The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (25 page)

“Do you
really
want this?” she asked. Robert’s older brother had gone into the mailroom and had crashed and burned. I said yes. Sarah called Mr. Lastfogel that afternoon, and on Monday I was at William Morris.

I did a rubber-stamp interview in Personnel with Chuck Booth, a guy who had worked at the phone company for twenty years and had sold the Morris office its own repeater phone system. Then I was ushered into Mr. Lastfogel’s office. I was petrified. He didn’t ask me much; he just told me in so many words that William Morris was his family, that being an agent is a life choice. He never asked me if it was something I wanted to do.

Did I? Was being an agent a career goal? No. If on my way to William Morris someone had said that he thought I’d make a great actor, I probably would have made a U-turn and found a drama school instead.

BRUCE BROWN:
When I was approached by Norman Brokaw to work at William Morris, I thought it was an insurance company. Norman and my parents belonged to Hillcrest Country Club. I taught tennis there in the summer to make money before going to law school. Brokaw’s wife was my student.

Brokaw thought I was an affable young man with relatively short hair for the early seventies. I didn’t know much about the entertainment business, but he pressed me. He said, “William Morris will be your master’s program. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to school.”

My first interview was with Kathy Krugel. Her hair was sort of blackish red and cut in a Daisy Duck kind of thing. She would come in perfectly coiffed, and by the end of the day she’d be totally disheveled, like she’d been in a wind tunnel. Kathy was also the only woman I knew who could have chalk on her body, even if there was no chalk in the building. Later I learned that her nickname was the Fly because she could not stop blinking. No one ever called her that to her face, of course.

I met with Chuck Booth for about two minutes. He was hale and hearty, a get-along-go-along guy, typical for human resources. Looked like a greeter. Because Brokaw had recommended me, I was pretty sure I’d make it in unless I spit on the floor. Booth told me to come to work the following Monday.

My parents were happy. After my first day they took me to Trader Vic’s at the Beverly Hilton. Abe Lastfogel ate there every Monday night because Hillcrest Country Club was closed for dinner. Sam Weisbord was with him. And there I was, with my parents: the new mailroom kid, sitting next to the most revered agents in show business. All I could think was that I made eighty bucks a week and they made eighty bucks a second.

ALAN IEZMAN:
I majored in international relations, wrote papers about the Middle East, and was fascinated by the CIA. But when it came right down to it, I thought: Name one Jew in the foreign service. I couldn’t. So I had to ask myself what I liked to do most in the world besides smoke dope and have sex.
Go to the movies
. I changed my major to film and after graduation took what was left of my student loan, moved to Westwood, and looked for a job. Couldn’t find one. I was about to give up when I opened the Westwood yellow pages and saw three companies under “Film.” One, Lion’s Gate Films—Robert Altman’s company— was right around the corner from my apartment. I walked over and said, “I’m looking for a job. I’ll do anything.”

They didn’t have a position. I went back every week for five months, and finally they gave me a job as a production assistant on
California
Split,
with George Segal and Elliott Gould. Then they asked me to go to Nashville in the middle of the summer with a bunch of crazy people. I declined—and turned down
Nashville
. Instead I wound up as an assistant director on an independent feature,
The First Nudie Musical
. The night we wrapped, someone said, “You know, you should be an agent.”

I said, “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard. They’re sleazy guys with cigars. They have bad reputations. Everybody hates them.”

A week later my girlfriend said, “I have this friend who works at a company where they sell actors.” She gave me the name: Barry Solomon, at William Morris. He spared a few minutes and told me about the mailroom program. He also said, “You’re wasting your time. Forget it.” But I needed desperately to make some money, and I figured I’d at least end up with an overview of the business.

DENNIS BRODY:
After college I went to Colorado to clear my head, then found out that my uncle, who was very influential in California politics, had a relationship with a judge whose brother was Sam Peckinpah, the director. We set up a meeting. It was a wild thing. I wore a three-piece suit and looked perfect. I walked into Peckinpah’s office at the old Samuel Goldwyn studios and found him lying naked on a convertible couch, like he’d slept there all night. The sheet was only up to his ankles. He told me stories about how he and my uncle used to piss on people’s lawns after important political parties. I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie. I tried to find in that moment some clue as to how I might fit into the business.

