The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (6 page)

He said, “We have no room for you. You’re let go, too.”

I said, “But I’m making forty bucks a week.”

He shrugged. “If you find a desk, you can stay.”

I did, with Hilly Elkins. Working for Hilly wasn’t bad. But he was more a Sammy Glick than I was, so I didn’t imitate him. My personality is more the lone wolf. I just did my job. I also kept watching my personal clock because I was prepared to go back to law school at any time. After about four months on Hilly’s desk he left and I replaced him. I left, too, to start my own business, but that took another fifty years.

WEISS:
Being an agent sounds great: you get an act, you book them, you get 10 percent. An easy job. But you don’t just become an agent. You have to start at the bottom and learn by osmosis. Minimally, it’s knowing the names: of theaters, of clubs, of club owners, of clients. You absorb information. Then you have to form relationships.

It takes years for what you absorb to take hold. There’s no way today you’re going to jump from the mailroom and become a David Geffen. Even he didn’t. He worked for me. Every day he said, “Lou, why don’t we go into the music business?”

I said, “David, your job is to do your job for me.” In those days I had to make sure our TV shows were covered properly. We used to read every episode of every show we had on the air. He was great at it, but he’d always say, “Lou, why aren’t we in the music business?”

He was right, and eventually he was ready.

Over the years I’ve watched the office boys, and I could always see which ones were the bright ones, how the cream rose to the top. Geffen was easy to notice. Barry Diller—the man was a hit the second you met him. Irwin Winkler. Scott Shukat. Bernie Brillstein. Bob Shapiro, Howard West, and George Shapiro.

How could I tell? Energy. Street smarts. They got it.

AUERBACH:
The business part of me grew up awful fast; I’m not sure I grew as well as a person in the early days. I shortchanged myself. My life became the business, and the business became my life. Most of my time was spent trying to stay abreast of things. Most of my meals were with show business people. Most of my evenings were spent catching shows. I didn’t spend enough time with my kids—and they’ve let me know that. We lived on Long Island, and by the time I got home, they were sleeping.

WEISS:
I’m lucky. I always knew I had a massive support system around me. Young people today don’t quite understand what a support system is. And if they do, they don’t appreciate it. I’ve seen more people leave this company through the years and quickly fall on their ass because they tried to function without a support system. An act has to be lousy someplace before it gets good. A person needs a place to learn.

I never thought I’d not spend my whole career at William Morris. I’ve been offered every job in the business, believe me, but I always knew this was my job for life. August 2002 marked my sixty-fifth year with the Morris office. Originally I was going to retire when I was seventy, and I asked my uncle George, “What do you think?”

He said, “Well, Louie”—he always called me Louie, and he’s the only one who did—“what do you want to do?”

I said, “I thought I’d travel and play golf and tennis.”

My uncle, besides being a huge talent, was a very, very wise man. He said, “That’s only good if you have something else to do.”

LOU WEISS
is based in New York and is chairman emeritus of the William Morris Agency. He has been with the company longer than any other living employee.

SOL LEON
is an executive vice president in the TV Department at William Morris. He lives in Los Angeles and still comes into the office every day.

LARRY AUERBACH
left William Morris when he was an executive vice president and board member. He is currently the associate dean of the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California.

HILLY ELKINS
heads Elkins Entertainment, a management/production company based in Beverly Hills. He represents actors (James Coburn), directors, and writers. Elkins has also produced forty-five shows on Broadway, including
Golden Boy,
with Sammy Davis Jr., and
Oh! Calcutta!
as well as films such as
A New Leaf
and
Alice’s Restaurant
.

LEONARD HIRSHAN
left the William Morris Agency in October 2001 after fifty years. He now heads his own company, Leonard Hirshan Management.

