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The Other Side of Me
Sidney Sheldon


A brilliant, highly spirited memoir of Sidney Sheldon's early life that provides as compulsively readable and racy a narrative as any of his bestselling novels.Growing up in 1930s America, the young Sidney knew what it was to struggle to get by. Millions were out of work and the Sheldon family was forced to journey around America in search of employment. Grabbing every chance he could, Sidney worked nights as a busboy, a clerk, an usher – anything – but he dreamt of becoming something more.His dream was to become a writer and to break Hollywood. By a stroke of luck, he found work as a reader for David Selznick, a top Hollywood producer, and the dream began to materialise.Sheldon worked through the night writing stories for the movies, and librettos for the musical theatre. Little by little he gained a reputation and soon found himself in demand by the hottest producers and stars in Hollywood.But, this was wartime Hollywood and Sidney had to play his part. He trained as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps and waited for the call to arms which could put a stop to his dreams of stardom.Returning to Hollywood and working with actors like Cary Grant and Shirley Temple; with legendary producers like David Selznick and Dore Schary; and musical stars like Irving Berlin, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, memories of poverty were finally behind Sheldon. This is his story: the story of a life on both sides of the tracks, of struggles and of success, and of how one man rose against the odds to become the master of his game.









The Other Side of Me

Sidney Sheldon












For my beloved granddaughters, Lizy and Rebecca

so that they will know what a magical journey I had


‘He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.’

THOMAS FULLER

Seventeenth-century English clergyman




Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u4cccf2a9-55c7-55a9-9186-3fa3104d1503)

Title Page (#ue7863664-84d9-5d3b-8dd7-dc63e6828b2a)

Dedication (#u2690f910-f637-5b2b-ae22-a73c6e7eed60)

Epigraph (#u7c604738-ecd4-59cb-a891-01c4ec4197f2)

One (#u8ab9e53d-6ced-55c2-81ef-116980d37444)

Two (#ube0861f9-9e0f-544d-b361-82a27c739e67)

Three (#u84030215-7a93-55ad-881c-9f207c4fd0b3)

Four (#u54e8e785-d8f2-55e8-aee4-bee5373a3816)

Five (#u76649785-5c3b-50e2-a8fc-b43a329aca3d)

Six (#u17ad8896-ab3a-5431-ba57-9a6f71f2bcc1)

Seven (#u4a5f49b7-78b5-5880-bacc-f5d9281fd64e)

Eight (#u10084784-25d7-5fc1-9c66-cc6afe3c7e72)

Nine (#uc2dfb3d1-ae29-52a5-9e26-6e972de82488)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Sidney Sheldon’s Credits (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Preview (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Books by Sidney Sheldon (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




ONE (#ulink_35f7607f-6c31-56d0-bf71-3e1ab0c71225)


At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I had read that whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.

It was Saturday—the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents would be away for the weekend and my brother, Richard, was staying at a friend’s. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no one there to interfere with my plan.

At six o’clock, the pharmacist called out, ‘Closing time.’

He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the things that were wrong with my life. I knew it wasn’t just me. It was the whole country.

The year was 1934, and America was going through a devastating crisis. The stock market had crashed and thousands of banks had failed. Businesses were folding everywhere. More than 13 million people had lost their jobs and were desperate. Wages had plunged to as low as a nickel an hour. A million vagabonds, including 200,000 children, were roaming the country. We were in the grip of a disastrous depression. Former millionaires were committing suicide, and executives were selling apples in the streets.

The most popular song was ‘Gloomy Sunday.’ I had memorized some of the lyrics:

Gloomy is Sunday.With shadows I spend it all.My heart and IHave decided to end it all.

The world was bleak and it fit my mood perfectly. I had reached the depths of despair. I could see no rhyme or reason for my existence. I felt dislocated and lost. I was miserable and desperately longing for something that I couldn’t define or name.

We lived near Lake Michigan, only a few blocks from the shore, and one night I walked down there to try to calm myself. It was a windy night and the sky was filled with clouds.

I looked up and said, ‘If there is a God, show yourself to me.’

And as I stood staring at the sky, the clouds merged together, forming a huge face. There was a sudden flash of lightning that gave the face blazing eyes. I ran all the way home, in a panic.

I lived with my family in a small, third-floor apartment in Rogers Park. The great showman, Mike Todd, said that he was often broke but he never felt poor. I, however, felt poor all the time because we were living in the demeaning kind of grinding poverty where, in a freezing winter, you had to keep the radiator off to save money and you learned to turn the lights out when not in use. You squeezed the last drops out of the ketchup bottle and the last dab of toothpaste out of the tube. But I was about to escape all that.

When I arrived at our dreary apartment, it was deserted. My parents had already left for the weekend and my brother had gone. There was no one to stop me from what I intended to do.

I walked into the little bedroom that Richard and I shared and I carefully removed the bag of sleeping pills I had hidden under the dresser. Next, I went into the kitchen, took a bottle of bourbon from the shelf where my father kept it and carried it back to the bedroom. I looked at the pills and the bourbon and I wondered how long it would take for them to work. I poured some whiskey into a glass and raised it to my lips. I would not let myself think about what I was doing. I took a swallow of the whiskey and the acrid taste of it made me choke. I picked up a handful of sleeping pills and started to raise them to my mouth, when a voice said, ‘What are you doing?’

I spun around, spilling some of the whiskey and dropping some of the pills.

My father was standing in the bedroom doorway. He moved closer. ‘I didn’t know you drank.’

I looked at him, stunned. ‘I—I thought you were gone.’

‘I forgot something. I’ll ask you again. What are you doing?’ He took the glass of whiskey from my hand.

My mind was racing. ‘Nothing, nothing.’

He was frowning. ‘This isn’t like you, Sidney. What’s wrong?’ He saw the pile of sleeping pills. ‘My God! What’s going on here? What are these?’

No plausible lie came to my mind. I said defiantly, ‘They’re sleeping pills.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m going to—to commit suicide.’

There was a silence. Then my father said, ‘I had no idea you were so unhappy.’

‘You can’t stop me, because if you stop me now I’ll do it tomorrow.’

He stood there, studying me. ‘It’s your life. You can do anything you want with it.’ He hesitated. ‘If you’re not in too big a hurry, why don’t we go for a little walk?’

I knew exactly what he was thinking. My father was a salesman. He was going to try to talk me out of my plan, but he didn’t have a chance. I knew what I was going to do. I said, ‘All right.’

‘Put on a coat. You don’t want to catch cold.’

The irony of that made me smile.

Five minutes later my father and I were headed down windswept streets that were empty of pedestrians because of the freezing temperature.

After a long silence, my father said, ‘Tell me about it, son. Why do you want to commit suicide?’

Where could I begin? How could I explain to him how lonely and trapped I felt? I desperately wanted a better life but there was no better life for me. I wanted a wonderful future and there was no wonderful future. I had glowing daydreams, but at the end of the day I was a delivery boy working in a drug store.

My fantasy was to go to college, but there was no money for that. My dream had been to be a writer. I had written dozens of short stories and sent them to Story magazine, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post, and I had gotten back printed rejections. I had finally decided I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in this suffocating misery.

My father was talking to me. ‘…and there are so many beautiful places in the world you haven’t seen…’

I tuned him out. If he leaves tonight, I can go on with my plan.

‘…you’d love Rome…’

If he tries to stop me now, I’ll do it when he leaves. I was busy with my thoughts, barely listening to what he was saying.

‘Sidney, you told me that you wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world.’

He suddenly had my attention. ‘That was yesterday.’

‘What about tomorrow?’

I looked at him, puzzled. ‘What?’

‘You don’t know what can happen tomorrow. Life is like a novel, isn’t it? It’s filled with suspense. You have no idea what’s going to happen until you turn the page.’

‘I know what’s going to happen. Nothing.’

‘You don’t really know that, do you? Every day is a different page, Sidney, and they can be full of surprises. You’ll never know what’s next until you turn the page.’

I thought about that. He did have a point. Every tomorrow was like the next page of a novel.

We turned the corner and walked down a deserted street. ‘If you really want to commit suicide, Sidney, I understand. But I’d hate to see you close the book too soon and miss all the excitement that could happen to you on the next page—the page you’re going to write.’

Don’t close the book too soon…Was I closing it too soon? Something wonderful could happen tomorrow.

Either my father was a superb salesman or I wasn’t fully committed to ending my life, because by the end of the next block I had decided to postpone my plan.

But I intended to keep my options open.




TWO (#ulink_a41dac59-ced1-5823-bfca-29904adb36ae)


I was born in Chicago, on a kitchen table that I made with my own hands. At least, my mother, Natalie, insisted it was so. Natalie was my North Star, my comforter, my protector. I was her first child, and she never got over the miracle of birth. She could not talk about me without the aid of a thesaurus. I was brilliant, talented, handsome, and witty—and that was before I was six months old.

I never addressed my parents as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father.’ They preferred that I call them ‘Natalie’ and ‘Otto,’ possibly because it made them feel younger.

Natalie Marcus was born in Slavitka, Russia, near Odessa, during the reign of the czars. When she was ten years old she escaped a Russian pogrom against Jews, and was brought to America by her mother, Anna.

Natalie was a beauty. She was five foot five inches tall, with soft brown hair, intelligent gray eyes, and lovely features. She had the soul of a romantic and a rich inner life. She had no formal education, but she had taught herself to read. She loved classical music and books. Her dream was to marry a prince and travel around the world.

Her prince turned out to be Otto Schechtel, a Chicago street fighter who had dropped out of school after the sixth grade. Otto was handsome and charming, and it was easy to see why Natalie had been attracted to him. They were both dreamers, but they had different dreams. Natalie dreamed of a romantic world, with castles in Spain and moonlit gondola rides in Venice, while Otto’s fantasies consisted of impractical get-rich-quick schemes. Someone said that all it took to be a successful writer was paper and a pen and a dysfunctional family. I was raised by two such families.

In this corner I would like to present the Marcus clan: two brothers, Sam and Al, and three sisters, Pauline, Natalie, and Fran.

And in the opposite corner we have the Schechtels: two brothers, Harry and Otto, and five sisters, Rose, Bess, Emma, Mildred, and Tillie.

The Schechtels were extroverts, informal and street smart. The Marcuses were introverted and reserved. The two families were not only dissimilar; they had absolutely nothing in common. And so, fate decided to amuse itself.

Harry Schechtel married Pauline Marcus. Otto Schechtel married Natalie Marcus. Tillie Schechtel married Al Marcus. And if that were not enough, Sam Marcus married Pauline’s best friend. It was a marital feeding frenzy.

Otto’s older brother, Harry, was the most formidable member of the Schechtel clan. He was five foot ten, muscular and powerful, with a commanding personality. If we had been Italian, he would have been the consigliere. He was the one that Otto and the others went to for advice. Harry and Pauline had four young boys—Seymour, Eddie, Howard, and Steve. Seymour was only six months older than I, but he always seemed older than his age.

In the Marcus family, Al was the charmer, good looking and amusing, the family bon vivant. He liked to gamble and flirt. Sam Marcus was the solemn elder statesman who disapproved of the Schechtels’ lifestyle. Sam’s business was running checkroom concessions in various Chicago hotels.

Sometimes when my uncles got together, they would go into a corner and talk about a mysterious thing called sex. It sounded wonderful. I prayed that it wouldn’t go away before I grew up.

Otto was a spendthrift who enjoyed throwing money around, whether he had it or not. He would often invite a dozen guests to an expensive restaurant, and when the bill came, borrow the money from one of them to pay the tab.

Natalie could not stand borrowing or owing money. She had a strong sense of responsibility. As I grew older, I began to realize how totally unsuited they were for each other. My mother was miserable, married to a man she had no respect for, living an inner life that he could not understand. My father had married a fairytale princess, only to find himself bewildered when the honeymoon ended.

They argued constantly, but these were not normal arguments; they were bitter and vicious. They found each other’s weak points and tore at them. The arguing became so savage that I would run out of the house to the public library where I escaped to the peaceful and serene worlds of The Hardy Boys and the Tom Swift books.

One day, when I got home from school, Otto and Natalie were screaming obscenities at each other. I decided I couldn’t stand it any longer. I needed help. I went to my Aunt Pauline, Natalie’s sister. She was a sweet, loving dumpling of a woman, pragmatic and intelligent.

When I arrived, Pauline took one look at me and said, ‘What’s the matter?’

I was in tears. ‘It’s Nat and Otto. They fight all the time. I don’t know what to do.’

Pauline frowned. ‘They’re fighting in front of you?’

I nodded.

‘All right. I’ll tell you what you do. They both love you, Sidney, and they don’t want to hurt you, so the next time they start to fight, you go up to them and tell them that you don’t want them to ever fight in front of you again. Will you do that?’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

Aunt Pauline’s advice worked.

