Tycoon (44 page)

Joni's escort was David Breck. Mo had arranged that. David was told that he was not forgiven for his boorishness. He was asked to escort Joni only because as a pair they would attract extraordinary attention—which would probably be more to his benefit than hers. When he was alone with her in the limousine
on the way to the premiere, he told her he was grateful to her for allowing him to be seen with her. He was attentive and deferential.

As they emerged from the limo, Joni was startled, then blinded, by the camera flashes. A crowd cheered. Joni could hardly see them but realized that bleachers had been put up on the sidewalk. She smiled and nodded to both sides, at people she could hardly make out.

Mo had also seen to her dress and hairdo.

Because her glossy brown hair was one of her most attractive features, Mo had sent around a stylist who had clipped it a little, exposing the back of her neck, combed it down over her forehead halfway to her eyebrows, and curled it smoothly under her ears. It was new style for her.

A designer who worked for many important stars had created her dress. Made of rose-colored silk embroidered with gold and silver thread, it was not tight but hung smoothly. The skirt was slit to the knee, and she wore no stockings on her tanned legs. Her décolletage was deep and wide. The designer had made her stride around, lift and swing her arms, and bend over deeply, until both of them were confident she would not fall out of it.

The picture was the star vehicle Mo Morris and Harry Klein had promised her. She had taken singing and dancing lessons, but no acting lessons. Nonetheless, she proved herself a talented actress—aided by Ben Lang's patient and meticulous directing. She played an ingenuous girl abruptly forced to mature in the face of tragedy and betrayal.

In two scenes she appeared nude. In one her breasts were shown, in the other her backside. The script made it plain that she was naked unwillingly and was painfully embarrassed. Lang's direction of the shots was such that she looked modest in spite of her nudity.

David's whispered comments on the film and her acting were respectful but insightful. At the post-premiere dinner he told Jack that Joni was an emerging talent and might become one of Hollywood's all-time greats. When Joni left him at the end of the evening, she kissed him in a sisterly way and told him he had redeemed himself.

The next morning Hollywood columnists described her as a major new star. Two of them said she would surely be nominated for an Academy Award.

J
ACK AND THE FAMILY STAYED IN
L
OS
A
NGELES FOR TWO DAYS
after the premiere. He looked for an opportunity to talk with Joni alone, and found it.

“I can't tell you how pleased I am for you,” he said. “I could have helped you, but you didn't ask me. You did it alone. I respect your reasons.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered.

“John wasn't relying on me for anything, either. Both of you went out and found your places in life.”

“I don't think you ever relied on my grandfather for much,” she said.

“No. We didn't like each other. What I wanted to say to you—besides how happy I am for you—is that I know Harry Klein's reputation and I can guess what he demanded of you. I don't want to know if you met his demands.”

Joni shook her head. “He didn't make the demand. I expected him to, but he didn't. I can't say what I would've done if he had.”

“Well, don't. If it ever comes to that, let me help you.”

“I will, Daddy.”

1962

H
AVING
B
OUGHT
25
PERCENT OF HIS BROTHER'S STOCK IN
Carlton House Productions, Jack was firmly in control. In spite of Bob Lear's defective character and occasional stupidity, Carlton House had made some fine films. Jack set these aside to be broadcast as “super specials,” meaning that they would be broadcast uninterrupted by commercials, except for a fifteen-minute intermission when all the commercials would be broadcast together. These shows earned very high ratings but lost money. Sponsors surmised that during fifteen minutes of commercials the audiences would depart in droves. Jack insisted, even so, that a few quality films be broadcast without interruptions and without cuts.

He tried a gimmick to prevent that loss of audience. At some time during the intermission a question based on the film would appear on the screen. The first viewer in each city to phone in the correct answer to the local station would win $1,000. It didn't work.

He held back the great Civil War epic,
Cameron Brothers,
because it was in color and he was not willing to broadcast it in black and white. For months he ran teasers, promising that
Cameron Brothers
would be broadcast in color soon. Grateful set manufacturers estimated that Jack Lear's campaign sold a hundred thousand color sets.

The Sally Allen Show,
now in its thirteenth season, was broadcast in color. Sally was one of the most popular stars on television. Joni made two appearances a year on her show, and her success on the big screen brought those two Allen shows exceptionally high ratings.

Doin' What Comes Natcherly
had lasted six seasons, until the joke wore out.
Thirty-Eight Special
remained one of the top twenty shows on television. The original heavy-breasted policewoman had been replaced by another, and the coming of miniskirts had put her legs on display as well.
Blue Yonder,
a semidocumentary drama based loosely on the Strategic Air Command began in 1960 and a year later was one of the top ten shows.

Though scandals had ruined the big quiz shows, Dick Painter judged that the public still loved them. He had always had a fascination with them and believed he could revive them. All he had to do was find a format. Jack told him to look into the idea but to be careful.

“Right,” said Painter. “The big networks thought they could get away with anything. We'll be careful—and subtle.”

W
ITH
J
ONI SPENDING MOST OF HER TIME IN
C
ALIFORNIA, THE
Manhattan town house was reclaimed by Jack and Anne. During Joni's time in New York, they had become guests in what she had made
her
place—though she had never paid rent on it—but now when she came to New York
she
was the guest. Anne had the rooms repainted and the floors refinished and replaced some of the furniture.

