The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (17 page)

Ebbins and Fitzgerald and Hartmann and I still have an occasional dinner. We call our little group the Sons of the Triple Cross because of the logo on the Morris stationery.

HARTMANN:
There are four
X
s. The first three stand for WMA. The fourth stands for the truth—about the other three.

EBBINS:
Typically, it was Hartmann’s idea.

FITZGERALD:
We used to drive these gray Mercury Comets for dispatch runs. No air-conditioning, no heat. They were really trashed.

EBBINS:
I still can’t drive by the Morris office without remembering the time I pulled one of those rotten Comets into the parking lot with the entire backseat on fire from a cigarette I thought I’d flipped out the window.

ROSENFIELD:
It’s scary, but I still remember the license plate: JNV643. We had to gas the cars every day, at Red Man’s Service. There were spies. If we didn’t do it in the morning, the company knew.

EBBINS:
Michael McLean and I had to take a couple of Oscars to be engraved at the Academy. We stopped by the Rexall Drugstore on La Cienega at Beverly Boulevard and took pictures of ourselves holding the Oscars in the twenty-five-cent photo booth.

ROSENFIELD:
The big fantasy was that we’d deliver a script to an actress, and she’d be in a bathrobe and invite you in.

FITZGERALD:
The closest I came was Natalie Wood in a bikini at her rented house on Summit Ridge Drive. Innocent enough, but still . . . She invited me in for some water, but I was so nervous that I said no and left as quickly as possible. I was an idiot.

ROSENFIELD:
Actually, we knew a secretary at one of the studios who, word got out quick, had a thing for young guys. We would all stop by to see her, hoping she’d say, “Are they paying you enough to eat? Do you want to come over to my house for dinner?” I think McLean got lucky.

MCLEAN:
I got lucky when I delivered to Kim Novak and she came to the door in an open robe, with nothing on underneath. I don’t think that was an accident. I’m sure she looked out the window and thought, Oh, there’s a young guy from the William Morris office, let me see what
this
does to him—just for fun. Some fun. I was dumbfounded. I probably limped back to the car.

EBBINS:
Many of our errands weren’t exactly orthodox. We used to pick up jars of chicken soup from the Hillcrest Country Club for Sam Weisbord, may he rest in peace. Once I bought some condoms for an agent. But those were nothing compared with driving the comedienne Martha Raye’s husband, Nick Condos, home. Condos had come to the office drunk. He was trashed; I mean drunker than shit. It was a little dicey because this guy was ranting and raving one minute about “these fucking agents,” and the next minute he was crying.

FITZGERALD:
I took a script to Spencer Tracy. I had gotten a ten-minute lecture about how I was supposed to go around the back to the gardener’s shack and leave it with him. Well, I screwed up and knocked on the front door. Then I saw Katharine Hepburn through the window, doing the dishes. I thought, Oh, gosh, I’m getting fired. They really liked their privacy.

Hepburn came out, wiping her hands on a towel. She smiled, said, “Thank you very much,” took the script, turned around, and called out, “Spensah. Spensah, your script is here.”

EBBINS:
One morning Michael McLean said, “It’s a beautiful day today. Let’s go to the beach.”

MCLEAN:
We hired Red Arrow Messenger Service to do our run. Then we took my boat out and had a day in the sun. But when we came back, we were in deep shit.

EBBINS:
A check from Paramount Studios for Elvis Presley, for a million dollars, was missing.

MCLEAN:
No one could actually cash the check, but we had to cop to what we had done.

EBBINS:
We had to see Mr. Lastfogel, confess, and make our mea culpas. Neither of us got fired over it. I think the reason was obvious: Michael’s dad was head of talent at Twentieth Century Fox. I was Milt’s kid. For once it came in handy.

EBBINS:
Mr. Lastfogel’s limo driver, Eddie Miller, used to disappear every now and then. I think he got drunk. When that happened, they’d get someone from the mailroom to drive the big black Caddy. One day they called me. The first stop was the Hillcrest Country Club, where Mr. Lastfogel had lunch, and then we went to MGM. We drove down Motor Avenue, not a straight or level road, and at some point I had to hit the brakes. Mr. Lastfogel, sitting in the back, flew off the seat and onto the floor.

I panicked and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Lastfogel!”

He said, “What’s your name, son?”

“Gary Ebbins, sir.”

“Ah, that’s right.
Milt’s kid
. Watch that, will ya?”

FITZGERALD:
My roommate, Bruce Johnson, had just gotten a job with a TV show shot on the Paramount lot. One day I saw in a trade publication a picture of a black guy—his name was Popcorn Wiley, a piano player—and he looked
exactly
like a black version of Bruce. I mean exactly. It was bizarre. I cut out the picture and I wrote a prank letter to Bruce on William Morris letterhead. It explained how I had seen him perform and thought he was fabulous, and I was going to do wonderful things for him. I signed it “Abe Lastfogel” and sent it to Bruce’s office.

Bruce was new at Paramount, and their mailroom didn’t know who he was yet. Since the letter had supposedly come from William Morris, they sent it back. But there was no agent’s name on the envelope, so the Morris mailroom opened it and, seeing the Abe Lastfogel signature, sent it to his office.

He read it and was horrified.

Mr. Lastfogel decided to find out who had written the letter by having the FBI come in and test every one of our manual typewriters. They narrowed it down to mine. First I got called into Morris Stoller’s office. He asked me if I knew anything about the letter, and I said, “Yes, sir. I wrote that letter.”

“What?”

I explained that it was a joke written to my roommate, and that I certainly didn’t mean to impugn Mr. Lastfogel’s reputation or character. And gosh, I never expected that it would be returned. I was horribly apologetic and embarrassed. Stoller gave me a stern lecture, but to my surprise, he didn’t fire me.

