The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (38 page)

‘I think I’ll start introducing myself as Sara Smythe’s brother,’ he said one evening.

‘But I always introduce myself as the sister of the funniest comedy writer in New York,’ I countered.

‘Nobody rates a comedy writer,’ he said.

That wasn’t totally true - because a few months after I signed my new contract with
Saturday/Sunday,
Eric called me early one morning in a state of high excitement. A young comedian named Marty Manning had been hired by NBC to create a show for the network’s prime-time television schedule - due to go on the air in January 1949. Manning told Eric that he’d heard great things about him from his pal, Joe E. Brown - and, after a long lunch at the Friar’s Club, offered Eric a contract as one of his show’s top writers.

‘Of course, I accepted on the spot - because Manning is a really hot talent: very smart, very innovative. The problem is, who the hell is going to watch television? I mean, do you know anyone who owns one?’

‘Everyone says it’s the coming thing.’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’

A few days later, one of NBC’s lawyers contacted Eric to discuss his contract. The money was amazing: two hundred dollars per week, starting September 1st, 1948 - even though the show wasn’t premiering until January twenty-eighth. There was a problem, however: the network had become aware of the fact that Eric was deeply involved in the Presidential campaign of Henry Wallace. He’d been Roosevelt’s Vice President, until FDR dropped him from the 1944 ticket for being too radical, instead choosing the untried, universally disliked Harry S. Truman. Had FDR kept his nerve and retained Wallace as his VP, he’d be our president now - and, as Eric was fond of noting, we would have a proper democratic socialist in the White House. Instead, we ended up with ‘that ward boss hack from Missouri’ (Eric’s words again) - a hack whom everyone was betting on to lose to Dewey in November. Especially since Wallace was now running as the candidate of his own Progressive Party, and was expected to rob Truman of many left-of-center voters.

Eric adored everything about Henry Wallace: his rigorous intelligence, his belief in social justice, his unwavering support for the working man and for the original principles of the New Deal. From the moment Wallace had announced his presidential candidacy - in spring of ‘48 - my brother had been a leading figure in the ‘Show Business for Wallace’ campaign, becoming one of the chief fundraisers in the Tri-State area, organizing benefit performances, soliciting contributions from the entertainment community in New York.

As Eric later described it to me, the NBC lawyer - Jerry Jameson - was a perfectly reasonable fellow, with a perfectly reasonable tone of voice, and a perfectly reasonable way of explaining why the network had a few problems with his political activism.

‘God knows, the National Broadcasting Company is a staunch defender of First Amendment rights,’ Jameson told him. ‘And those rights, Eric, include supporting whatever political party or candidate you want - whether he’s hard-left, hard-right, or just plain cuckoo.’

Jameson laughed at his own joke. Eric didn’t join in. Instead he said, ‘Let’s get to the point here, Mr Jameson.’

‘The point, Mr Smythe, is this: if you were simply supporting Wallace privately, there’d be no problem. But the fact that you’re flashing your radical credentials for all to see is worrying some of the NBC brass. They know Manning wants you. He keeps telling everyone how good you are. And the way the brass see it is: if Marty wants you on the team, Marty should have you. All they’re worried about is … .’

‘What? That I might set up my own Politburo within NBC? Or maybe that I’ll try to hire Laughing Joe Stalin as part of Marty’s writing team?’

‘I can see why Marty wants you. You really know how to turn out a one-liner …’

‘I am not a Communist.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I am a loyal American. I have never supported a foreign power. I have never preached civil insurrection, or the overthrow of Congress, or come out in favor of a Soviet as our next Commander in Chief.’

‘Believe me, Mr Smythe - you don’t have to convince me of your patriotism. All we’re asking …
my
advice to you … is that you take a back seat in the Wallace campaign. Sure, you can attend fundraising stuff. Just don’t be seen to be playing such an upfront role for the guy. Face fact, Wallace has absolutely
no
chance of being elected. Dewey’s going to be our next president … and after November fifth, no one’s going to give a damn about any of this. But Eric, take it from me - people are going to give a damn about television. Give it five, six years - and it will kill radio dead. You could be one of the pioneers of the medium. Someone, my friend, in the vanguard of an entire new revolution …’

‘Cut the crap, Jameson. I’m a gag writer, not Tom Paine. And let’s get one thing clear: I am
not
your friend.’

‘All right. I’m very clear on that point. I am simply asking you to be realistic.’

‘All right. I’ll be completely realistic. If you want me to back out of the Wallace campaign, I want a two-year contract with Manning at three hundred dollars a week.’

‘That’s excessive.’

‘“No, Jameson - that’s the deal.” And then I put down the phone.’

I poured Eric some more wine. He needed it.

‘So what happened next?’ I asked.

‘An hour later, the sonofabitch came back and agreed to the three hundred bucks per week, the two-year contract, three weeks paid vacation, major medical, blah, blah, blah - on the condition that it would all be taken away from me if I was seen publicly raising funds for that bad Mr Wallace. They even added an extra proviso: they didn’t want me near any Wallace rallies, campaign parties, whatever. “That’s the price for your extra hundred a week,” Jameson told me.’

‘That’s outrageous,’ I said. ‘Not to mention unconstitutional.’

‘Well, as Jameson himself said, I didn’t have to accept these terms - “because, after all, it is a free country”.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Oh, I’ve done it already. I said “yes” to NBC’s terms.’

I said nothing.

‘Do I detect a hint of reproach in your silence?’ he asked.

‘I’m just a little surprised by your decision, that’s all.’

‘I have to tell you, the Wallace people were very understanding. And supportive. And actually grateful.’

‘Grateful? Why?’

‘Because I’m giving them the extra five thousand dollars I’m making this year from NBC for agreeing to vanish from the Wallace campaign.’