She bought a Calder mobile and had it hung from the living room ceiling. In an obscure gallery in Lower Manhattan she came upon a collection of pre-Columbian pottery, much of it explicitly erotic. She was well aware of Jack's appreciation of high-quality erotic art, so she bought a piece of Chimu pottery,
from Peru. It depicted a female figure sucking off a male. The piece stood about five inches high, and she put it on the small Empire writing table that faced the window.

Their children were teenagers now, and Jack and Anne felt at liberty to stay in town two or three nights a week. Often they met for lunch.

One Wednesday in spring he met her at Lutèce. He was not entirely surprised to find someone with her; she often brought a guest to their lunches. Sometimes she called and told him who would be there, and sometimes she didn't. Today she hadn't.

“Jack. Let me introduce Jason Maxwell.”

Jason Maxwell was the author of the current best-selling novel,
Voices from the Belly
. He'd had another best-seller, too, though Jack couldn't remember the title. Neither of Maxwell's novels was the kind of stuff Jack cared to read, though Anne had read both of them and had talked about them.

“It's a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lear,” said Maxwell, extending his hand for a limp handshake.

“I'm happy to meet you, too. I've heard your name often.”

Jason Maxwell was twenty-nine years old. He was a pretty little man, and the skinny on him was that he was a homosexual. If he wasn't, he was the caricature of one; he possessed every characteristic the straight community supposed homosexuals had: a high-pitched voice, girlish mannerisms . . . all of it.

“Jason is a flowing fountain of gossip,” said Anne. “He knows everything about everybody.”

“God forbid,” said Jack.

“I'm catty,” Jason warned.

“Fortunately,” Jack said, “we have no secrets.”

“Oh, everybody does. If you really don't, we should create some for you. I mean, what would life be without secrets?”

“You mean, scandals,” said Jack.

“Yes, of course!” Jason piped. “Delicious scandals.”

“Jason has confessed,” said Anne, “that some of the characters in his novels are real people, thinly disguised.”

“They recognize themselves,” Jason said happily.

“How do you learn their secrets?”

“Oh, they confide in me! I don't know why. They
know
I'm a writer.”

“It's lucky you didn't know my father and never told anything on him.”

“Oh? Why?”

“He would have killed you,” said Jack.

“How
thrilling!”

C
ATHY
M
C
C
ORMACK PUT HER EYE TO THE PEEPHOLE IN HER
door. Ah. It was Dick in the hall. Quickly she pulled off her blouse and bra, then unchained and unlatched the door and let him in. He kissed her firmly on the mouth, then bent down and lightly kissed each of her nipples.

“I feel like going out to dinner tonight,” he said to her as they walked hand in hand from the foyer to the living room. “I'm feeling faintly celebratory.”

“Wonderful! What will we be celebrating?”

“Pour us a couple of drinks, and I'll tell you.”

While she was pouring drinks, he picked up her
New Yorker
and riffled through it, glancing at a few of the cartoons.

“Cheers,” said Cathy as she handed him his rye and lifted her glass of bourbon. “So what will we be celebrating?”

“The new show,
You Bet!
It's gonna work. I've already got three first-class contestants lined up. Hey! Listen to this. We got a guy from Queens who works behind the counter in a deli, cutting sandwiches. He speaks fluent English, Russian, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He can speak a little Polish, a little Lithuanian, a little Hungarian. Everybody knows him for a linguist. He reads his neighbors' foreign-language letters for them. He's a cute little guy, too. He's gonna win $100,000 on
You Bet!”

“You're sure of that,” she said skeptically.

Painter grinned. “Of course I'm sure. We start off with simple stuff that he already knows. Like ‘Now, Mr. Abraham, you know that the word “lungs” is the name of an important
part of the human body. What's the word for that part of the body in Russian, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish?' He knows. If he doesn't, we'll help him a little.”

“You'll make sure he knows?”

“Damned right. I'm not gonna take chances.”

“You're gonna feed him answers? Dick—”

“This son of a bitch is gonna know the Swahili word for penis.”

“Careful.”

“No. We won't use Swahili. Or Chinese. But he'll know the Arabic word. A man who knows Hebrew could reasonably know Arabic. We'll be careful to stick to things he could reasonably be expected to know, has a reputation for knowing.”

“Well—”

“There's a seventeen-year-old girl in Scarsdale who knows more about baseball than Red Barber. Think of this: Cute blond kid. She chews gum and giggles. ‘What was Babe Ruth's batting average for the 1924 season?' She'll know.”

“Because you fed her the question in advance?”

“Gimme a little credit, Cathy. For
some
smarts. She's got a hell of a reputation for knowing more about baseball than anybody. She's got that reputation already. That's why it'll be believable. If we used some kid who wasn't known for a freakish knowledge of baseball, we'd fall on our face. With this kid—”

“It's still risky. What if somebody blows the whistle?”

“Every winner that we coach will wind up with $100,000. The losers that we don't coach will win, say, $10,000. Small winners won't resent big winners. It's not a competition. They'll play against the questions, not against each other.”

“Who's going to know?” she asked. “Lear?”

“Sort of. He doesn't want details.”

I
N
O
CTOBER
J
ACK MET
R
EBECCA
M
URPHY, HIS PRIVATE INVES
tigator, in a suite in a motel in Lexington, far enough from Boston so that it was unlikely he'd be seen or recognized. They sat together in the parlor, sipping Scotch and talking.