Natalie and Otto were in the middle of a shouting match when I walked up to them and said, ‘Don’t do this to me. Please don’t fight in front of me.’

They were both immediately contrite. Natalie said, ‘Of course. You’re right, darling. It won’t happen again.’

And Otto said, ‘I’m sorry, Sidney. We have no right to put our problems on you.’

After that the arguments continued, but at least they were muffled by their bedroom walls.

We were constantly on the move from city to city, with Otto looking for work. When someone would ask me what my father did for a living, my answer always depended on where we were. In Texas, he worked in a jewelry store; in Chicago, it was a clothing store; in Arizona, it was a depleted silver mine; in Los Angeles, he sold siding.

Twice a year, Otto would take me shopping for clothes. The ‘shop’ was a truck parked in an alley, filled with beautiful suits. They were so new that they still had their price tags on them and they were remarkably inexpensive.

In 1925 my brother, Richard, was born. I was eight years old. We were living in Gary, Indiana at that time, and I remember how thrilled I was to have a brother, an ally against the dark forces of my life. It was one of the most exciting events of my life. I had big plans for us, and I was looking forward to all the things we were going to do together as he got older. Meanwhile, I raced him around Gary in his buggy.

During the Depression our financial situation was something out of Alice in Wonderland. Otto would be away, working on one of his fantasy mega-deals, while Natalie, Richard and I lived in a dreary, cramped apartment. Suddenly Otto would appear and announce that he had just made a deal that paid him $1,000 a week. Before we knew it, we would be living in a grand penthouse in another city. It seemed like a dream.

It always turned out to be a dream, because a few months later Otto’s deal would have vanished and we would be back living in a little apartment again, in a different city.

I felt like a displaced person. If we had had a family crest, it would have been a picture of a moving van. Before I was seventeen I had lived in eight cities and attended eight grammar schools and three high schools. I was always the new kid on the block—an outsider.

Otto was a great salesman and when I started at a new school, in another city, he would always take me to see the principal on the first day, and almost invariably he would talk him into promoting me a grade. The result of that was that I was always the youngest boy in the class, creating another barrier to making friends. Consequently I became shy, pretending that I enjoyed being a loner. It was a very disruptive life. Each time I would start to make friends, it was time to say goodbye.

Where the money came from I don’t know, but Natalie bought a little second-hand spinet piano, and she insisted I start taking piano lessons.

‘Why?’ Otto asked.

‘You’ll see,’ Natalie said. ‘Sidney even has the hands of a musician.’

I enjoyed the lessons, but they ended a few months later, when we moved to Detroit.

Otto’s proudest boast was that he never read a book in his life. It was Natalie who instilled the love of reading in me. Otto was concerned because I enjoyed sitting at home, reading books I took from the public library, when I could have been out on the street, playing baseball.

‘You’re going to ruin your eyes,’ he would keep saying. ‘Why can’t you be like your cousin Seymour? He plays football with the boys.’

My Uncle Harry went further. I overheard him saying to my father, ‘Sidney reads too much. He’s going to come to a bad end.’

When I was ten years old, I made matters worse by starting to write. There was a poetry contest in Wee Wisdom, a children’s magazine. I wrote a poem and asked Otto to send it to the magazine to enter it in the contest.

The fact that I was writing made Otto nervous. The fact that I was writing poetry made him very nervous. I later learned that because he did not want to be embarrassed when the magazine rejected my poem, he took my name off it, substituted my Uncle Al’s name, and sent it in to the magazine.

Two weeks later, Otto was having lunch with Al.

‘The damnedest thing happened, Otto. Why would Wee Wisdom magazine send me a check for five dollars?’

Thus, my first professional writing was published under the name of Al Marcus.

One day my mother came running into the apartment, breathless. She hugged me and exclaimed, ‘Sidney, I’ve just come from Bea Factor. She says you’re going to be world famous! Isn’t that wonderful?’

Bea Factor was a friend who was reputed to be a psychic and there were many acquaintances of hers who verified it.

To me, it was wonderful that my mother believed her.

In the twenties and thirties Chicago was a city of noisy elevated trains, horse-drawn ice wagons, crowded beaches, strip clubs, the smell of the stockyards, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, where seven mobsters were lined up against a wall in a garage and machine-gunned down.

The school system was run like the city—tough and aggressive. Instead of ‘show and tell,’ it was ‘throw and tell.’ And it wasn’t the students who were throwing things; it was the teachers. One morning, when I was in third grade, a teacher was displeased by something a pupil said. She picked up one of the heavy glass inkwells that were set on each desk and hurled it across the room at the student. If it had hit him in the head, it would have killed him. I was too terrified to return to school that afternoon.

My favorite subject in school was English. Part of the class assignment was taking turns reading aloud from a book called the Elgin Reader that contained short stories. We would turn to a story by Poe or O’Henry or Tarkington, and I would dream that one day the teacher would say, ‘Turn to page twenty in your reader,’ and lo and behold, there would be a story written by me. Where that dream came from, I do not know. Perhaps it was an atavistic throwback to some long-gone ancestor.

The tenth floor of the Sovereign Hotel was the neighborhood’s ole swimmin’ hole. Whenever possible, I would take Richard there to play in the pool. He was five years old.

On this particular day, I deposited him in the shallow end and I swam to the deep end. While I was talking to some people, Richard got out of the pool, looking for me. He came to the deep end of the pool, slipped and fell in. He went straight to the bottom. I saw what had happened, dove down and pulled him up.

No more ole swimmin’ hole for us.

When I was twelve years old, in the seventh grade at Marshall Field grammar school in Chicago, I was in an English class where we were allowed to work on our own projects. I decided to write a play about a detective investigating a murder. When it was finished, I turned it in to my teacher. She read the play, called me to her desk and said, ‘I think this is really good, Sidney. Would you like to stage it?’

Would I! ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I’ll arrange for you to put it on in the main auditorium.’

And suddenly I remembered Natalie’s excitement about Bea Factor’s prediction. Sidney is going to be world famous.

I was filled with excitement. This was the beginning. When the class heard the news, everyone wanted to be cast in the play. I decided that not only would I produce it and direct it, but I would also star in it.

I had never directed before, of course, but I knew exactly what I wanted.

I began casting. I was allowed to rehearse after school in the huge auditorium, and soon my play was the talk of the school. I was given all the props I asked for: couches, chairs, tables, a telephone…

It was one of the happiest times of my life. I knew without question that this was the beginning of a wonderful career. If I could write a successful play at my age, there was no limit to how far I could go. I would have plays on Broadway with my name in lights.

I held a final dress rehearsal with my classmates who had been cast by me, and the rehearsal went perfectly.

I went to my teacher. ‘I’m ready,’ I said. ‘When would you like me to put the play on?’

She was beaming at me. ‘Why don’t we do it tomorrow?’

I got no sleep that night. I felt that my whole future depended on the success of the play. Lying in bed, I went over it scene by scene, looking for flaws. I could find none. The dialogue was excellent, the plot moved swiftly and the play had an unexpected twist at the end. Everyone was going to love it.

The next morning, when I arrived at school, my teacher had a surprise for me.

‘I’ve arranged to have all the English classes dismissed so that they can come down to the auditorium to see your play.’

I could not believe it. This was going to be a far bigger triumph than I had imagined.

At ten o’clock in the morning the huge auditorium was filled. Not only were all the students in the English classes there, but the principal and teachers who had heard about my play were present, eager to see the work of the child prodigy.

In the midst of all this excitement, I was calm. Very calm. It seemed only natural that this was happening to me at such an early age. You’re going to be world famous.

It was show time. The conversations in the auditorium began to die down and the theater became hushed. The set consisted of a simple living room where a boy and girl were playing a husband and wife whose friend had been murdered. They were seated next to each other on a sofa.

I was playing the detective investigating the murder. I stood in the wings, ready to make my entrance. My cue was the boy on stage looking at his watch and saying, ‘The inspector should be here soon.’ But instead of ‘soon,’ he started to say ‘any minute,’ and he caught himself and tried to change ‘minute’ to ‘soon.’ What came out was, ‘The inspector should be here any minsoon.’ He quickly corrected himself, but it was too late. Minsoon? That was the funniest sound I had ever heard. It was so funny, I had to laugh. And I could not stop. The more I thought about it, the louder I laughed.

The boy and girl on the stage were staring at me in the wings, waiting for me to make my entrance. I could not move because I was laughing too hard. I was helpless. The laughing took over completely and I became more and more hysterical.

The play had come to a standstill before it started.

After what seemed an eternity, from the auditorium I heard my teacher’s voice calling, ‘Sidney, come out here.’

I forced myself to leave the shelter of the wings and stumble out to the center of the stage. My teacher was in the middle of the auditorium, on her feet, listening to my frenzied outburst. ‘Stop it,’ she commanded.

But how could I? Minsoon?

The audience began getting up and drifting out of the auditorium and I watched them go, pretending that I was laughing because I wanted to, pretending that what was happening was not important.

Pretending that I did not want to die.




THREE (#ulink_a7a01465-3ab6-5e5c-8285-d0d13374be36)


By 1930 the Depression had gotten deeper and was squeezing the economic life out of the country. Bread lines had increased and unemployment was pandemic. There were riots in the streets.

I had graduated from Marshall Field grammar school and had a job at Afremow’s drugstore. Natalie was working as a cashier at a roller derby, a new craze that took place in large rollerdrome arenas with huge circular wooden rinks where intrepid men on roller skates raced around the rink, knocking down their rivals and committing as much mayhem as they could while the audience cheered them on.

Otto, meanwhile, was traveling around the country putting together his hypothetical mega-deals.

Intermittently, he would come home filled with enthusiasm.

‘I have a good feeling about this. I just made a deal that’s going to put us on easy street.’

And we would pack up and move to Hammond, or Dallas, or Kirkland Junction, in Arizona.

‘Kirkland Junction?’

‘You’ll love it there,’ Otto promised. ‘I bought a silver mine.’

Kirkland turned out to be a small town, 104 miles from Phoenix, but that was not our destination. Kirkland Junction was a dilapidated gas station, and we ended up living in the back of it for three miserable months while Otto tried to corner the silver market. It turned out that there was no silver in the mine.

We were saved by a phone call from Uncle Harry.

‘How’s the silver mine?’ Harry asked.

‘Not good,’ Otto said.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m in Denver. I have a great stock brokerage company going. I want you to join me.’

‘We’re on our way,’ Otto told him. He hung up and turned to Natalie, Richard and me. ‘We’re moving to Denver. I have a good feeling about this.’

Denver turned out to be a delight. It was pristine and beautiful, with cool breezes sweeping down from the snowcapped mountains through the city. I loved it.

Harry and Pauline had found a luxurious, two-story mansion in an elegant section of Denver. The back of their home looked out on an enormous, verdant piece of land called Cheeseman Park. My cousins, Seymour, Howard, Eddie and Steve, were glad to see us, and we were delighted to see them.

Seymour was driving a bright red Pierce Arrow and dating girls older than himself. Eddie had been given a saddle horse for his birthday. Howard was winning junior tennis matches. The moneyed atmosphere in their lives was a far cry from our dreary existence in Chicago.

‘Are we going to live with Harry and Pauline?’ I asked.

‘No.’ They had a surprise for me. ‘We’re going to buy a home here.’

When I saw the house they were going to buy, I could hardly believe it. It was large, with a lovely garden, in a quiet suburb on Marion Street. The rooms were large, beautiful and welcoming. The furniture was fresh and lovely, far different from the musty furniture in the apartments I had lived in all my life. This was more than a house. This was a home. The moment I walked in the front door, I felt that my life had changed, that I finally had roots. There would be no more moving around the country every few months, changing apartments and schools.

Otto is going to buy this house. I’m going to get married here and my children will grow up here…

For the first time in my memory, money was plentiful. Harry’s business was doing so well that he now owned three brokerage firms.

In the fall of 1930, at the age of thirteen, I enrolled at East High School, and it turned out to be a very pleasant experience. The teachers in Denver were friendly and helpful. There was no throwing of inkwells at students. I was starting to make friends at school, and I enjoyed the thought of going home to the beautiful house that was soon to be ours. Natalie and Otto seemed to have settled most of their personal problems, which made life even sweeter.

One day, during a gym class, I slipped, hurt my spine and tore something loose. The pain was excruciating. I lay on the floor, unable to move. They carried me to the school doctor’s office.

When he was through examining me, I asked, ‘Am I going to be crippled?’

‘No,’ he assured me. ‘One of your discs has torn loose and it’s pressing against your spinal cord. That’s what’s causing the pain. The treatment is very simple. All you have to do is lie still in bed for two or three days with hot packs to relax the muscles, and the disc will slip back into place. You’ll be as good as new.’

An ambulance took me home and the paramedics put me to bed. I lay there in pain, but just as the doctor had said, in three days the pain was gone.

I had no idea how deeply this incident was going to affect the rest of my life.