A CHARMED LIFE, Or A THIRTY-SIX SHORT MAKES IT BIG

William Morris Agency, Los Angeles, 1943

NORMAN BROKAW

Norman Brokaw followed in Abe Lastfogel’s footsteps, rising from office boy to chairman of William Morris. Today Brokaw gives anyone
he hasn’t met before a star-studded tour of his career, right down to the
row of pictures on his office credenza. It’s not braggadocio; he just feels
that to know his life is to know him, and to know that his life has
been devoted to William Morris is to know him best of all.

If you want to be in this business, there’s no greater place to learn than in a mailroom.

I got my job on Saturday, July 7, 1943. My mother and I were at her brother’s house—her brother being Johnny Hyde, one of the all-time top William Morris agents. He handled Lana Turner and Betty Hutton and Marilyn Monroe. He was a partner with Abe Lastfogel, who ran the company, and had himself started as William Morris Sr.’s mailboy and assistant.

Three things took place on that day. First, Johnny Hyde had just closed a deal for two moguls, Leo Spitz and Bill Goetz, and formed Universal-International Pictures. Later he told my mother, “There’s a young lady named Esther Kovner who’s going to be a big, big star, and I just made an important deal for her. She’ll be here shortly.”

I was inside having a sandwich, and when I came out, I saw this attractive young lady jump into the swimming pool. Her name was Esther Williams. She had just married Dr. Kovner.

Then Johnny asked if I’d like to go to work as a mailboy at William Morris.

I was fifteen years old. Only Mr. Lastfogel started younger. The company didn’t call it a training program at the time, but Mr. Lastfogel loved William Morris, and William Morris loved him. Out of that relationship our New York office was built. Lots of young men started that way and grew up in our company. Lou Weiss, Sol Leon, et cetera. If I had to relive my life again, I would still want to start at the William Morris Agency, in the mailroom, and learn show business from the bottom up.

My grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, and mother were the first Russian dance troupe to arrive in America, in 1898. Coincidentally, that was the same year the William Morris Agency was founded. My mother appeared on the bill with George M. Cohan; she retired early and raised a family of six sons. I was the youngest.

One of my brothers went to New York Military Academy at Cornwall-on-Hudson. In August 1941 he was sent to the Philippines. Four months later the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, continued to the Philippines, and bombed Albay Gulf. My brother, a reserve officer with General MacArthur, was in the area. Later we found out that he was executed at the age of thirty-two during the infamous Bataan Death March.

My father had died about a week before my brother went overseas; he had a coronary. When my mother got a letter from the War Department telling her my brother was missing in action, it gave her a heart attack. Later one brother joined the army, one the navy, and one the marines to avenge our brother’s death, and we moved to California, where my brothers were being trained. My mother came to California right from the hospital so she could be with her children. I later entered the army.

My first day at William Morris, I took the streetcar from Gramercy Place, got off at Cañon Drive three or four blocks away, and walked to the office. I carried my lunch in a brown bag, probably a chicken salad or tuna fish sandwich my mother had made.

My wardrobe was one pair of slacks, a bow tie, a regular tie, and a sport jacket I’d bought at Jerry Rothschild’s, a top haberdashery. It cost forty dollars. I took home twenty-one dollars and forty cents a week and paid off my jacket at two dollars a week.

It wasn’t my first job—before William Morris I’d worked at the Pennsylvania Drug Company in New York, delivering prescriptions for a nickel a delivery; I was lucky if I made fifteen bucks a week—but I guess I’d always been interested in show business. Back East when I was nine and ten, I would take milk bottles to the grocery store, collect the money, then take a streetcar to the Riverside Theater on Sunday afternoons to see the talent shows. Sometimes on the weekend I’d go to the Loews State Theater on Broadway and see Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra. I’d see Mickey Rooney or Judy Garland at the Strand. I’d go to the Music Hall. When I started at William Morris, my interest showed. I’d even come into the office on Saturday. I was the only mailboy, but I was told that if I worked out well, they’d like me to be the first trainee in the Los Angeles office.

