What Makes Sammy Run? (27 page)

The police department had taken the
Megaphone’s
prediction of civil war at the membership meeting seriously. Twenty or thirty policemen had planted themselves ominously around the hall to preserve law and order, staring curiously at the five or six hundred writers filling the auditorium.

Just before the meeting opened Kit stopped at my seat on her way to the platform and said animatedly, “Well, Al, it looks as if it’s going to be run your way.”

Then she was up there, facing the microphone. She ran her hand back over her hair once firmly, the way she always did before she began to speak. She spoke with an emphasis and implication of surprise that caught the membership immediately.

“For the past four weeks, which we will always look back on fondly as the Days of the Terror …”—she waited for her laugh—”there has been mounting confusion on the question of Guild autonomy. To satisfy those critics of the Authors’ League amalgamation plan who honestly fear the loss of our independence, I propose that we vote tonight only on the
principle
of affiliation with the League, reserving the right to postpone official action on it until the membership is reassured that this does not mean the transference of Guild control from Hollywood to New York, Moscow, Mars or the dining room of the Algonquin.”

I thought of our talk that evening at Glick’s Lagoon. Now I knew what she meant by getting my way.

Lawrence Paine was recognized from the floor. Everyone leaned forward, expecting him to light the fuse that would set off the explosion. His gaunt, melancholy face was almost expressionless.

“I would like to second Miss Sargent’s motion,” he said and sat down.

Almost the entire audience rose spontaneously. The applause lasted several minutes. Dignified writers jumped up on their feet and whistled. They weren’t cheering Paine. They were cheering the miracle of unity and peace.

The next move was a great piece of showmanship. “It is very appropriate,” the President announced, “that the second motion we must vote on tonight will be made by a member who this morning turned down a major studio seven-year contract doubling his salary.”

Julian walked onto the platform. His reception was deafening. It’s a funny thing, I thought as I clapped with everybody else, we like to think of ourselves as the blasé, sophisticated people. And the first teaspoonful of emotion lays us right in the aisles.

He stood up there self-conscious and heroic and stiff with stage fright, a typewritten sheet of paper trembling in his hand.

“I move,” he stammered, “that this meeting approve the action of the Executive Board in ordering us not to sign contracts binding us and our material for more than two years from today and that this Article XII remain in effect until the Producers’ Committee opens negotiations with us for a minimum basic agreement.”

This motion was seconded by none other than that courageous champion of the underdog, Samuel Glick. Now I am ready to face my Maker, I thought. For five years I’ve been waiting for Sammy Glick to make one positive gesture in the direction of the Brotherhood of Man. Now I can die in peace.

It might have been a positive gesture, but it wasn’t exactly a modest gesture. That would have been too much. That would have been the regeneration stuff that has made so many pretty endings for the movies.

Sammy raised his hand importantly to halt the applause. “As the spokesman for our Committee,” he said, “I wish to add that at a conciliation meeting with your Board just before we came in tonight, all differences were ironed out and our Committee
pledged its support to the two motions on the floor. As loyal members of the Guild we are ready to carry out this pledge.”

The audience sounded like a rooting section just after its team scored the winning touchdown. Sammy stood there at the mike longer than he had to, taking the bows. Suddenly everybody was loving everybody else. The cops must have thought the world had really gone nuts. They are sent to prevent screen writers from butchering each other and the crazy bastards do nothing but get up and make love to each other.

Everything after that was passed by acclamation. Someone got up and urged that all the Guild officers be re-elected as a gesture of our support, and we all yelled Aye. Then Kit took the mike again to propose that Paine, Wilson, McCarter, Griffin and Glick be added to the Executive Board, to demonstrate the Guild’s concern for safeguarding the interests of the minority elements, and we all roared Aye again. The meeting was topped by an almost unanimous vote in favor of the two motions, and as much of the audience as possible adjourned to celebrate in the bar across the street.

We all piled into the gaudy little joint and turned an early May evening into a New Year’s Eve midnight, only this time we really had something to celebrate.

Sammy and Kit and I buried the hatchet in a bottle of Scotch.

“Hey, Kit, what did I tell ya?” I kept repeating myself, being very gay and probably very boring. “This way everybody’s happy. Isn’t this just what I said oughta happen?”

Or I’d pound Sammy’s sturdy little chest and tell him, “Sammy Glick, you of bastard, you know me. Don’t I always tell you just what I think of you? Well, when you were shoveling it at the studio this morning, I says to myself: There goes the biggest sonofabitch in the whole goddam world. It’s like the movie ads. Know what I mean, Sammy? See Sammy Glick in Ima Sonofabitch. Even bigger than last week, bigger ’n when he played Al Manheim for a sucker in the
Record
office, bigger every minute. But tonight! Tonight you really fooled me, Sammy. You finally came through and I’m proud of you. Hey, bartender, hit us all
again and put your goddam money away, Kit, this one is on me.”