One day I had an out-of-this-world experience. There was an advertisement for a county fair in Denver, where one of the attractions was a ride in an airplane.

‘I’d like to go up,’ I told Otto.

He thought about it. ‘All right.’

The plane was a beautiful Lincoln Commander and it was a thrill just to get in it.

The pilot looked at me and said, ‘First time?’

‘First time.’

‘Fasten your seat belt,’ he said. ‘You’re in for a thrill.’

He was right. Flying was a surreal experience. I watched the earth swoop up and down and disappear, and I had never felt anything so exhilarating in my life.

When we landed, I said to Otto, ‘I want to go up again.’

And I did. I was determined that some day I was going to be a pilot.

Early one morning in the spring of 1933, Otto came into my bedroom. His face was grim. ‘Pack your things. We’re leaving.’

I was puzzled. ‘Where are we going?’

‘We’re going back to Chicago.’

I could not believe it. ‘We’re leaving Denver?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But—’

He was gone.

I got dressed and went to see Natalie. ‘What happened?’

‘Your father and Harry had a—a misunderstanding.’

I looked around at the home that I thought I was going to live in for the rest of my life. ‘What about this house?’

‘We’re not buying it.’

Our return to Chicago was joyless. Neither Otto nor Natalie wanted to talk about what had happened. After Denver, Chicago seemed even more unfriendly and uncaring. We moved into a small apartment and I was back to reality, a grim reminder that we had no money, and that a decent job was impossible to get. Otto was on the road again and Natalie was working as a sales clerk at a department store. My dream of going to college died. There was no money for my tuition. The apartment walls were closing in on me and everything smelled gray.

I can’t spend the rest of my life living this way, I thought. The poverty we lived in now seemed even worse after the brief, heady taste of affluence in Denver, and we were desperately short of money. Working as a delivery boy for a pharmacy was not my future.

That was when I had decided I would commit suicide, and Otto had talked me out of it by telling me I had to keep turning the pages. But the pages were not turning and I had nothing to look forward to. Otto’s promise had been empty words.

When September came around, I enrolled at Senn High School. Otto was on the road again, trying to make mega-deals. Natalie was working full time at a dress shop, but not enough money was coming in. I had to find a way to help…

I thought about Natalie’s older brother, Sam, and the checkroom concessions he owned at several hotels in the Loop. The checkrooms were staffed with attractive, scantily dressed women, and hang boys. The customers were generous with their tips to the women. They had no idea that the money went to the management.

I took the elevated train (the ‘El’) downtown to the Loop to see my Uncle Sam. He was in his office at the Sherman Hotel.

He greeted me warmly. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise. What can I do for you, Sidney?’

‘I need a job.’

‘Oh?’

‘I was hoping that maybe I could work in the checkroom at one of your hotels as a hang boy.’

Sam knew our financial situation. He looked at me thoughtfully. Finally he said, ‘Why not? You look older than seventeen. I think the Bismarck Hotel can use you.’

And he put me to work that week.

Being a hang boy was simple. The customers would give their coats and hats to the female attendant, who handed them a numbered check. She would then turn their coats and hats over to me, and I would hang them up on corresponding numbered racks. When the customer returned, the process would be reversed.

I now had a new schedule. I went to school until three, and immediately after school, I would take the El south to the Loop, get off at the station near the Bismarck Hotel and go to work. My hours were from five p.m. to closing, which was sometimes midnight or later, depending on whether there was a special party. My salary was three dollars a night. I turned the money over to Natalie.

Weekends were the busiest time for parties at the hotels, so I found myself working seven evenings a week. Holidays were emotionally difficult for me. Families came to the hotel for Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations and I watched the children celebrating with their mothers and fathers, and I envied them. Natalie was busy working and Otto was gone, so Richard and I were alone, and had no one to celebrate with. At eight o’clock, while everyone else enjoyed their holiday dinners, I would hurry out to a coffee shop or a fast food restaurant, have a quick bite to eat and return to work.

The bright spot in my nightly routine was when my Aunt Frances, Natalie’s effervescent younger sister, came to work at the Bismarck checkroom for a night or two. She was a small and vivacious brunette, with a quick sense of humor, and the customers adored her.

A new checkroom attendant, Joan Vitucci, came to work at the Bismarck. She was only a year older than I, and she was very pretty. I was attracted to her, and I began to fantasize about her. I would start by taking her out on dates. Even though I had no money, she would see the positive things about me. We would fall in love and get married, and we would have wonderful children.

One evening she said, ‘My aunt and uncle have a family lunch every Sunday. I think you would like them. If you’re free this Sunday, why don’t you join us?’

The fantasy was coming true.

That Sunday turned out to be a lovely experience. It was a warm, Italian family gathering of about a dozen adults and children sitting around a large dining room table, filling up on bruschetta, pasta fagioli, chicken cacciatore and baked lasagna.

Joan’s uncle was an affable, gregarious man named Louie Alterie, the head of the Chicago Janitors Union. When it was time to leave, I thanked everyone and told Joan what a great time I had had. This was the real beginning of our relationship.

The following morning, Louie Alterie was machine-gunned to death as he was leaving his building where we had had lunch.

Joan disappeared.

That was the end of the fantasy.

Between school during the day, the checkroom nights, and the drugstore Saturdays, I had little time for myself.

Something strange seemed to be happening at home. There was tension, but it was a different kind of tension. Natalie and Otto were whispering things to each other, and looking grim.

One morning, Otto came in to me and said, ‘Son, I’m going to the farm. I’m leaving today.’

I was surprised. I had never been on a farm and I thought it would be fun. ‘I’d like to go with you, Otto.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t take you.’

‘But—’

‘No, Sidney.’

‘Okay. When will you be back?’

‘In three years.’ He walked away.

Three years? I couldn’t believe it. How could he desert us for three years to live on a farm?

Natalie came into the room. I turned to her. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Sidney. Your father got mixed up with some evil people,’ she said. ‘He was selling vending machines to stores. What your father didn’t know was that there were no vending machines. The men he worked for took the money and ran. But they were caught, and your father was found guilty, along with them. He’s going to prison.’

I was shocked. So that’s the farm. ‘For three years?’ I did not know what to say. What are we going to do without him for three years?

As it turned out, I need not have worried.

Twelve months after Otto reported to Lafayette State Prison, he was on his way back home, a hero.




FOUR (#ulink_28580914-587b-5f62-8f60-91a8cd57e28a)


We had read the story of Otto’s heroism in the newspapers and had heard it over and over on the radio, but we wanted to hear it from Otto. I had no idea what prison did to a man, but somehow I had the feeling that he would come home changed—pale and burdened down. I was in for a pleasant surprise.

When Otto walked through the front door of our apartment, he was grinning and cheerful. ‘I’m back,’ he said.

There were hugs all around. ‘We want to hear what happened.’

Otto smiled. ‘I’ll be happy to tell it again.’ He sat down at the kitchen table and he began. ‘I was working inside the grounds of the prison with the regular cleaning crew. About fifty feet away there was a huge reservoir that supplied the prison’s water. It was surrounded by a wall that was about ten feet high. I looked up and saw a little boy come out of a building. He was probably three or four years old. The work crew had finished and I was alone.

‘When I looked up again, the boy was climbing the steps of the reservoir wall, and was almost at the top. It was dangerous. I looked around for his babysitter or nurse or someone, but there was no one. As I watched, the little boy reached the top. He slipped and fell down into the reservoir. A guard in the tower saw what had happened, but I knew that he could never get to the boy in time.

‘I got up and ran like hell to the wall. I climbed it as fast as I could. When I got to the top, I looked down and I could see the boy going under. I jumped down, into the water, and managed to grab him. I was fighting to keep the two of us afloat.

‘Then help arrived and they pulled us out. They put me in the hospital for a couple of days because I had swallowed a lot of water and I had some bruises from the jump.’

We were hanging on his every word.

‘As luck had it, the boy was the warden’s son. The warden and his wife came to visit me in the hospital to thank me.’ Otto looked up at us and smiled. ‘And that would have been the end of it except for one thing. They found out that I couldn’t swim and that’s when everything got crazy. Suddenly I was a hero. It was in the newspaper and on the radio. There were phone calls and letters and telegrams coming into the prison offering me jobs and asking for leniency for me. The warden and the governor had a meeting and they decided that since my offense wasn’t too serious, that it might be good public relations to pardon me.’ He held out his arms. ‘And here I am.’

We were a family again.

It might have been a coincidence, but suddenly a scholarship that I had applied for a year earlier from B’nai B’rith—a Jewish philanthropic organization—had been awarded to me.

It was like a miracle. I was going to be the first one in my family to go to college. A page had turned. I decided that maybe there might be a future for me somewhere after all. But even with the scholarship, we were desperately short of money.

Could I handle the checkroom job seven nights a week, Afremow’s on Saturdays and a full college schedule?

I would see.

Northwestern University is located in Evanston, Illinois, twelve miles north of Chicago. The university, a 240-acre campus on the shore of Lake Michigan, was spectacular. At nine o’clock on a Monday morning, I walked into the office of the registrar.

‘I’m here to enter the university.’

‘Your name?’

‘Sidney Schechtel.’

The registrar picked up a heavy volume and looked through it. ‘Here we are. What courses would you like to take?’

‘All of them.’

She looked up at me. ‘What?’

‘I mean as many as I’m allowed. While I’m here, I want to learn all I can.’

‘What are you mostly interested in?’

‘Literature.’

I watched her go through some pamphlets. She picked one up and handed it to me. ‘Here’s a list of our courses.’

I scanned the list. ‘This is great.’ I checked off the courses I wanted and then handed the list back to her.

She looked at it and said, ‘You’re taking the maximum amount of courses?’

‘That’s right.’ I frowned. ‘But Latin isn’t there. I really do want to take Latin.’

She was looking at me. ‘Do you really think you can handle all this?’

I smiled. ‘No problem.’

She wrote down ‘Latin.’

From the registrar’s office, I went to the cafeteria kitchen. ‘Can you use a busboy?’

‘Always.’

So I had another job, but it was not enough. I felt impelled to do more, as though I were making up for lost time. That afternoon I went to the offices of the Daily Northwestern, the school newspaper.

‘I’m Sidney Schechtel,’ I told the man behind the desk with a sign marked ‘Editor.’ ‘I’d like to work on the paper.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘we’re full up. Try us next year.’

‘Next year will be too late.’ I stood there thinking. ‘Do you have a show business section?’

‘A show business section?’

‘Yes. Celebrities are always coming to Chicago to do shows here. Don’t you have someone to interview them for the paper?’

‘No. We—’

‘Do you know who’s in town right now, dying to be interviewed? Katharine Hepburn!’

‘We’re not set up to—’

‘And Clifton Webb.’

‘We’ve never had a—’

‘Walter Pidgeon.’

‘I can talk to someone, but I’m afraid—’

‘George M. Cohan.’

He was getting interested. ‘Do you know these people?’

I did not hear the question. ‘There’s no time to lose. When their shows close, they’re leaving.’

‘All right. I’m going to take a chance on you, Schechtel.’

He had no idea how excited I was. ‘That’s the best decision you’ve ever made.’

‘We’ll see. When can you start?’

‘I’ve already started. You’ll have the first interview in your next edition.’

He looked at me in amazement. ‘Already? Who is it?’

‘It’s a surprise.’

It was a surprise to me, too.

In what spare time I had, I interviewed many minor celebrities for the newspaper. My first interview was with Guy Kibbee, who was a minor character actor at the time. The major stars were too important to be interviewed for a school newspaper.

I was working in the checkroom and the drugstore, I was taking the maximum number of courses at school, plus Latin, I had a job as a busboy, and I was on staff at the Daily Northwestern. But it wasn’t enough. It’s as though I was driven. I thought about what else I could do. Northwestern had a great winning football team, and there was no reason I couldn’t be on it. I’m sure the Wildcats could use me.

The following morning I went out to the football field where the team was practicing. Pug Rentner, who went on to a glorious career in the NFL, was the star of the team that year. I walked up to the coach, who was on the sidelines watching the action. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I’d like to try out for the team.’

He looked me over. ‘You would, huh? You’ve got a pretty good build. Where did you play?’

I didn’t answer.

‘High school? College?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Grammar school?’

‘No, sir.’

He was staring at me. ‘You’ve never played football?’

‘No, but I’m very quick and—’

‘And you’d like to be on this team? Son, forget about it.’ And his attention went back to the scrimmage.

That was the end of my football aspirations.

The professors at Northwestern were wonderful and the classes were exciting. I was hungry to learn everything I could. The week after I started school, I passed a sign in the corridor that read: ‘Tryouts tonight. Northwestern Debating Team.’ I stopped and stared at it. I knew it was insane and yet I felt compelled to try out.