My uncle Johnny’s two sons also worked in the office, but I didn’t want people to think I’d gotten the job just because I was his nephew. I wanted to get ahead on my own. As it happened, Abe Lastfogel became my mentor, so I didn’t have to be wholly identified with my uncle.

An agent named Ben Holzman was also like a father to me. He handled Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor and the Marx Brothers. Every Monday night he’d take me to the Orpheum Theatre.

At the end of my first day they gave me the keys to a 1941 Ford twoseater coupe to take the mail to the post office. We were at 202 North Cañon, and the post office was a few blocks away. I said, “I’d like to go, but I’m only fifteen and I don’t have a driver’s license.” Then I started to worry. Can I still work here? They promised to work out something, and Doris Appel, a girl who worked in the mailroom, got the job of driving me to the post office at night. When I had to deliver something to a studio, I took the streetcar into Hollywood, then walked to Columbia and RKO and Paramount to pick up checks. I got to know everyone in town, as well as what our clients earned. Knowing that information was a stepping-stone to my being promoted: when I served coffee to a group of agents having a picture meeting, one said so-and-so got three thousand a picture, and the other said, “No, it’s thirty-five something.” I said, “Sir, it’s thirty-eight fifty,” and I was right.

When I was older, I got to drive Lana Turner to meet L. B. Mayer. Both the guard and the receptionist said, “Oh, hi, Mr. Brokaw. Hi, Miss Turner.” Being greeted by name, particularly in front of Lana Turner, was very impressive.

I also used to pick up Marilyn Monroe, on Harper Avenue and Fountain, and take her early in the morning to her acting coach at Twentieth Century Fox. She was going around with Johnny Hyde then. I took her out often on job interviews. I remember selling her for fiftyfive dollars a day for a movie. Paramount used to have an audition room where people would perform; they could see you, but you could not see them. I took Marilyn there and I asked the man in charge, “Would you be interested in her?”

He wasn’t. He said, “She’s just another blonde.”

When she scored big, I ran into him one day. His head was down. “I missed it,” he said. “You were right.”

About a year and a half after I arrived, I officially became a trainee, which meant being groomed to be an agent. A few years later I got out of the mailroom and worked as the secretary to three men: Moe Sackin; Murray File, who handled Mae West; and Joe Schoenfeld, who was later the editor of
Variety.
Eventually I worked only for Joe. By twenty I was a junior agent. I had dinner with Mr. Lastfogel on Monday and Friday nights, religiously, and sometimes during the week as well. One day he said to me, “We’re going to start working with something called television. I’d like you to start our TV Department.”

I’ve made this business and this company my life. It’s exciting: running and building careers, making success happen. I like seeing results. I knew that by putting in the time and making sure my clients did well, I would make great progress. I wound up representing people like Loretta Young and Barbara Stanwyck, Susan Hayward, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Natalie Wood, Bill Cosby, Clint Eastwood, and President Ford. I just tried to do a good job every day. It wasn’t to impress anyone; I just worked hard so I could have a job.

There’s a picture in my office today of Red Skelton, Joe Louis, Harpo Marx, George Burns, Frank Sinatra, Calvin Jackson, and me. I was very young. You don’t just stand with people like that unless they ask, which they did, because I made it a point to develop relationships early on. The picture was taken at a benefit by a paparazzo at the hotel; I still don’t know his name. I made copies for Burns and Harpo and Sinatra. They said they were glad to get it.

Some people always look for ways to promote themselves and say, “I’m the greatest.” I never say that. Other people have said that I’m in the same category as Lew Wasserman, Myron Selznick, Abe Lastfogel, Jules Stein, and Charles Feldman—but I would never say that about me. I’m not self-aggrandizing. I’m just a guy who learned the agency business from the bottom up, became William Morris’s first vice president, became their cochairman of the board, became president and CEO, became chairman and CEO. When I turned seventy, I gave up being CEO because I thought it was time to give that to someone else.