And Sammy, drinking and kidding but never abandoned, “Well, Al, I’m really tickled to death. I think you and Kit had me pegged wrong about being against the Guild, but now that it’s patched up I know our outfit’s going to go places and I’m all for it.”

My God, I thought, it almost sounds as if Sammy were actually going to stop running. Maybe he’s decided he’s gone as far as he needs and now he can cut off the motor and stop running people down. That thought made me very happy. It’s wonderful what a few drinks of Scotch will do on an empty brain.

The following day was Saturday and, after we knocked off at noon, Sammy took us to the swank tennis club he was very proud of joining. I couldn’t see where Sammy had had time enough to attend to his private needs properly, much less learn tennis, but he had. We started volleying, and I thought this is one place where Sammy eats humble pie, but he started right off hitting them back one after another without much style but with plenty of confidence.

“When the hell did you learn this?” I yelled across the net.

“I just started taking lessons two weeks ago,” he said. “From the best teacher in the country. Five dollars an hour. You ought to try him, Al.”

“I don’t have to,” I said. “I’ve been playing tennis since I was a kid.”

As a matter of fact, I looked very lousy. My eye was off and I was wild as hell.

“I’ll play you for dough,” he said, “and beat you.”

I’ve always thought tennis is a better indication of character than handwriting or any of those other things they use. For instance, I liked to just get out there and slug the ball until I worked up a good sweat knocking most of the balls outside without paying too much attention to the score. Of the three of us Kit was the closest to a tennis player. She served her second serve just
as hard as her first, chasing after her ball to the net and holding her ground with a good sense of volley and a stiff net game. Sammy was always reminding you of the score, especially if he were ahead. He played a smart, cautious game, getting everything back, making his awkward puny shots count by mixing up maddening lobs with shrewd little drop shots.

We played a couple of sets of doubles with one of the good club kids, whom Sammy promptly chose as his partner, and then Kit beat Sammy 6–3 and then Sammy turned around and beat me 10-8, in spite of the fact that I looked three or four times as good as he did and had him set point half a dozen times. I really think the margin between us was that he objected to losing more than I did. He had to win the little things just as much as the big ones; and the more I thought of it, the more incredible it seemed that he had backed down on his Guild position the way he had the night before.

A few nights later I was sitting in bed reading when there was a knock on the door. I grabbed for my robe, surprised that anyone would be knocking, more surprised to find Kit.

“Well,” she said, “now I’ve seen everything! Got a drink?”

She followed me into the kitchenette while I poured one for each of us.

“I’m afraid we congratulated ourselves a little too soon,” she said. “Tonight Sammy and his playmates came to their first Board meeting. And it turned out to be their last.”

I could feel it coming. I could feel him running again.

“Well, they walked out on us,” she said. “Just got up and calmly announced they were resigning and walked out. Just told us what we could do with our pledges and took a powder.”

She was still too overwhelmed to be really sore. It was the first time I had ever seen her really ruffled.

“My God! All of them?”

“All except Bob Griffin. He was absolutely furious. He said, ‘Boys and girls, everything in Hollywood always seems to run to
the super-colossal. I only regret that the Committee of which I have been an active member had to give you the most super-colossal double-cross I ever saw.’ And he promised that he was going to stick with us to follow through the compromise program that the so-called Sanity Committee had pledged itself to. He was really magnificent. I had a hunch about him. You may not always agree with him but at least his convictions are never for sale. He ended up by saying, ‘They say keeping pledges is a Rover-Boyish sentiment. I guess I’ll just never grow up.’ ”

“Do you think Sammy and his pals were bought out?”

“I don’t know,” Kit said. “I’m too mixed up to think anything tonight. But I felt Griffin thinks so.”

“What’s the pay-off going to be?” I said.

She shook her head back and forth several times wearily. “Oh, hell, I don’t know, Al. I guess it’ll be interesting to see. If we live through it.”

We didn’t have to wait very long. The next morning there were rumors flying around about the number of Guild members who had already sent in resignations. First I heard ten and then I heard a hundred. Writers gave each other funny looks as they passed the stories around.
What do you think, pals?
they were asking each other silently,
think we’re licked, think it’s getting time to quit?
It was funny, that hot-and-cold business, the same pressure that made them so tough the day of the meeting was beginning to break them down now. Even though Sammy, Paine, Wilson and McCarter couldn’t have had more than forty or fifty followers, their unexpected run-out had sprung a leak in the hull for fear to rush in.

And before the leak could be repaired it was torn wide open with another broadside.

Dan Young called us all into the projection room again. His big red face was wrinkled in a triumphant grin.