There is a maxim that death is the number two fear that people have, and public speaking is the first. That was certainly so in my case. To me, there was nothing more terrifying than public speaking. But I was obsessed. I had to do everything. I had to keep turning the pages.

When I walked into the designated tryout room, it was filled with young men and women waiting their turn. I took a seat and listened. All the speakers sounded fantastic. They were articulate and spoke fluently, with great confidence.

Finally it was my turn. I got up and walked over to the microphone.

The man in charge said, ‘Your name?’

‘Sidney Schechtel.’

‘Your subject?’

I had prepared for this. ‘Capitalism versus communism.’

He nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

I began to speak and I thought it was going very well. When I got halfway through my subject, I stopped. I was frozen. I had no idea what came next. There was a long, nervous pause. I mumbled something to end the speech and slunk out, cursing myself.

A student at the door said, ‘Aren’t you a freshman?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Freshmen aren’t allowed on the debating team. You have to be an upperclassman.’

Oh, good, I thought. Now I have an excuse for my failure.

The following morning the names of the winners were posted on the bulletin board. Out of curiosity, I took a look at it. One of the names was ‘Shekter.’ Someone with a name similar to mine had been chosen. At the bottom of the board was a notice that those who had been selected should report at three-thirty in the afternoon to the debate coach.

At four o’clock I received a telephone call. ‘Shekter, what happened to you?’

I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘What? Nothing.’

‘Didn’t you see the notice to report to the debate coach?’

Shekter. They had gotten my name wrong. ‘Yes, but I thought—I’m a freshman.’

‘I know. We’ve decided to make an exception in your case. We’re changing the rules.’

So I became the first freshman ever to be accepted on the Northwestern Varsity Debating Team.

Another page had turned.

As busy as I forced myself to be, something was still missing. I had no idea what it was. Somehow I felt unfulfilled. I had a deep sense of anomie, a feeling of anxiety and isolation. On the campus, watching the hordes of students hurrying to and from their classes, I thought, They’re all anonymous. When they die, no one will ever know that they lived on this earth. A wave of depression swept over me. I want people to know I’ve been here, I thought. I want to make a difference.

The next day my depression was worse. I felt that I was being smothered by heavy black clouds. Finally, in desperation, I made an appointment to see the college psychologist, to find out what was wrong with me.

On the way to see him, for no reason I started to feel so cheerful that I began to sing aloud. When I reached the entrance of the building where the psychologist was located, I stopped.

I don’t need to see him, I thought. I’m happy. He’ll think I’m crazy.

It was a bad decision. If I had gone to see him, I would have learned that day what I did not find out until many years later.

My depression returned and showed no signs of abating.

Money was getting tighter. Otto was having difficulty getting a job and Natalie was clerking in a department store six days a week. I worked every night in the checkroom and at Afremow’s on Saturday afternoons, but even with what Otto and Natalie earned it was not enough. By February of 1935 we were far behind on the rent.

One night I heard Otto and Natalie talking. Natalie said, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. Everybody is beginning to press us. Maybe I can get a night job.’

No, I thought. My mother was already working at a full-time job and came home and made dinner for us, and cleaned the apartment. I could not let her do more.

The next morning I quit Northwestern.

When I told Natalie what I had done, she was horrified. ‘You can’t quit college, Sidney.’ Her eyes were filled with tears. ‘We’re going to be all right.’

But I knew we were not going to be all right. I started looking for another job, but 1935 was the height of the Depression and there weren’t any to be found. I tried advertising agencies, newspapers, and radio stations, but no one was hiring.

On my way to another interview at a radio station, I passed a large department store called Mandel Brothers. Inside, it looked busy. Half a dozen salesmen were serving customers. I decided I had nothing to lose, and I walked in and looked around. I started walking through the store. It was enormous. I passed the ladies’ shoe department and stopped. This would be an easy job.

A man came up to me. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’d like to see the manager.’

‘I’m Mr. Young, the manager. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m looking for a job. Do you have any openings?’

He studied me a moment. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. Have you had experience selling ladies’ shoes?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I assured him.

‘Where did you work before?’

I recalled a store where I had bought shoes. ‘Thom McCann, in Denver.’

‘Good. Come into the office.’ He handed me a form. ‘Fill this out.’

When I had finished, he picked it up and looked at it. Then he looked at me.

‘First of all, Mr. Schechtel, ‘‘McCann’’ is not spelled ‘‘M-I-C-K-A-N.’’ And secondly, it’s not located at this address.’

I needed this job desperately. ‘They must have moved,’ I said quickly, ‘and I’m a terrible speller. You see—’

‘I hope you’re a better salesman than you are a liar.’

I nodded, depressed, and turned to leave. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

‘Wait a minute. I’m hiring you.’

I looked at him, surprised. ‘You are? Why?’

‘My boss thinks that only people with experience can sell ladies’ shoes. I think anyone can learn to do it quickly. You’re going to be an experiment.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, gratefully. ‘I won’t let you down.’

I went to work, filled with optimism.

Fifteen minutes later, I was fired.

What happened was that I had committed an unforgivable sin.

My first customer was a well-dressed lady who approached me in the shoe department.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I want a pair of black pumps, size 7B.’

I gave her my best salesman smile. ‘No problem.’

I went into the back room where shoes were stored on large racks. There were hundreds of boxes, all labeled on the outside—5B…6W…6B…7A…8N…8…9B…9N. No 7B. I was getting desperate. There was an 8 Narrow. She’ll never know the difference, I decided. I took the shoes out of the box and brought them to her.

‘Here we are,’ I said.

I put them on her feet. She looked at them a moment.

‘Is this a 7B?’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am.’

She studied me a moment. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You’re sure this is a 7B?’

‘Positive.’

‘I want to see the manager.’

That was the end of my career in the ladies’ shoe department.

That afternoon I was transferred to Haberdashery.




FIVE (#ulink_bd2f631e-a628-5787-9375-1183161c5522)


Even though I was working six days a week in Haberdashery at Mandel Brothers, seven nights a week at downtown hotel checkrooms, and Saturdays at Afremow’s drugstore as well, the money was still short. Otto got a part-time job working in a ‘boiler room’ on the south side, an operation that would now be called telemarketing, the object being to sell products to strangers over the telephone.

This particular operation was in a large bare room, with a dozen men, each with a telephone, talking simultaneously to prospects, trying to sell them oil wells, hot stocks, or anything else that would sound like an inviting investment. It was a high-pressure operation. The names and phone numbers of potential customers were obtained from master lists sold to whomever was running boiler rooms. The salesmen got a commission on sales they made.

Otto would come home at night and talk excitedly about the boiler room. Since it was open seven days a week, I decided to drop by to see if I could earn some extra money on Sundays. Otto arranged for me to have a tryout, and the following Sunday I went to work with him. When I arrived, I stood there, in the dreary room, listening to the sales pitches.

‘…Mr. Collins, it’s a lucky thing for you that I was able to reach you. My name is Jason Richards and I have some great news for you. You and your family have just won a free VIP trip to Bermuda. All you have to do is send me a check for…’

‘…Mr. Adams, I have some wonderful news for you. My name is Brown, Jim Brown. I know that you invest in stocks, and there’s a new issue coming out that’s going to have a hundred percent rise in the next six weeks. Not many people know about it, but if you want to make some real money…’

‘…Mrs. Doyle, this is Charlie Chase. Congratulations. You and your husband and little Amanda and Peter have been selected for a free trip to…’

And so it went.

It amazed me how many people actually bought the pie in the sky offered by the salesmen. For some reason, doctors seemed to be the most gullible. They would buy almost anything. Most of the products that were sold were either defective, overpriced, inferior, or non-existent.

I had my fill of the boiler room that Sunday and never returned.

My job at Mandel Brothers was boring and easy, but I was not looking for easy. I wanted a challenge, something that would give me a chance to grow. I knew that if I did well here, I would have a chance of moving up. One day I might be made head of the department. Mandel Brothers had a chain of stores around the country, so in time I could become a regional manager and even work my way up to president.

On a Monday morning, my boss, Mr. Young, came over to me. ‘I have some bad news for you, Schechtel.’

I was staring at him. ‘What?’

‘I’m going to have to let you go.’

I tried to sound calm. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘No. All the departments have orders to cut overheads. You were the last one hired, so you’re going to have to be the first to go.’

I felt as though someone had taken my heart and squeezed it. I needed this job desperately. He had no idea that he was not only firing a clerk in the haberdashery department, but that he was firing the future president of the company.

I knew I had to find another job as quickly as possible. Debts were piling up. We owed grocery bills, the landlord was getting nasty, and our utilities, which had already been shut off several times, were about to be shut off again.

I thought of someone who might be able to help.

Charley Fine, a long-time friend of my father, was an executive at a large manufacturing company. I asked Otto whether he thought it would be all right if I talked to Charley about getting a job.

Otto thought about it for a moment, looked at me and said, ‘I’ll talk to him for you.’

The following morning I was walking through the huge gates of the Stewart Warner factory, the world’s largest manufacturer of automobile gears. The factory was housed in a five-story building that took up an entire block on Diversey Street. A guard escorted me through the factory floor, crowded with huge, arcane machines that looked like prehistoric monsters. The noise from the machines was incredible.

Otto Karp, a short, heavy-set man with a thick German accent, was waiting for me.

‘So, you’re going to work here,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

He looked disappointed. ‘Follow me.’

We started walking across the huge factory floor. All the machines were running at full speed.

As we approached one of the machines, Karp said, ‘This makes drive and driven gears for speedometers. They turn the flexible shaft that drives the speedometer. Understand?’

I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Right.’

He led me over to the machine next to it. ‘What you see coming out here are round drive gears that are pressed into the output shaft of the transmission. The long one is the driven gear that’s inserted at a right angle to mesh with the drive gear.’

I looked at him and wondered. Chinese? Swahili?

We went to the next machine. ‘Here they’re making drive gears that press onto the front wheel hub. The driven gear is fixed to the brake backing plate to mesh with the drive gear. See?’

I nodded.

He walked me over to another machine. ‘This machine replaces worn gears. The transmission gearing has been standard for a long time. The advantage of the front-wheel systems is that axle ratios can be changed, or multiple-ratio rear axles can be used without affecting the speedometer accuracy. See?’

Swahili, I decided. ‘Of course.’

‘Now I’ll show you your department.’

He took me over to the short order department, where I was to take charge. The machines I had been introduced to were mammoth and were built to turn out huge orders for automobile manufacturers, half a million gears or more at a time. The short order department consisted of three much smaller machines.

Otto Karp explained, ‘If someone orders five or ten gears, we can’t afford to start up the big machines for that small an order. But these machines here are equipped to turn out as few as one or two gears. When a short order comes in, you will handle it and it can be filled right away.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘First, you will be handed a purchase order. The order can be for anywhere from one to a dozen drive or driven gears. Next, you give the order to the machinist. When the gears are ready, you’ll take them to the annealing department, where they’ll be hardened. Your next stop is inspection and finally the wrapping department.’

It sounded simple enough.

I learned that my predecessor had given the men who worked in the short order department no more than six orders a day. The rest he held back, and the men sat around half the day, doing nothing. I thought it was a waste. Within a month I had increased the output by fifty percent. At Christmastime I got my reward. Otto Karp handed me a check for fourteen dollars and said, ‘Here. You deserve it. You have a dollar raise.’’

Otto was traveling on the road and Natalie was working six days a week at a dress shop. Richard was going to school. My days at Stewart Warner, working in the drab surroundings of the factory, surrounded by surrealistic machinery, had become mind-numbing. My evenings were just as bad. I rode the El downtown to the Loop, walked into the hotel where I was working and spent the next few hours receiving and returning overcoats. My life had become an ugly gray rut again, and there was no way out.

Riding home on the El late one night, coming from work, an ad in the Chicago Tribune newspaper caught my eye:

Paul Ash is Sponsoring an Amateur Contest

Start your career in show business

Paul Ash, a nationally known band leader, was appearing at the Chicago Theatre. The ad was catnip to me. I had no idea what the amateur contest was about, but I knew I wanted to be in it.

On Saturday, before I went to work at the drugstore, I stopped at the Chicago Theatre and asked to see Paul Ash. His manager came out of an office. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to enter the amateur contest,’ I said.

He consulted a paper. ‘We don’t have an announcer yet. Can you handle that?’

‘Oh. Yes, sir.’

‘Good. What’s your name?’

What was my name? Schechtel was not a show business name. People were always misspelling it and mispronouncing it. I needed a name they would remember. The possibilities raced through my mind. Gable, Cooper, Grant, Stewart, Powell…

The man was staring at me. ‘Don’t you know your name?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s Sidney Sh—Sheldon. Sidney Sheldon.’

He wrote it down. ‘All right. Be here next Saturday, Sheldon. Six o’clock. You’ll be broadcasting from the studio on a remote from WGN.’

Whatever that meant. ‘Right.’