My father turned out to be the key. He was a stockbroker. His client Ruth Engelhardt was head of business affairs at William Morris. He set me up, and she got me the interview with Chuck Booth.

People always talk about how they had to wait to get into the mailroom. It’s changed significantly, but then it was a matter of timing, and of something else: Certain types were shoo-ins, like the young Jewish man, a college grad, and anyone who was reasonably attractive—or at least not scary-looking. Occasionally they would stretch it because, with a mix of personalities, you never know who’s going to make a good agent. The day I started, Jim Houston, the first black in the mailroom, also started. Within a month Shelley Baumsten, the first woman in the William Morris training program, was hired. Things were changing.

SHELLEY BAUMSTEN:
I got out of college with a degree in literature and no thought given to what I wanted to do in life. Getting into show business had not been my life’s ambition, but I met a woman who suggested I might want to get into a literary agency. Okay, good idea. My brilliant follow-up? I opened the yellow pages and looked under “Agencies.”

I wrote a particularly literate letter and got a couple of positive responses. One was from the firm Adams, Ray and Rosenberg, which at the time was a really top-notch agency. The senior partner, Adams, wrote, “Dear
Mr.
Baumsten: We’re interested in your qualifications. We have an entry-level position, so please phone for an interview.”

Mr. Baumsten?
Clerical error, not important.

Adams was an elderly, portly guy, and the entire interview consisted of “I’m not going to hire you because you’re a woman.” Straight out. “When your kids get sick, you’re going to have to stay home with them.”

I said, “I don’t have any kids.”

“When your husband gets transferred, you’re going to have to leave with him.”

“I don’t have one of those, either.”

I knew I could sue, but I didn’t want to waste my time. Besides, on some level I appreciated the fact that he’d been straightforward. I didn’t have to rack my brain about why I didn’t get the job.

I finally went to work with Jane Jordan Brown; she had a one-woman operation. A year later I ran into a woman I’d grown up with. She was married to Ron Mardigian, an agent at William Morris. When she heard that I was in the agency business, she suggested that I meet with her husband. We had coffee at my mother’s apartment: Merle, Ron, my mom, and I. It was very casual. Ron told me that the company had brought people through the mailroom for fifty years, give or take— but never a woman. They’d decided it was time.

CHUCK BINDER:
I was already in law school—actually, getting thrown out of one after the other—and made money teaching tennis in Beverly Hills. Most of the teachers in the seventies were guys who didn’t make it on the tour, so they gave lessons and hit on the rich guys’ wives and daughters. Through some doctors I knew, I ended up teaching Eva Gabor. I didn’t even know who she was, but they said she was a big star, and gave me some advice: “You charge us ten bucks an hour to hit the ball. Charge her twenty-five bucks. She won’t think you’re a high-grade tennis teacher otherwise.” When I went to her house, I was stunned. I’d never met anybody with a tennis court in her backyard. Her servants gave me Coke in a crystal glass.

I was thrilled to be in the center of a wealthy environment making my hundred bucks a day. Mel Brooks and his wife, Anne Bancroft, took lessons. I taught people who ran studios. I hung around Bob Evans’s house. I taught Larry Gelbart’s kids. They hated tennis, so they’d say, “Take us down to Thrifty’s and buy us an ice cream cone.”

But my dad wasn’t pleased and said I had to find a real job. He was a tough guy from New York’s Lower East Side who liked to say, “If I could just have put you in the army for two years, they would have made a man out of you.” He wanted me to go downtown to the garment industry, but I wasn’t interested. I was thin, in shape, had long hair. I said I would marry a Beverly Hills girl and that would be it for me.

“You’re a dreamer,” he said. “Come into my company.” My dad was a window cleaner, and compared with standing in someone’s backyard hitting tennis balls, that was really hard work.

Then Bob Shapiro, the number-two guy in the William Morris Motion Picture Department, said, “I’ll get you into the Morris office mailroom.”