I laughed loudly. ‘That’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘What a classy sting.’

He put his finger to his lips. ‘It’s obviously all Top Secret - because if NBC learned what I was doing with their hush money, the ax would fall on my head. There is a problem, though - I won’t have the five grand until I start getting paid …’

‘I’ll write you a check,’ I said.

‘I promise it will be paid back in full by February first.’

‘Whenever. I’m just so damn impressed, Mr Machiavelli. Do you always never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing?’

‘Hey - it’s the American Way.’

Wallace, as predicted, was trounced at the polls. Like the rest of the nation, Truman went to bed on the night of the election, fully expecting to wake up to Thomas Dewey’s victory. But the math didn’t work out that way - and Harry stayed put at the White House. On the morning of the election, I got cold feet. Fearing that a vote for Wallace was, in actuality, a vote for Dewey - I switched allegiance and voted for the President. When I later admitted this to Eric, he just shrugged and said, ‘I guess somebody has to be sensible in this family.’

Two months later,
The Big Broadway Review
with Marty Manning premiered on NBC. It was an immediate, huge hit. Shortly thereafter, my banker rang me one morning to say that a check for five thousand dollars had just been lodged to my account. Eric was always a man of his word.

And now,
finally,
he was also a huge success.
The Big Broadway Review
eventually turned into
The Marty Manning Show
- and became the talk of the town. Everyone adored it. I even went out and bought a television set - because, understandably, I had to see what my brother was cooking up each week. Marty Manning and his cohorts became overnight stars. But Eric and his writing team were also feted. The
New York Times
ran a lengthy profile in its Sunday
Arts and Leisure
section on a day in the life of the
Marty Manning
writers - in which Eric featured prominently as the witty ringleader of this gang of paid gag men. Even Winchell mentioned him in his column:

Heard a good yuck the other day at the Stork Club from
Marty Manning
scribe, Eric Smythe: ‘Where there’s a will, there’s always a relative!’ Smythe - Marty Manning’s major-domo for one-liners - also has a talented sis: Sara, whose ha-ha column in
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
keeps the ladies laughing every week. Talented yucksters, them Smythes …

‘Did you really tell Winchell that terrible joke?’ I asked Eric after the column appeared.

‘I was drunk at the time.’

‘Well, he obviously thought it was funny.’

‘Don’t you know that rabid Republicans never have a sense of humor.’

‘I love being referred to as a “yuckster”.’

‘What can I say, S? Fame at last.’

Not just fame - but also, for Eric, celebrity. Success transformed him. He reveled in his new-found professional esteem and prosperity. Finally, he cast off his aura of self-loathing, his need to play the failed writer-in-the-garret. Within a month of the show’s premiere, he exchanged his down-at-heel atelier on Sullivan Street for an elegant furnished apartment at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. The rent was a staggering two hundred and fifty dollars a month - nearly four times that of his Greenwich Village place - but, as he was fond of saying, ‘Hey, that’s what the money’s for.’

Besides his talent for comedy, Eric also discovered another interesting gift during that first heady year with Marty Manning: an ability to spend money recklessly. As soon as he moved to Central Park South, he revamped his entire wardrobe - and started favoring bespoke suits. Whereas Manning’s other writers dressed like Damon Runyon characters - just back after a day at the track - Eric fancied himself a Noel Coward dandy: cravats, double-breasted suits in Prince of Wales check, hand-made brogues, expensive aftershave. But it wasn’t just clothes that soaked up his money. He was out every night - a regular habitue at the Stork Club, or 21, or the Astor Bar, or the jazz clubs that lined 52nd Street. He would always pick up the tab. Just as he would insist on taking me on a week-long vacation to Cuba, staying at the ultra-expensive Hotel Nacional. Just as he would hire his own personal valet. Just as he would lend money to anyone who needed it. Just as he would always be broke at the end of every month … until the next pay check rolled in.

I tried to lecture him on financial restraint, and the virtue of putting a little bit aside every month. He didn’t listen to me. He was having too good a time. And he was also in love - with a musician named Ronnie Garcia, who played sax for the Rainbow Room’s resident band. Ronnie was a diminutive Cuban-American, raised on the Bronx’s Grand Concourse; a high school dropout and self-taught musician who also managed to consume books at a ferocious rate. I’d never met a better-read person. As a musician, he’d backed the likes of Dick Haymes, Mel Torme, and Rosemary Clooney … but he could also carry on a very erudite conversation about Eliot’s
Four Quartets
(in an authentic
dees-dems-and-does
Bronx accent). Eric had met him at a backstage Rainbow Room party for Artie Shaw in April of 1949 - and from that moment on, they were an item. Only, of course, they could never advertise that they were involved. Extreme discretion was demanded. Though the staff of the Hampshire House obviously knew that Ronnie was living with Eric, this was never mentioned. His fellow writers on
Marty Manning
never asked him about his private life - though they all knew he was the only member of the team who wasn’t bragging about his skirt-chasing exploits. Ronnie and Eric never showed the slightest bit of physical affection towards each other in public. Even around me, their status as a couple was never acknowledged. Only once - over dinner alone with my brother in Chinatown - did Eric openly ask me if I liked Ronnie.

‘I think he’s wonderful. Smart as hell - and he plays a mean sax.’

‘Good,’ he said shyly. ‘That really makes me happy. Because … well … uh … you know what I’m getting at, don’t you?’

I put my hand on top of my brother’s. ‘Yes, Eric - I do. And it’s fine.’

He looked at me warily. ‘Are you sure?’

‘If you’re happy, I’m happy. That’s all that matters.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’

He gripped my hand. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t know how much that means to me.’

I leaned over and kissed his head, then said, ‘Shut up.’