I hurried home to break the news to my parents and my brother, Richard. They were excited. There was one more thing I had to tell them. ‘I’m using a different name.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Schechtel is not a show business name. From now on, I’m Sidney Sheldon.’

They looked at one another and then shrugged. ‘Okay.’

I had difficulty sleeping for the next few nights. I knew that this finally was the beginning. I was going to win this contest. Paul Ash would give me a contract to travel around the country with him. Sidney Sheldon would travel around the country with him.

When Saturday reluctantly dragged its way onto the calendar, I returned to the Chicago Theatre and was ushered into a small broadcast studio with several other young contestants. There was a comedian, a singer, a female pianist, and an accordion player.

The director said to me, ‘Sheldon—’

I felt a little thrill. It was the first time anyone had spoken my new name. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘When I point to you, you’ll step up to the microphone and start the show. You’ll say, ‘‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Paul Ash Amateur Contest. This is your announcer, Sidney Sheldon. We’re going to give you an exciting show, so stay tuned!’’ Got that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Fifteen minutes later, the director looked up at the studio clock on the wall and raised his arm. ‘Quiet, everyone.’ He began counting. He pointed to me and I was ready for show business. I had never been calmer in my life because I knew that this was the beginning of a wonderful career. And I was going to start under my new show business name.

With great composure, I stepped up to the microphone, took a deep breath and said, in my best announcer’s voice, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Paul Ash Amateur Contest. This is your announcer—Sidney Schechtel.’




SIX (#ulink_23bbedfc-774c-537f-8235-4ca2d35e1700)


I recovered enough to introduce the other contestants. The show went well. The accordion player executed a foot-stomping tune, followed by the comedian, who did his bit like a seasoned pro. The singer sang beautifully. Nothing went wrong until the last contestant, the female pianist, was introduced. As soon as I announced her, she panicked, started to cry, and hurriedly fled from the room, leaving us with three minutes of empty air. I knew I had to fill it. I was the announcer.

I stepped back up to the microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we all start out as amateurs in life, but as we go on we grow and become professionals.’ I got so caught up in my own words that I kept talking until finally the director signaled for me to shut up.

We went off the air. I knew that I had saved the show and they would be grateful for that. Perhaps they would offer me a job as—

The director came up to me. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, whatever your name is?’ he yelled. ‘You went over by fifteen seconds.’

My radio career was ended.

Paul Ash did not invite me to travel around the country with him, but there was one interesting fallout from the Paul Ash Contest. Otto, Natalie, Richard, Seymour, Howard, Eddie, and Steve all changed their last names to ‘Sheldon.’ The only remaining ‘Schechtel’ was Uncle Harry.

Early in May, my cousin Seymour stunned us all by announcing that he was getting married.

Seymour was only nineteen, but it seemed to me that he had been an adult for most of his life.

I had met his bride-to-be, Sydney Singer, when I lived in Denver. Sydney was a young, attractive secretary who had worked in Harry’s brokerage office, where Seymour met her. I found her to be warm and intelligent, with a nice sense of humor.

The wedding was simple, with just the members of the family there. When the ceremony was over, I congratulated Seymour. ‘She’s a terrific girl,’ I told him. ‘Hang on to her.’

‘Don’t worry. I intend to.’

Six months later, they went through a bitter divorce.

‘What happened?’ I asked Seymour.

‘She found out I was having an affair.’

‘And she asked for a divorce?’

‘No. She forgave me.’

‘Then why—?’

‘She caught me with someone else. That’s when she divorced me.’

‘Do you ever see her?’

‘No, she hates my guts. She told me she never wants to see me again. She went to Hollywood. She has a brother out there. She got a job as a secretary at MGM for a woman director. Dorothy Arzner.’

My very brief foray into radio had given me a taste for it and I had become excited about its possibilities. Radio could well be the profession I was looking for. In every minute of my spare time, I haunted WBBM and other Chicago radio stations, looking for a job as an announcer. There were no jobs, period. I had to face the fact that I was back in the same deadly trap, with no prospects for the future.

One Sunday afternoon when everyone was out of the apartment, I sat down at our little spinet piano. I sat there, creating a melody. I decided it was not bad and I put lyrics to it. I called it ‘My Silent Self.’ I looked at it and thought, Now what? I could either let it sit inside the piano bench, or I could try to do something with it.

I decided to try to do something.

In that year, 1936, the major hotels in the country had orchestras in their ballrooms that broadcast coast to coast. At the Bismarck Hotel the orchestra leader was an amiable young musician named Phil Levant. I had never spoken to him, but from time to time, when he passed the checkroom on his way to the ballroom, we would nod at each other.

I resolved to show my song to him. As he passed the checkroom that evening, I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Levant. I’ve written a song and I wonder if you would mind taking a look at it.’

The expression on his face gave me an idea of how many times he had heard that request, but he was very gracious.

‘Glad to,’ he said.

I handed him a copy of the sheet music. He glanced at it and walked away. That’s the end of that, I thought.

An hour later, Phil Levant was back at the checkroom.

‘That song of yours…’ he said.

I was holding my breath. ‘Yes?’

‘I like it. It’s original. I think it could be a hit. Would you mind if I had an orchestration made, and we played it?’

Mind? ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s—that’s wonderful.’

He liked my song.

The following evening, while I was hanging hats and coats, from around the corner in the huge ballroom I heard ‘My Silent Self’ being played. I was thrilled. Since the orchestra was broadcasting nationwide, people would be hearing my song all over the country. It was a heady feeling.

When I finished work late that night, I went home, exhausted, and got into a hot bath.

Just as I was relaxing, Otto hurried into the bathroom. ‘There’s a telephone call for you.’

At this hour? ‘Who is it?’

‘He says his name is Phil Levant.’

I leaped out of the tub, grabbed a towel and hurried to the telephone.

‘Mr. Levant?’

‘Sheldon, there’s a publisher here from Harms Music Company. They heard your song over the air, in New York. They want to publish it.’

I almost dropped the phone.

‘Can you come down here right away? He’s waiting for you.’

‘I’m on my way.’ I dried myself off and hurriedly got dressed again. I grabbed a copy of the sheet music.

‘What’s going on?’ Otto asked.

I explained it to him. ‘Can I borrow the car?’

‘Certainly.’ He handed me the keys. ‘Be careful.’

I hurried downstairs, got into the car and headed for the Outer Drive, on my way to the Bismarck Hotel. My mind was racing with the excitement of having my first song published, when I heard a siren behind me, and saw a flashing red light. As I pulled over to the side of the road, a policeman got off his motorcycle and came up to the car.

‘What’s your rush?’

‘I didn’t know I was speeding, Officer. I’m on my way to meet a music publisher at the Bismarck Hotel. I work there, in the checkroom. Someone wants to publish my song and I—’

‘Driver’s license?’

I showed him my license. He put it in his pocket. ‘Okay. Follow me.’

I was staring at him. ‘Follow you where? Just give me a ticket. I’m in a big—’

‘There’s a new procedure,’ he said. ‘We’re not giving out tickets anymore. We’re taking offenders right to the station.’

My heart sank. ‘Officer, I have to go to this meeting. If you could just give me a ticket, I’d be glad to—’

‘I said follow me.’

I had no choice.

He started up his motorcycle and took off ahead of me. I followed him. Instead of meeting my new publisher, I was on my way to a police station.

I reached the next corner just as the light changed from amber to red. He went through it. I stopped, waiting for it to turn green again. When I started to go, the motorcycle policeman was nowhere in sight. I went slowly to make sure that he didn’t think I was trying to lose him. The farther I got, the more optimistic I became. He was gone. He had forgotten about me. He was looking for someone else to send to jail. I began to speed up again and headed for the Bismarck.

I parked the car in the garage and hurried to the checkroom. I could not believe what I saw. The policeman was inside, waiting for me, and he was furious. ‘You thought you could get away from me, huh?’

I was bewildered. ‘I wasn’t trying to get away from you. I gave you my driver’s license and I told you I was coming here, and—’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re here. Now we’re going to the station.’

I was desperate. ‘Let me call my father.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve wasted enough—’

‘It will only take a second.’

‘Go ahead. But make it brief.’

I dialed my home number.

Otto answered. ‘Hello.’

‘Otto—’

‘How did it go?’

‘I’m on my way to the police station.’ I explained the situation to him.

Otto said, ‘Let me talk to the officer.’

I held the phone out to the policeman. ‘My father wants to talk to you.’

He reluctantly took the phone. ‘Yes…No, I haven’t time to listen. I’m taking your son to the station…What?…Oh, really?…That’s interesting. I know what you mean…As a matter of fact, I do…I have a brother-in-law who needs a job…Really? Let me write that down.’ He took out a pen and a pad and began to write. ‘That’s very nice of you, Mr. Sheldon. I’ll send him around in the morning.’ He glanced at me. ‘And don’t worry about your son.’

I was listening to this conversation, openmouthed. The officer replaced the receiver, handed me my driver’s license and said, ‘Don’t let me catch you speeding again.’

I watched him leave.

I said to the hatcheck girl, ‘Where’s Phil Levant?’

‘He’s conducting the orchestra,’ she said, ‘but someone is waiting to see you in the manager’s office.’

In the manager’s office I found a dapper, well-dressed man who appeared to be in his fifties.

As I walked in, he said, ‘So, this is the Boy Wonder. My name is Brent. I’m with TB Harms.’

TB Harms was one of the biggest music publishers in the world. ‘They heard your song in New York,’ he told me, ‘and they’d like to publish it.’

My heart was singing.

He hesitated. ‘There’s just one problem.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They don’t think Phil Levant is a big enough name to introduce your song. They’d like someone more important to give it a real send-off.’

My heart sank. I did not know anyone more important.

‘Horace Heidt is playing at the Drake Hotel,’ Brent said. ‘Maybe you could go talk to him and show him your song.’ Horace Heidt was one of the most popular bandleaders in the country.

‘Sure.’

He handed me his card. ‘Have him give me a call.’

‘I will,’ I promised.

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Horace Heidt would still be playing. I got into Otto’s car and drove very slowly to the Drake Hotel. When I arrived, I made my way to the ballroom where Horace Heidt was conducting his orchestra.

As I walked in, the maître d’ asked, ‘Do you have a reservation?’

‘No. I’m here to see Mr. Heidt.’

‘You can wait there.’ He pointed to an empty table against a back wall.

I waited fifteen minutes, and when Horace Heidt stepped off the bandstand, I intercepted him. ‘Mr. Heidt, my name is Sidney Sheldon. I have a song here that—’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time to—’

‘But Harms wants to—’

He started to walk away.

‘Harms wants to publish it,’ I called after him, ‘but they want someone like you behind it.’

He stopped and walked back to me. ‘Let me see it.’

I handed him the sheet music.

He studied it as if he was hearing it in his mind. ‘That’s a nice song.’

‘Would you be interested?’ I asked.

He looked up. ‘Yes. I’ll want fifty percent of it.’

I would have given him a hundred percent. ‘Great!’ I handed him the card that Brent had given me.

‘I’ll have an orchestration made. Come back and see me tomorrow.’

The following night, when I returned to the Drake Hotel, I heard my song being played by Horace Heidt and his orchestra, and it sounded even better than Phil Levant’s arrangement. I sat down and waited until Horace Heidt was free. He came over to the table where I was seated.

‘Did you talk to Mr. Brent?’ I asked.

‘Yes. We’re making a deal.’

I smiled. My first song was going to be published.

The next evening, Brent came to see me at the Bismarck checkroom.

‘Is everything set?’ I asked.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘But—’

‘Heidt is asking for a five-thousand-dollar advance, and we never give that much on a new song.’

I was stunned. When I finished work, I drove back to the Drake Hotel to see Horace Heidt again.

‘Mr. Heidt, I don’t care about the advance,’ I told him. ‘I just want to get my first song published.’

‘We’re going to get it published,’ he assured me. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m going to publish it myself. I’m leaving for New York next week. The song will get a lot of airtime.’

Besides his nightly broadcast, Horace Heidt hosted a popular weekly show called Horace Heidt and his Alemite Brigadiers.

‘My Silent Self’ would be broadcast from New York, and be heard often all over the country.

During the next few weeks I managed to listen to Horace’s broadcasts, and he was right. ‘My Silent Self’ did get a lot of airtime, both on his nightly broadcasts and on the Alemite program. He used my song, but he never had it published.

I was not discouraged. If I could write one song that a major publisher wanted, I could write a dozen. And that is exactly what I did. I spent all my spare time at the piano, composing songs. I felt that twelve songs would be a good number to mail to New York. I could not afford to go to New York in person because I needed to keep my jobs, to help the family.

Natalie would listen to my songs and be beside herself with excitement.

‘Darling, they’re better than Irving Berlin’s. Much better. When are you going to take them to New York?’