He said, “You’re going to have to see Mr. Lastfogel. When he has time, he’ll call you in.”

He didn’t have time for a couple days, and I just had to sit with my fear. Then I got the call.

Mr. Lastfogel wore his little bow tie and his glasses, and he sat behind his little desk. And he seemed gracious and charming, not mad. He said, “Larry, I’ve done a lot of investigating. I understand the intent of this and I know it was a joke. I just want to impress upon you the fact that you used my name. I have a certain reputation, and the William Morris Agency has a certain reputation. Some of the racial implications and the humor I find not very amusing.”

He also told me he knew his wife liked me; I used to drive her around. Sometimes we’d just sit in the soda shop at the Beverly Wilshire and chat.

“I understand from Frances that she thinks you’re a pretty good worker. She has asked me to talk to you but not to let you go.” He paused. “I want you to go back to work. I’m hoping there will never be another incident like this, ever.”

“No, sir, Mr. Lastfogel. There certainly won’t be.” I walked out of the office and almost passed out.

Frances Lastfogel never mentioned the incident.

HARTMANN:
I covered
The Ed Sullivan Show
when it came to Los Angeles for a few weeks. I could end up spending the day with acts ranging from Sophie Tucker to the Marquis Chimps. At one point I found myself standing in the wings as they walked the chimps offstage. I had to help. The trainers and I held hands with the chimps, and the chimps held hands with one another. Just then Judy Garland and her entourage came the other way. She’d never met me, didn’t know I was a William Morris agent, but she’d been a client of our office for thirty years until a falling-out with Mr. Lastfogel—who was a very short guy. As she passed by she stopped right in front of me, looked down at my chimp, and said, “Hi, Abe.”

MCLEAN:
Phil Kellogg was head of the Motion Picture Department, and I had to pick up his tickets for the Academy Awards show and banquet. The tickets were printed in black and white. I photocopied them, mounted them on heavier stock, took a razor blade, and made a perforation so they’d tear. Then I called Cheri, a girl I had dated in high school, and said, “I’ve just forged tickets to the Academy Awards and the Governor’s Ball. Do you want to go?” Before she answered, I added, “By the way, we could be arrested.”

She said, “Yeah!” A beautiful girl.

We went to the Oscars. Phil Kellogg didn’t show up, so we sat in his seats. We went to the banquet afterward, and Phil Kellogg
did
show up. Gary Ebbins was there—he had his father’s tickets—so we sat at his table until the people whose seats Cheri and I were in showed up. We walked to the back of the room, and I said, “Cheri, the game may be up here.”

We were standing at the bar, about to leave, when I saw Charlie Brackett, an old producer I had known when I was a mailboy at Fox. Charlie was the writer-producer of
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
State Fair,
and
Sunset Boulevard
. He and his wife were leaving, so I introduced myself. He remembered me. He said his wife wasn’t feeling well. I said this was our first time and we were sitting way at the back, so could I trade tickets with him? He gave me his tickets, and Cheri and I sat in front at a table with Sophia Loren, who had just won Best Actress for
Two Women
. She was there with her husband, Carlo Ponti. Maximilian Schell, who had won Best Actor for
Judgment at Nuremberg,
was also at the table, with his mother. He started hitting on Cheri.

I had a few drinks and asked Sophia to dance. She had on an ostrich-feather-boa kind of thing, and as we swirled around the dance floor I kept blowing the feathers out of her cleavage. She was in hysterics. Carlo Ponti stared daggers at me.

At the end of the evening all the waiters came out with what they called the Parade of Cakes. Each cake had a wax Oscar on top. I believe the penalty was death if the waiter didn’t return with that wax Oscar, but I was able to steal one and give it to Cheri.

I’ve been to the Academy Awards a number of times since. I’ve been there with clients. I’ve been nominated. It was never as much fun as going on those forged tickets.

EBBINS:
Years later, when I managed Dwight Yoakam, I told him that story but said it was
me
dancing with Loren. Then Dwight, not knowing the truth, told the story to Michael and his wife, and Michael cracked up. When Michael and his wife were alone, she said, “Wasn’t that
you
who danced with Sophia Loren?”

He said, “Yeah, but Ebbins and I have been friends for so long, we’re telling each other’s stories.”

DILLER:
I had a terrible early experience. I was very naive. Somebody had stolen documents from William Morris and had leaked them to the press. This turned the office into a police state. I was called in to take a lie detector test. First they asked me if I’d ever taken anything home, and I said yes. They almost fired me right there, but they didn’t. It was understood that reading the files was appropriate behavior for mailroomers. I had taken files home to read when I couldn’t finish them during the day, and returned them with their confidentiality intact.

HARTMANN:
After six months in the mailroom I was chosen to work for Colonel Tom Parker, who managed Elvis. The Colonel was an amazing character who never made a deal in which he didn’t get something for free at the end. He’d say, “Okay, but I need one more thing . . .” When he signed Elvis to William Morris for films and television, the “one more thing” was a full-time guy on his staff, paid for by William Morris, plus a car paid for and insured by William Morris, and an office in the building that he could use anytime he wanted. Mr. Lastfogel told the Colonel he could have the guy and the car, but when it came to the office, he said, “Colonel, there’s no office in this building good enough for you except mine. Whenever you’re in, come and use my office. I’ll step aside for you.”

Irv Schecter, who’d started in the mailroom before me, was the Colonel’s full-time William Morris guy. When he went into the reserves for two weeks, the Colonel demanded someone to fill in. Ed Levy called me.

Every square inch of the Colonel’s seven-room office suite at Paramount Pictures was covered with pictures of Elvis, from wallet size to near billboard size. The Colonel’s office itself was full of pictures of him with heavyweights.