I thought, An agent? All I knew was that the guys I taught tennis to who ran studios made jokes about agents, called them jerks and stupid. But I decided to give it a shot, just to get my father off my back. Of course, he thought it was great: I’d get a haircut, clean up, and become part of the world.

JACK RAPKE:
I’m from Miramar, just north of Miami, by way of the Bronx. When we moved to Florida, my father opened a couple of businesses that went bust, then became sales manager for the Florida Smoked Fish Company. He never made a lot of money, but he always brought home good fish. They wanted me to be a doctor; I decided to go to NYU film school. My parents didn’t understand how I’d make a living, but they were supportive. I think they realized the ship had sailed.

The war in Vietnam was going on, and I felt rebellious and outraged. I wanted to make political films. Film school was great, but afterward I couldn’t find work, so I drove a cab at night in Manhattan and tried to get into the cameramen’s union. Then a light came on in my head: I had to go to Hollywood, because that’s where the movies were
made
.

I came west and sold real estate a few days a week. Then, somehow, a guy I knew from film school, Richard Katz, got ahold of me. He worked in the mailroom at William Morris but was unhappy. He also wanted to be a cameraman. After we hung up, I remember wondering why he’d called. We really weren’t that tight. But for some reason the conversation seemed otherworldly. I felt it would change my life.

We met for lunch, and I quizzed him about the agency. Then he said, “I’m going to a party. Some of the guys in the mailroom will be there.”

I met his friends, checked out their style and energy, and thought, Okay, I get it. I see myself in these guys. We’re kind of cut from the same cloth.

Richard Katz got me an application and an interview. I didn’t own a suit, so I bought one in navy blue, sort of a Madison Avenue look. I had read that Frank Yablans, who ran Paramount at the time, always wore a polka-dot tie. I got a polka-dot tie.

On interview day I got to William Morris an hour early. I was beyond nervous. To calm myself, I walked around the residential streets. I went over my strategy. Before I realized it, I found myself on Beverly and Wilshire—and I had stepped in some dog shit. There I was, on the corner, wiping off my shoe ten minutes before I had the biggest interview of my life. I started to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

When I met with Chuck Booth, he said, “I think you’re a little bit overqualified.”

He wasn’t going to hire me, and in that moment I understood how much I wanted to be part of Hollywood: I needed it like you need sex, water, food, and sleep. It had become a need to the death. I said, “Please, let me be the judge of that. If my qualifications are greater than what you believe the normal applicant has, then allow me to step down in class. Don’t take it away from me. I’m willing to do anything, and if I’m willing to do anything, then that should be enough.”

The thing is, when you’re young and you want to be in the business, you often say “I’ll do anything.” Oh, so you’ll do anything? You don’t know what anything is until you’re doing
anything
.

RICHARD MARKS:
I had just graduated law school and had an interview at the entertainment division of Loeb and Loeb, a Beverly Hills law firm. Either I was cheap or I didn’t have the money to park in the garage, so I parked blocks away, in a residential area. Walking to the law firm, I passed the William Morris Agency. On the way back to the car I went in for an application, filled it out, and never thought about it again. A couple of weeks later I got a call.

A woman said, “This is Kaaathy Kruuugel.” I thought it was a friend playing a joke, so I said, “Well, it’s niiiice to meeet you, Kaaathy Kruuugel.” But when she said, “I’m from William Morris, and we want you to start in our training program in the mailroom on Monday,” it dawned on me that I was being a jerk and I’d just been offered a job.

BOB CRESTANI:
My mom was a homemaker, my dad a superintendent at Bethlehem Steel. I grew up in Portage, Indiana, about thirty miles from Chicago. A very rural area. I went to Indiana University and got into radio/television. When I graduated, my dad asked, “You gonna get a job in the mill?” I said no, packed my Volkswagen with everything I owned, towed it behind a drive-away car—a Camaro—and headed for California. I ended up in a little studio apartment on Second Street in Santa Monica. I looked for work and night-clerked at a Holiday Inn to pay the bills. Then a distant aunt who worked in the travel industry told me I should try the talent agencies. “Try to get work as someone’s secretary,” she said. “It’ll help you get a job in the business.”