I shook my head. ‘Natalie, I can’t go to New York. I have three jobs here. If I—’

‘You have to go,’ she said firmly. ‘They’re not even going to listen to songs that come in the mail. You have to go, personally.’

‘We can’t afford it,’ I said. ‘If—’

‘Darling, this is your big chance. You can’t afford not to take it.’

I had no idea that she was living vicariously through me.

We had a family discussion that night. Otto finally reluctantly agreed that I should go to New York. I would get a job there until my songs started selling.

We decided I would leave the following Saturday.

Natalie’s parting gift was a ticket to New York on a Greyhound bus.

As Richard and I lay in our beds that night, he said to me, ‘Are you really going to be as big a songwriter as Irving Berlin?’

And I told him the truth. ‘Yes.’

With all the money that would be pouring in, Natalie would never have to work again.




SEVEN (#ulink_a7e185d8-407c-50cb-a4fb-2d0ca683c9c0)


I had never been inside a bus depot before my trip to New York in 1936. The Greyhound bus station had an air of excitement, with people going to and coming from cities all over the country. My bus seemed huge, with a washroom and comfortable seats. It was a four and a half day trip to New York. The long ride would have been tedious, but I was too busy dreaming about my fantastic future to mind.

When we pulled into the bus station in New York, I had thirty dollars in my pocket—money that I was sure Natalie and Otto could not spare.

I had telephoned ahead to the YMCA to reserve a room. It turned out to be small and drab, but it was only four dollars a week. Even so, I knew that the thirty dollars was not going to last very long.

I asked to see the manager of the YMCA.

‘I need a job,’ I told him, ‘and I need it right away. Do you know anyone who—?’

‘We have an employment service for our guests,’ he informed me.

‘Great. Is there anything available now?’

He reached for a sheet of paper behind the desk and scanned it. ‘There’s an opening for an usher at the RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street. Are you interested?’

Interested? At that moment my sole ambition in life was to be an usher at the RKO Jefferson on Fourteenth Street. ‘That’s just what I was looking for!’ I told him.

The manager wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘Take this to the theater in the morning.’

I had been in New York for less than one day and I already had a job. I phoned Natalie and Otto to tell them the news.

‘That’s a good omen,’ Natalie said. ‘You’re going to be a big success.’

I spent the first afternoon and evening exploring New York. It was a magical place, a bustling city that made Chicago seem provincial and drab. Everything was larger—the buildings, the marquees, the streets, the signs, the traffic, the crowds. My career.

The RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street, once a vaudeville house, was an old, two-story structure with a cashier’s booth in front. It was part of a chain of RKO theaters. Double features were common—patrons could see two movies back to back, for the price of one.

I walked thirty-nine blocks from the YMCA to the theater and handed the note I had been given to the theater manager.

He looked me over and said, ‘Have you ever ushered before?’

‘No, sir.’

He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you walk?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you know how to turn on a flashlight?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then you can usher. Your salary is $14.40 a week. You’ll work six days. Your hours are from four-twenty to midnight.’

‘That’s fine.’ It meant that I was free to have the whole morning and part of the afternoon to spend at the Brill Building, where the headquarters of the music business was.

‘Go into the staff changing room and see if you can find a uniform that fits you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I tried on an usher’s uniform and the manager looked at me and said, ‘That’s fine. Be sure to keep an eye on the balcony.’

‘The balcony?’

‘You’ll see. You’ll start tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’ And tomorrow I will begin my career as a songwriter.

The famous Brill Building was the holy of holies in the music business. Located at 1619 Broadway, at Forty-ninth Street, it was the center of Tin Pan Alley, where every important music publisher in the world was headquartered.

As I entered the building and wandered through the corridors, I heard the strains of ‘A Fine Romance,’ ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin,’ ‘Pennies from Heaven’…The names on the doors made my heart pound: Jerome Remick, Robbins Music Corporation, M. Witmark & Sons, Shapiro Bernstein & Company, and TB Harms—all the giants of the music industry. This was the fountainhead of musical talent. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern…They had all started here.

I walked into the TB Harms office and nodded to the man behind the desk. ‘Good morning. I’m Sidney Schech—Sheldon.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I wrote ‘‘My Silent Self.’’ You people were interested in publishing it.’

A look of recognition came over his face. ‘Oh, yes, we were.’

Were? ‘Aren’t you still?’

‘Well, it’s been on the air too much. Horace Heidt has been playing it a lot. Do you have anything new?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I can come back with some songs tomorrow morning, Mister…?’

‘Tasker.’

At four-twenty that afternoon I was in my usher’s uniform, escorting people down the aisle to their seats. The manager had been right. This was a job that anyone could do. The only thing that kept it from being boring was the movies that were playing. When things were slow, I could sit at the back of the theater and watch them.

The first double bill I saw there was A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The coming attractions were A Star is Born, with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and Dodsworth with Walter Huston.

At midnight, when my shift was over, I went back to my hotel. The room no longer looked small and dreary. I knew it was going to turn into a palace. In the morning I would take my songs to TB Harms, and the only question was which ones they would publish first—‘The Ghost of My Love,’ ‘I Will If I Want To,’ ‘A Handful of Stars,’ ‘When Love Has Gone’…

At eight-thirty the following morning I was standing in front of the TB Harms Publishing Company, waiting for the doors to open. At nine o’clock Mr. Tasker arrived.

He saw the large envelope in my hand. ‘I see you brought some songs.’

I grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’

We walked into his office. I handed the envelope to him and started to sit down.

He stopped me. ‘You don’t have to wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll look these over when I get a chance. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?’

I gave him my best professional songwriter’s nod. ‘Right.’ I would have to wait another twenty-four hours for my future to begin.

At four-twenty I was back in my uniform at the RKO Jefferson. The manager had been right about the balcony. There was a lot of giggling going on up there. A young man and woman were seated in the last row. As I started toward them he moved away from her and she hastily pulled down her short dress. I walked away and did not go upstairs again. To hell with the manager. Let them have their fun.

The following morning I was at the Harms office at eight o’clock, in case Mr. Tasker came in early. He arrived at nine and opened the door.

‘Good morning, Sheldon.’

I tried to judge from his tone whether he had liked my songs. Was it just a casual ‘good morning’ or did I detect a note of excitement in his voice?

We stepped inside the office.

‘Did you have a chance to listen to my songs, Mr. Tasker?’

He nodded. ‘They’re very nice.’

My face lit up. I waited to hear what else he was going to say. He was silent.

‘Which one did you like best?’ I prodded.

‘Unfortunately they’re not what we’re looking for just now.’

That was the most depressing sentence I had ever heard in my life.

‘But surely some of them—’ I began.

He reached behind his desk, took out my envelope and handed it to me. ‘I’ll always be glad to listen when you’ve got something new.’

And that was the end of the interview. But it’s not an end, I thought. It’s just the beginning.

I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon going around to the offices of the other publishers in the building.

‘Have you ever had a song published?’

‘No, sir, but I—’

‘We don’t take on new songwriters. Come back when you’ve had something published.’

How was I going to get a song published if publishers wouldn’t publish any of my songs until I had a song published? In the weeks that followed, when I was not at the theater I spent my time in my room, writing.

At the theater, I loved watching the wonderful movies we showed there. I saw The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, My Man Godfrey, and Shall We Dance? with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They transported me to another world, a world of glamour and excitement, elegance and wealth.

My money was running out. I received a check from Natalie for twenty dollars and I sent it back. I knew that without the additional income I had been earning, and Otto not working, life would be even more difficult for them. I wondered whether I was being selfish in thinking of myself when they needed help.

When my new batch of songs was ready, I took them to the same publishers. They looked at them, and gave me the same infuriating answer: ‘Come back when you’ve had something published.’

In one lobby, a wave of depression hit me. Everything seemed hopeless. I did not intend to spend my life as an usher, and no one was interested in my songs.

This is an excerpt from a letter to my parents, dated November 2, 1936:

I want all of you to be as happy as possible. My happiness is an elusive balloon, waiting for me to grab it, floating from side to side with the wind, across oceans, big green meadows, trees and brooks, rustic pastoral scenes and rain-swept sidewalks. First high, barely visible, far out of reach, then low, almost within reach, blown here and there by the vagaries of a playful wind, a wind one moment heartless and sadistic, the next gently compassionate. The wind of fate, and in it rests our lives.

One morning, in the lobby of the YMCA, I saw a young man about my age sitting on a couch, furiously writing. He was humming a melody, and seemed to be writing a lyric. I walked up to him, curious.

‘Are you a songwriter?’ I asked.

He looked up. ‘Yes.’

‘So am I. Sidney Sheldon.’

He held out a hand. ‘Sidney Rosenthal.’

That was the beginning of a long friendship. We spent the whole morning talking and it was as though we were soul mates.

When I went to work the following day, the theater manager called me into his office. ‘Our barker is sick. I want you to get into his uniform and take his place until he gets back. You’ll work days. All you have to do is walk up and down in front of the theater and say, ‘‘Immediate seating. No waiting for seats.’’ The job pays more.’

I was thrilled—not because of the promotion, but because of the raise. I would send the extra money home.

‘How much does it pay?’

‘Fifteen-forty a week.’

A dollar a week raise.

When I put on the uniform, I looked like a general in the Russian army. I had nothing against my job as a barker, but could not stand the boredom of saying, ‘Immediate seating—no waiting for seats,’ over and over and over. I decided to dramatize it.

I began to yell, in a stentorian voice, ‘An exciting double feature—The Texas Rangers and The Man Who Lived Twice. How does a man live twice, ladies and gentlemen? Come in and find out. You’ll have an afternoon you will never forget. Absolutely no waiting for seats. Hurry, before we’re sold out!’

The real barker never did show up and I kept the job. The only difference from before was that I now worked mornings and early afternoons. I still had time to go see all the music publishers who were uninterested in my songs. Sidney Rosenthal and I wrote a few songs together. They received a lot of praise and no contracts.

At the end of the week I would usually find myself with only ten cents in my pocket. I had to get from the theater to the Brill Building, and I had to decide whether to have a hot dog for five cents and a Coca-Cola for five cents and walk the thirty-five blocks, or have a hot dog, no Coke, and take the subway uptown for a nickel. I got used to alternating the routine.

A few days after I started working as a barker, business at the theater began to pick up.

I was out in front of the theater, yelling, ‘You won’t want to miss Conquest, with Greta Garbo and Charles Boyer. And there’s another treat for you—Nothing Sacred, with Carole Lombard and Fredric March. These are the world’s greatest lovers, who will teach you how to be great lovers. And admission is only thirty-five cents. Two lessons in love for thirty-five cents. It’s the bargain of the century. Hurry, hurry, hurry, get your tickets now!’

And the customers came.

With the next films, I had even more fun. ‘Come and see the most fantastic double bill in the history of show business—Night Must Fall, with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell. Keep your overcoats on because you’re going to get cold chills. And with it, as an extra treat, is the new Tarzan picture,’ at which point I gave a loud Tarzan yell, and I watched people from a block away turning around to see what was happening, and coming back toward the theater and buying tickets. The manager was standing outside, watching me.

At the end of the following week, a stranger walked up to me.

‘Where is the son of a bitch from Chicago?’

I did not like his tone. ‘Why?’

‘The manager of the RKO Theater chain told all the barkers we all have to come and watch the bastard and do what he does.’

‘I’ll tell him when he comes back.’ I turned away and said, in a conversational voice, ‘Immediate seating inside. No waiting for seats. Immediate seating inside. No waiting for seats.’

The advantage of working days was that while I still had time to see the music publishers, my evenings were free, and at least three times a week I went to the theater to see plays, sitting in the cheapest balcony seats. I saw Room Service, Abie’s Irish Rose, Tobacco Road, You Can’t Take It With You…The variety was endless.

Sidney Rosenthal, my new friend, had found a job, and one day he suggested, ‘Why don’t we pool our money and get out of this place?’

‘Great idea.’

One week later we left the YMCA and moved into the Grand Union Hotel on Thirty-second Street. We had two bedrooms and a living room, and after the little room at the YMCA it seemed like the height of luxury.

In a letter Natalie reminded me that we had a distant cousin living in New York who had a checkroom concession at the Glen Cove Casino, on Long Island. She suggested that I give him a call. His name was Clifford Wolfe. I called him and he could not have been more cordial.

‘I heard you were in New York somewhere. What are you doing?’

I told him.

‘How would you like to work in the checkroom for me, three nights a week?’

‘I’d love it,’ I said. ‘And I have a buddy who—’

‘I can use him, too.’

And so three nights a week Sidney Rosenthal and I went out to Long Island to the Glen Cove Casino and earned three dollars apiece checking hats and coats. We also scrounged as much food as we could from the buffet table.

A car carrying other employees of the casino picked us up and took us to Long Island, an hour and a half away. At the end of the evening, when we were through working, we were taken back to our hotel. The extra money I made I sent to Natalie. She invariably sent it back.

