enough, we got an angry telephone call from Franciosa; who knows what he was up to. Then I got a lecture about how I had to be more aware. Part of it was Elliot’s fault. I said, “But you don’t tell me things.”

I got promoted to agent about four years after I started. The long process took its toll. After a while you’re just marking time. Your friends from college are in big jobs and making good money. If you meet for dinner, you can’t pick up the check; often you just show up for drinks. At parties the only thing you can contribute is talk about the clients. But even that was boring because in those days all anyone wanted to know was if Rock Hudson was gay. Did I care? No.

PERKINS:
I never had to be in a hurry. I started on November 9, 1959. Because of all the new guys they brought in when the five in front of me quit, I was head of the mailroom by March. In June I became Stan Kamen’s assistant. The next June I went to Hawaii on vacation. When I came back, there was another guy on Kamen’s desk. I was really upset. He said, “Calm down. We’ve decided to make you an agent.”
Bing.
I felt charmed.

LIEBERSON:
My first desk was Lenny Hirshan. I wasn’t a very good secretary, but Lenny couldn’t complain because I’d come from working in Mr. Lastfogel’s office. But because Lenny is a great politician, he did something very smart: He tolerated me and, to get rid of me, got me promoted as soon as he could. It took only five months.

SHAPIRO:
In 1968 the Morris office sent me to London. Before I left, I hired Fred Specktor to take my place. I came back in 1974. I was head of the International Motion Picture Department and still wanted to be president of the company. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I decided to exercise my creative juices and be a producer, and I left in 1977. I didn’t have a job, although I got one at Warner Brothers so quickly that I think the Morris office thought I left because I
did
have a job. The agency was unhappy, but they’re always unhappy when you do that. The thing about William Morris was that they pretty much expected you to join for life. Leaving was a betrayal, and they turned your picture to the wall—like they did with Ovitz. But when they heard I’d made an overall deal to be a producer, it wasn’t so bad. Two or three months later I became head of production at Warner Brothers. Now they were
proud
of me. Some of the first congratulatory letters I got were from people at William Morris. They were smart businessmen: If you left to run a studio, then you were a
buyer
. Your picture got turned back around a little bit.

SANFORD LIEBERSON
has had a long and distinguished career producing many popular and award-winning films. He also cofounded Creative Management Associates, which eventually became International Creative Management, and was for a time president of production at Twentieth Century Fox, where he oversaw
Chariots of Fire, Nine to Five,
Quest for Fire
, and Akira Kurosawa’s
Kagemusha,
among others. He still produces independently and teaches at the National Film and Television School in England. He lives in London.

RON MARDIGIAN
left William Morris as a senior vice president of Motion Picture Literary, West Coast. He is now head of Mardigian Management and is on the faculty of the USC School of Cinema-Television, where he teaches “The Business of Writing.”

JOE WIZAN
was, in the eighties, president of Twentieth Century Fox. He currently produces movies (
Along Came a Spider
) and for a time had a radio show called
The A List,
on which, in a Charlie Rose–type format, he interviewed everyone who was anyone in show business.

RON DEBLASIO is president of Shankman/DeBlasio/Melina, a management and publishing company based in Los Angeles.

ROWLAND PERKINS
cofounded Creative Artists Agency. After leaving in 1995, he became an independent producer of feature, TV, network, and cable films. Currently Mr. Perkins is chairman and also sits on the board of
ieProducer.com
, an integrated Internet company, and is president of
ieProducer.com
’s wholly owned subsidiary Talentclick, an Internet company servicing the casting needs of the motion picture, television, legitimate theater, and commercial worlds.