One evening, as I walked into the checkroom, Clifford Wolfe stared at me, frowning. ‘That suit you’re wearing…’ It was torn and shabby.

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t you have anything nicer?’

I shook my head, embarrassed. My wardrobe would have fit into a briefcase. ‘I’m afraid not.’

‘We’ll take care of that,’ he said.

The next night, when I arrived at Glen Cove, Clifford Wolfe handed me a blue serge suit and said, ‘I want you to go to my tailor and have this fitted for you.’

From that time on, whenever I went to Glen Cove I wore Clifford Wolfe’s suit.

The inexplicable changes in my moods continued. I was either unreasonably elated or suicidal. In an excerpt from a letter to Natalie and Otto, dated December 26, 1936, I wrote:

At the moment I haven’t much heart for this fight. Whether I am going to stick it out, I don’t know. If I were more sure of my ability, it would be so much easier.

One month later, I wrote:

Well, as far as songs are concerned, it looks as if we might click. Chappell heard one of our new numbers, told us to rewrite the bridge and bring it back. They are quite particular and their liking our numbers is encouraging.

I had had two episodes of my disc tearing loose, and both times I had been in bed for three days. It was in the middle of a period of euphoria that my future opened wide. It was on one of my rounds in the Brill Building that I encountered a short, dapper man with a friendly smile. I had no idea then who he was. He happened to be in the Remick office when the manager was listening to one of my songs.

The manager shook his head. ‘That’s not what we’re looking—’

‘This could be a big hit,’ I implored him. ‘When love is gone, love is gone, the stars forget to glow, and we can hear much sadder songs than we were meant to know…’

The manager shrugged.

The stranger with the friendly smile was studying me. ‘Let me see that,’ he said.

I handed him the sheet of music and he scanned it.

‘That’s a damned good lyric,’ he commented. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sidney Sheldon.’

He held out a hand. ‘I’m Max Rich.’

I knew his name. He had two popular songs playing on the air at that moment. One was ‘Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!’ and the other was a novelty song, ‘The Girl in the Little Green Hat.’

‘Have you had anything published, Sidney?’

The same trick question. I was crestfallen. ‘No.’ I was looking at the door.

He smiled. ‘Let’s change that. How would you like to work with me?’

I was stunned. This was exactly the opportunity I had dreamed of.

‘I—I’d love it,’ I said. I could hardly get the words out.

‘I have an office here, on the second floor. Why don’t you meet me there tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, and we’ll go to work.’

‘Great!’

‘Bring all the lyrics you have.’

I swallowed. ‘I’ll be there, Mr. Rich.’ I was in a state of euphoria.

When I told Sidney Rosenthal what had happened, he said, ‘Congratulations, big time! Max Rich can get anything published.’

‘I can show him some of your songs, too,’ I offered, ‘and—’

‘Get yourself started first.’

‘Right.’

That night Sidney Rosenthal and I had a celebratory dinner, but I was too excited to eat. Everything I had longed for was about to come true. Songs by Max Rich and Sidney Sheldon. The names sounded good together.

I had a feeling that Max Rich was a wonderful man to work with and I knew that some of my lyrics were going to please him.

I started to call Natalie and Otto, but I thought, I’ll wait until I’ve started.

As I got into bed that night, I thought, Why would Max Rich want to write with me when he could write with anybody? I’m a nobody. He’s just being kind. He’s overestimated what little talent I have and he’s going to be disillusioned. I’m not good enough to work with him. Out of nowhere, the black cloud had descended. All the publishers in the Brill Building have turned me down, and they’re professionals. They know talent. I have none. I would just make a fool of myself with Max Rich.

At ten o’clock in the morning, while Max Rich was waiting to collaborate with me in his office at the Brill Building, I was on a Greyhound bus, headed back to Chicago.




EIGHT (#ulink_19028d5c-2bda-510d-8983-80f21e5ee36a)


I returned to Chicago in March of 1937, a failure. Otto, Natalie and Richard were sympathetic about my lack of success as a songwriter.

‘They don’t know great songs when they hear them,’ Natalie said.

The economic situation at home had not improved. I reluctantly went back to work at the Bismarck checkroom. I managed to get a job during the day parking cars at a restaurant on the north side, in Rogers Park. My irrational mood swings continued. I had no control over them. I became ecstatic for no reason and depressed when things were going well.

One evening Charley Fine, my Stewart Warner mentor, and his wife Vera came to the apartment for dinner. For economical reasons we served a cheap, take-out dinner I had picked up at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, but the Fines pretended not to notice.

During the evening, Vera said, ‘I’m driving to Sacramento, California next week.’

California. Hollywood. It was as though a door had suddenly opened for me. I thought of all the magical hours I had spent at the RKO Jefferson Theater, solving crimes with William Powell and Myrna Loy in After the Thin Man, riding with John Wayne in the covered wagon to California in The Oregon Trail, watching helplessly as Robert Montgomery terrorized Rosalind Russell in Night Must Fall, swinging through the trees with Tarzan in Tarzan Escapes, and having dinner with Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Judy Garland. I took a deep breath and said, ‘I’d like to drive you there.’

They all looked at me in surprise.

‘That’s very kind of you, Sidney,’ Vera Fine said, ‘but I don’t want to imp—’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ I said enthusiastically.

I turned to Natalie and Otto. ‘I’d like to take Vera to California.’

There was an uncomfortable silence.

We picked up the conversation after the Fines had left. ‘You can’t go away again,’ Otto said. ‘You just got back.’

‘But if I could get a job in Hollywood—’

‘No. We’ll find something for you to do here.’

I knew what there was for me to do in Chicago. Checkrooms and drugstores and parking cars. I had had enough of that.

After a brief silence, Natalie said, ‘Otto, if that’s what Sidney wants, we should give him a chance. I’ll tell you what. Let’s compromise.’ She turned to me. ‘If you don’t find a job in three weeks, you’ll come back home.’

‘It’s a deal,’ I said happily.

I was sure I could easily get a job in Hollywood. The more I thought about it, the more wildly optimistic I became.

This was finally going to be my big break.

Five days later I was packing, getting ready to drive Vera and her young daughter, Carmel, to Sacramento.

Richard was upset. ‘Why are you leaving again? You just got back.’

How could I explain to him all the wonderful things that were about to happen?

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but this is important. Don’t worry. I’m going to send for you.’

He was near tears. ‘Is that a promise?’

I put my arms around him. ‘That’s a promise. I’m going to miss you, buddy.’

It took five days to get to Sacramento, and when we arrived I said goodbye to Vera and Carmel, and spent the night in a cheap hotel. Early the following morning I took a bus to San Francisco, where I changed to another bus, to Los Angeles.

I arrived in Los Angeles with one suitcase and fifty dollars in my pocket. I bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times at the bus station and turned to the want ads to look for rooms to rent.

The one that instantly appealed to me was an ad for a boarding house that had rooms for four-fifty a week, breakfast included. It was in the Hollywood area, a few blocks from the famed Sunset Boulevard.

It turned out to be a charming, old-fashioned house in a lovely residential area on a quiet street, at 1928 Carmen Street.

When I rang the doorbell, the door was opened by a small, pleasant-faced woman who appeared to be in her forties.

‘Hello. Can I help you?’

‘Yes. My name is Sidney Sheldon. I’m looking for a place to stay for a few days.’

‘I’m Grace Seidel. Come in.’

I picked up my suitcase and walked into the hall. The house had obviously been converted from a sprawling family residence to a boarding house. There was a large living room, a dining room, a breakfast room, and a kitchen. There were twelve bedrooms, most of them occupied, and four communal bathrooms.

I said, ‘I understand that the rent is four-fifty a week, and that includes breakfast.’

Grace Seidel contemplated my rumpled suit and my worn shirt, and said, ‘If you press me, I could make it four dollars a week.’

I looked at her and desperately wanted to say, ‘I’ll pay the four-fifty.’ But the little money I had left was not going to last very long. I swallowed my pride and said, ‘I’m pressing.’

She gave me a warm smile. ‘That’s fine. I’ll show you to your room.’

The room was small but neat and attractively furnished, and I was very pleased with it.

I turned to Grace. ‘This is great,’ I said.

‘Good. I’ll give you a key to the front door. One of our rules is that you’re not allowed to bring any women in here.’

‘No problem,’ I said.

‘Let me introduce you to some of the other boarders.’

She took me into the living room where several of the boarders were gathered. I met four writers, a prop man, three actors, a director, and a singer. As time went on, I learned that they were all wannabes, unemployed, pursuing wonderful dreams that would never come true.

Gracie had a well-mannered twelve-year-old son, Billy. His dream was to become a fireman. It was probably the only dream in the boarding house that would come true.

I phoned Natalie and Otto to tell them that I had arrived safely.

‘Remember,’ Otto said, ‘if you don’t find a job in three weeks, we want you back here.’

No problem.

That night, Gracie’s boarders sat around the large living room, telling their war stories.

‘This is a tough business, Sheldon. Every studio has a gate and inside the gate the producers are screaming for talent. They’re yelling that they desperately need actors and directors and writers. But if you’re standing outside the gate, they won’t even let you in. The gates are closed to outsiders.’

Maybe, I thought. But every day someone manages to get through.

I learned that there was no Hollywood, as I had imagined it. Columbia Pictures, Paramount, and RKO were located in Hollywood, but Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Selznick International Studios were in Culver City. Universal Studios was in Universal City, Disney Studios was in Silverlake, Twentieth Century-Fox was in Century City, and Republic Studios was in Studio City.

Grace had thoughtfully subscribed to Variety, the show business trade paper, and it was left in the living room like a bible for all of us to look at, to see what jobs were available and which pictures were being produced. I picked it up and looked at the date. I had twenty-one days to find a job, and the clock was running. I knew that somehow I had to find a way to get through those studio gates.

The following morning, while we were having breakfast, the telephone rang. Answering the telephone was almost an Olympic event. Everyone raced to be the first to pick it up because—since none of us could afford any kind of social life—the phone call had to be about a job.

The actor who picked up the phone listened a moment, turned to Grace and said, ‘It’s for you.’

There were sighs of disappointment. Each boarder had hoped that it was a job for him. That phone was the lifeline to their futures.

I bought a tourist’s guide to Los Angeles, and since Columbia Pictures was the closest to Gracie’s boarding house I decided to start there. The studio was on Gower Street, just off Sunset. There was no gate in front of Columbia.

I walked in the front door. An elderly guard was seated behind a desk, working on a report. He looked up as I came in.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ I said confidently. ‘My name is Sidney Sheldon. I want to be a writer. Who do I see?’

He studied me a moment. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No, but—’

‘Then you don’t see anybody.’

‘There must be someone I—’

‘Not without an appointment,’ he said firmly. He went back to his report.

Apparently the studio did not need a gate.

I spent the next two weeks making the rounds of all the studios. Unlike New York, Los Angeles was widely spread out. It was not a city for walking. Streetcars ran down the center of Santa Monica Boulevard and buses were on all the main streets. I soon became familiar with their routes and schedules.

While every studio looked different, the guards were all the same. In fact, I began to feel that they were all the same man.

I want to be a writer.

Who do I see?

Do you have an appointment?

No.

You don’t see anybody.

Hollywood was a cabaret, and I was hungry. But I was outside looking in, and all the doors were locked.

I was running out of my short supply of funds, but worse than that, I was running out of time.

When I was not haunting the studios, I was in my room, working on stories on my old battered portable typewriter.

One day, Gracie made an unwelcome announcement. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but from now on there will be no more breakfasts.’

No one had to ask why. Most of us were behind in our rent and she could no longer afford to keep carrying us.

I woke up the next morning, starving and broke. I had no money for breakfast. I was trying to work on a story, but could not concentrate. I was too hungry. Finally, I gave up. I went into the kitchen. Gracie was there, cleaning the stove.

She saw me and turned around. ‘Yes, Sidney?’

I was stammering. ‘Gracie, I—I know the new rule about—about no breakfast, but I was wondering if—if I could just have a bite to eat this morning. I’m sure that in the next few days—’

She looked at me and said, sharply, ‘Why don’t you go back to your room?’

I felt crushed. I walked back to my room and sat in front of my typewriter, humiliated that I had embarrassed both of us. I tried to go back to the story, but it was no use. All I could think of was that I was hungry and broke and desperate.

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door. I walked over and opened it. Gracie stood there, holding a tray, and on it was a large glass of orange juice, a steaming pot of coffee, and a plate of bacon and eggs with toast. ‘Eat it while it’s hot,’ she said.

That may have been the best meal I ever had. Certainly the most memorable.

When I returned to the boarding house one afternoon, after another futile day making the rounds of the studios, there was a letter from Otto. In it was a bus ticket to Chicago. It was the most depressing piece of paper I had ever seen. His note read: We will expect you home next week. Love, Dad.

I had four days left and nowhere else to go. The gods must have been laughing.

That evening, as Gracie’s group and I sat around the living room, chatting, one of them said, ‘My sister just got a job as a reader at MGM.’

‘A reader? What does that mean?’ I asked.

‘All the studios have them,’ he explained. ‘They synopsize stories for producers, which saves them the trouble of reading a lot of trash. If the producer likes the synopsis, he’ll take a look at the full book or play. Some studios have staffs of readers. Some use outside readers.’

My mind was racing. I had just read Steinbeck’s masterpiece, Of Mice and Men, and—

Thirty minutes later I was skimming through the book and typing a synopsis of it.

By noon the next day I had made enough copies on a borrowed mimeograph machine to send to half a dozen studios. I figured that it would take a day or two to deliver them all and I should hear about the third day.

When the third day came, the only mail I received was from my brother, Richard, asking when I was going to send for him. The fourth day brought a letter from Natalie.

The next day was Thursday, and my bus ticket was for Sunday. One more dream had died. I told Gracie that I would be leaving Sunday morning. She looked at me with sad, wise eyes. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked.

I gave her a hug. ‘You’ve been wonderful. Things haven’t worked out as I hoped they would.’

‘Never stop dreaming,’ she told me.

But I had stopped.

Early the following morning, the telephone rang. One of the actors ran over to it and grabbed it. He picked up the receiver and in his best actor voice said, ‘Good morning. Can I help you?…Who?’

The tone of his voice changed. ‘David Selznick’s office?’

The room went completely silent. David Selznick was the most prestigious producer in Hollywood. He had produced A Star is Born, Dinner at Eight, A Tale of Two Cities, Viva Villa!, David Copperfield, and dozens of other movies.

The actor said, ‘Yes, he’s here.’

We were literally holding our breaths. Who was he?

He turned to me. ‘It’s for you, Sheldon.’

I may have broken the boarding house record, racing to the phone.

‘Hello?’

A woman’s high voice said, ‘Is this Sidney Sheldon?’

I sensed instantly that I was not speaking to David Selznick himself. ‘Yes.’

‘This is Anna, David Selznick’s secretary. Mr. Selznick has a novel that he wants synopsized. The problem is that none of our readers are available.’

Is available, I thought automatically. But who was I to correct someone who was about to launch my career?

‘And Mr. Selznick needs the synopsis by six o’clock this evening. It’s a four-hundred-page novel. Our synopses usually run about thirty pages with a two-page summary and a one-paragraph comment. But it must be delivered by six o’clock this evening. Can you do it?’

There was no possible way I could get to the Selznick Studios, read a 400-page novel, find a decent typewriter somewhere, write a thirty-page synopsis and get it done by six o’clock.

I said, ‘Of course I can.’

‘Good. You can pick up the book at our studio in Culver City.’

‘I’m on my way.’ I replaced the receiver. Selznick International Studios. I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty in the morning. Culver City was an hour and a half away. There were a few other problems. I had no transportation. I am a hunt and peck typist, and to have typed a thirty-page synopsis would have taken me forever, and forever did not even include time to read a 400-page novel. If I arrived at the Culver City studio at eleven, I would have exactly seven hours to perform a miracle.

But I had a plan.




NINE (#ulink_94a9b85b-7729-5900-8fa2-c72e4b6f5124)


It took a streetcar and two buses to get me to Culver City. On the second bus, I looked around at the passengers and wanted to tell them all that I was on my way to see David Selznick. The bus dropped me off two blocks from the Selznick International Studios.

The studio was a large, imposing, Georgian structure, fronting on Washington Street. It was familiar because I recognized it from the opening credits of David Selznick’s movies.

I hurried inside and said to the woman behind the desk, ‘I have an appointment with Mr. Selznick’s secretary.’ At least I was going to meet David Selznick now.

‘Your name?’

‘Sidney Sheldon.’

She reached into the desk and pulled out a thick package. ‘This is for you.’

‘Oh. I thought maybe I could see Mr. Selznick and—’

‘No. Mr. Selznick is a busy man.’

So I would meet David Selznick later.

Clutching the package, I left the building and started running down the street toward the MGM Studios, six blocks away, reviewing my plan as I ran. It stemmed from a conversation with Seymour about Sydney Singer, his ex-wife.

Do you ever see her, Seymour?

No. She went to Hollywood. She got a job as a secretary at MGM for a woman director. Dorothy Arzner.

I was going to ask Sydney Singer to help me. It was a long, long, long shot, but it was all I had.

When I reached the MGM Studios, I went up to the guard behind the desk in the lobby. ‘My name is Sidney Sheldon. I want to see Sydney Singer.’

‘Sydney…Oh—Dorothy Arzner’s secretary.’

I nodded knowingly. ‘Right.’

‘Is she expecting you?’

‘Yes,’ I said confidently.

He picked up the phone and dialed an extension. ‘Sidney Sheldon is here to see you…’ He repeated slowly, ‘Sidney Sheldon.’ He listened a moment. ‘But he said—’

I stood there, paralyzed. Say yes. Say yes. Say yes.

‘Right.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘She’ll see you. Room 230.’

My heart started beating again. ‘Thank you.’

‘Take the elevator, over there.’

I took the elevator and hurried down a corridor on the second floor. Sydney’s office was at the end of the corridor. When I walked in, she was seated behind her desk.

‘Hello, Sydney.’

‘Hello.’ There was no warmth in her voice. And I suddenly remembered the rest of the conversation with Seymour. She hates my guts. She said she never wants to see me again. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Would she ask me to sit down? No.

‘What are you doing here?’

Oh, I just dropped in to ask you to spend your afternoon as my unpaid secretary. ‘It’s—it’s a long story.’

She looked at her watch and rose. ‘I’m on my way to lunch.’

‘You can’t!’

She was staring at me. ‘I can’t go to lunch?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Sydney—I—I’m in trouble.’ I poured out the whole story, starting with the fiasco in New York, my ambition of becoming a writer, my inability to get past any of the studio guards, and the telephone call that morning from David Selznick.

She listened, and as I got to the end of the story, her lips tightened. ‘You took the Selznick assignment because you expected me to spend the afternoon typing for you?’

It was a bitter divorce. She hates my guts.

‘I—I didn’t expect it,’ I said. ‘I was just hoping that—’ It was hard to breathe. I had acted stupidly. ‘I’m sorry I bothered you, Sydney. I had no right to ask this of you.’

‘No, you didn’t. What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going to take this book back to Mr. Selznick. Tomorrow morning I’ll leave for Chicago. Thanks anyway, Sydney. I appreciate your listening to me. Goodbye.’ I started for the door, in despair.

‘Wait a minute.’

I turned.

‘This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?’

I nodded. I was too upset to speak.

‘Let’s open that package and take a look at it.’

It took a moment for her words to sink in. I said, ‘Sydney—’

‘Shut up. Let me see the book.’

‘You mean you might—’

‘What you’ve done is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. But I admire your determination.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘I’m going to help you.’

A feeling of relief flooded through me. I couldn’t stop grinning. I watched her riffle through the book.

‘It’s long,’ she said. ‘How do you expect to finish this synopsis by six o’clock?’

Good question.

She handed the book back to me. I glanced at the inside cover to get a quick idea of what it was about. It was a period romance, the kind of story that Selznick seemed to enjoy making.

‘How are we going to do this?’ Sydney asked.

‘I’m going to skim the pages,’ I explained, ‘and when I come to a story point, I’ll dictate it to you.’

She nodded. ‘Let’s see how it works.’

I took a chair opposite her and began turning pages. In the next fifteen minutes I had a fairly clear sense of the story. I began skimming through the book, dictating when I came to something that seemed pertinent to the plot. She typed as I talked.

To this day, I don’t know what made Sydney agree to help me. Was it because I had blundered into an impossible situation, or because I looked desperate? I will never know. But I know that she sat at her desk all that afternoon, typing the pages as I thumbed through the book.

The clock seemed to be racing. We were only halfway through the book when Sydney said, ‘It’s four o’clock.’

I started reading faster and talking faster.

By the time I finished dictating the thirty-page synopsis, the two-page summary, and the one-page comment, it was exactly ten minutes to six.

As Sydney handed me the last page, I said gratefully, ‘If there is anything I can ever do for you—’

She smiled. ‘A lunch will be fine.’

I kissed her on the cheek, stuffed the pages into the envelope with the book and raced out of the office. I ran all the way back to the Selznick International Studios, and arrived there at one minute to six.

I said to the same woman behind the desk, ‘My name is Sheldon. I want to see Mr. Selznick’s secretary.’

‘She’s been waiting for you,’ she said.

As I hurried down the corridor, I knew that this was just the beginning. I had read that Selznick had started as a reader at MGM, so we had something in common that we could chat about.

Selznick will put me on the staff. I’ll have an office here. Wait until Natalie and Otto hear that I’m working for him.

I reached his secretary’s office. When I walked in, she looked at her watch. ‘I was getting worried about you,’ she said.

‘No problem,’ I told her, nonchalantly. I handed her the package and watched her glance through the pages.

‘This is beautifully done.’ She handed me an envelope. ‘There’s ten dollars in there.’

‘Thank you. I’m ready to do the next synopsis whenever—’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘our regular reader will be back tomorrow. Mr. Selznick doesn’t usually use outside readers. As a matter of fact, you were called by mistake.’

I swallowed. ‘Mistake?’

‘Yes. You’re not on our regular list of readers.’

So I was never going to be a part of David Selznick’s team. We were not going to have a cozy chat about his days as a reader. This frantic day had been the beginning and the end. At that moment, I should have been deeply depressed. Oddly enough, I felt happy. Why? I had no idea.

When I reached Gracie’s, the boys were waiting for me.

‘Did you see Selznick?’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Are you going to work there?’

‘It’s been an interesting afternoon,’ I said. ‘Very interesting.’ And I went into my room and closed the door.

I saw the bus ticket on the table next to my bed. It was the symbol of failure. It meant going back to the checkrooms and the drugstore and parking cars and the life I thought I had escaped from. I had reached a dead end. I picked up the bus ticket and it was all I could do to keep from tearing it in half. How could I turn this failure into a success? There has to be a way. There has to be a way.

And then it came to me. I called home. Natalie answered the phone. ‘Hello, darling. We can’t wait to see you. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I have some good news. I just did a synopsis for David Selznick.’

‘Really? That’s wonderful! Was he nice?’

‘Yes. Couldn’t have been nicer. And this is only the beginning. The gates here have opened, Natalie. Everything is going to be great. I just need a few more days.’

She did not hesitate. ‘All right, darling. Let us know when you’re coming home.’

I’m not coming home.

The following morning I went to the bus station and cashed in the ticket Otto had sent me. I spent the rest of the day writing letters to the literary departments of all the major studios.

The letters read, in part:

At his personal request, I have just finished a synopsis of a novel for David O. Selznick, and I’m now free to do other synopses…

The telephone calls began coming in two days later. Twentieth Century-Fox called first, then Paramount. Fox needed a book synopsized and Paramount wanted me to synopsize a play. Each synopsis paid five or ten dollars, depending on the length.

Since each studio had its own staff of readers, the only time they called in outside readers was when they were overburdened. I could only do one novel a day. It took me that long to get to a studio to pick it up, return to Gracie’s boarding house, read the book, type a synopsis and take it back to the studio. I averaged two or three calls a week. I didn’t have Sydney in my life anymore.

To augment my meager income, I telephoned a man I had never met. Vera Fine had mentioned him on the drive to California. His name was Gordon Mitchell. He was head of the Technical Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

I called and mentioned Vera Fine’s name, and told him I was looking for a job. He was very cordial. ‘As a matter of fact, I have something here that you can do.’

I was thrilled. I would be working for the esteemed Academy.

The following day I met him in his office.

‘It’s perfect timing,’ he said. ‘You’ll be working evenings here, watching films in our projection room.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘What’s the job?’

‘Watching films in our projection room.’

I was staring at him. He went on to explain.

‘The Academy is testing different film preservatives. We’ve coated different sections of the film with different chemicals. Your job is to sit in the projection room and keep a record of the number of times each film is run.’ He added, apologetically, ‘I’m afraid it only pays a three dollars a day.’

‘I’ll take it.’

The first movie I saw over and over was The Man Who Lived Twice, and I was soon able to quote every line. I spent my evenings watching the same films and my days waiting for the telephone to ring.

On the fateful date of December 12, 1938, I received a call from Universal Studios. I had just done a few synopses for them.

‘Sidney Sheldon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you come in to the studio this morning?’

Another three dollars.

‘Yes.’

‘Go to Mr. Townsend’s office.’

Al Townsend was the story editor at Universal. When I arrived at the studio, I was ushered into his office.

‘I’ve read the synopses you’ve done for us. They’re very good.’

‘Thank you.’

‘We need a staff reader here. Would you like the job?’




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