What Makes Sammy Run? (44 page)

See you in the Brown Derby, Sammy was saying.

Then I got nostalgic. I was always a soft guy, and I said:

Sure, kid, and remember, don’t say ain’t.

That was too much for Sammy. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like to be reminded. There are two kinds of big shots: those who tell as many people as they can that they started out as newsboys at two dollars and peanuts a week, and those who take every step as if it were the only level they knew, those who drive ahead in high speed and never bother to look back to see where they’ve been. I began to have a strong hunch that Sammy fell roughly into the latter category, only more so.

I watched Sammy walk out of the office that day, and then I stood at the window and watched him as he appeared on the street
below and jumped into a taxi. I sound like a sucker, but I felt just a little sorry for Sammy Glick. I felt the way I did on the commencement platform, the last day of college, watching the guys; thinking, You poor uneducated guinea pigs, you’re smug, you’ve got no springs, and you’re going to take some awful bumps. And it’s not your fault; they’ve poured you into a mold, like Jell-O.
They
is the villain, but don’t get me wrong.

I never said Sammy Glick wasn’t arrogant, deceitful, four-flushing, crude, cruel—well, I could go on like this all day. But that’s what Sammy learned. He learned it on the sidewalks in the Bronx and he learned it well. He knows where he’s going, and he’s running fast. And when you know that, when you know what makes Sammy run, you know something.

A couple of months passed, and then I got
my
break. I don’t know yet how it happened; you can bet dollars to supervisors I didn’t get it by stealing any stories from Eugene Spitzer. One of the Warner brothers must have got the idea to round up all the drama columnists in New York, and when they pulled in the net, there I was, floundering with the rest.

The day after the news broke that I had “surrendered to Hollywood”—it certainly wasn’t a battle—a girl’s voice came trembling over the telephone to me.

You probably don’t remember me, she said. This is Miss Goldbaum—Rosalie Goldbaum.

Her voice sounded funny to me. It was shrill but dead, like a high note on a cheap piccolo.

I told her I was glad to hear from her again, which was a lie.

I’ve got to see you, she said.

Oh, hell! I thought. Meet me at the Tavern at seven, I said.

I got there fifteen minutes late, and she was sitting in a booth. I noticed that her shoulder blades stuck out. Her eyes were red. When I took her hand and said, Gladtoseeyou, it was rubbery and soft, like a half-blown balloon. She said, Oh, it was so good of you to come.

There was something too intimate and uncomfortable between us.

You’re looking swell, I said.

I read you were going to Hollywood, she told me. You’ll see Sammy Glick.

Somehow I sensed I shouldn’t wisecrack about that. I can, I said guardedly.

Will you—Mr. Manners, would you see him for me?

Sure, I said. When I run into him I’ll say hello for you.

I knew it was more than that. I wanted to find out.

It’s not that, she said. You could find out why he never writes, she said. Never, not once, not a single letter, and she kept mumbling it as if trying to make herself believe it was true.

Sure, I said, I can ask him; but after all, it’s new to him out there, and, getting adjusted and all, it’s hard to write.

Can you imagine me, defending the slob? It didn’t sound convincing.

You don’t understand, she said. He promised to send for me the second week he was out there. I got rid of everything I couldn’t take along. I was all set. He told me not to worry; he’d send for me in a couple of weeks. He told me the only reason we couldn’t go together was he didn’t have the train fare. Said he’d send me his second week’s salary. Now I don’t know what to do.

Skunk, I said.

Tell him I don’t understand, she said. Ask him why. Ask him why.

She was crying. The waiter was standing over us impatiently. It was embarrassing.

Do you want yours with onions? I asked.

She wiped her eyes with her napkin. Her mascara was running.

Before I left, I slipped her twenty-five bucks. Just to salve my conscience for knowing a slime like Sammy Glick. She put it into her purse as quickly as possible, as if her hand was trying to put something over on the rest of her.

Give me your address in Hollywood so I can pay it back, she said.

Write me care of Warner’s, and tell me if you hear from him, I said.

I looked after her as she turned down to Broadway and the crowd sucked her in like an undertow. And I stood, thinking what New York and Sammy Glick had done to Miss Goldbaum, this little female toothpick of humanity, thin and straight and strong for its size, but easy to break for a grown-up man, or a grown-up city.

All the way out to Hollywood, Miss Goldbaum kept running through my mind, and when I got out there, the first thing I did was go over to Colossal and look up Sammy.

His secretary had a bigger office than our city room. She said Mr. Glick was in a story conference.

I waited an hour and fifteen minutes. I was all steamed up about this thing. Finally Mr. Glick made his appearance. He didn’t wear a tie. Instead he wore a big yellow scarf, with a big yellow handkerchief to match. If you put his suit on a table you could have played checkers on it. He was no longer the thin, pale, eager little kid that used to say, Thank you, Mr. Manners. He had one of those California tans, and he was beginning to bulge at the waist. But he hadn’t stopped running.

Well, Al, he said, so they finally pulled you into the racket. I didn’t think you were smart enough.

We sat down in his office. His desk looked as long as the runway in a burlesque theater. He swung his feet on to it. I noticed he was wearing camel’s-hair socks.

How’s the gang? he asked. Still selling their souls for twenty kopecks?

They all send regards, Sammy, I said.

Great old bunch, he said meaninglessly; but once you get the Indian sign on the producers out here the dough comes rolling in so fast you use it for wallpaper.

Miss Goldbaum was asking for you too, I said. Sammy stopped running for a moment. He looked at me and I knew he was
wondering how much I knew. Even through that sunburn he paled.

How is she, Al? he asked.

Swell, I said, just swell. High and dry.

I couldn’t help it, he said.

He was frightened. And it’s a funny thing, the poor guy meant it. He had to come out here. He had to move along. There was something in him that wouldn’t be checked, something that had to run loose. And sometimes it was so strong it ran way out ahead of him. That’s what Miss Goldbaum got for loving a guy like that. I guess it can happen to anyone up in the Bronx, and the Bronx is just like any place else these days, only faster and harder.

Al, he said, I’ll write her. I’ll tell her it just isn’t the place for her: I’ll send her a thousand bucks. Damn it, you know how those promises are; it could’ve happened to anybody.

Give her a break, Sammy, I said. And then, for no reason at all, I said, Give everybody a break.

Sure, he said, sure. What are you working on over at Warner’s?

I don’t know, I said. But I’ve got a hunch it’s the ninth episode of the Mr. Wu series.

Don’t be a sucker, Sammy said. Turn down the first three stories they give you. They’ll think more of you.

I guess I’ll be seeing you around, I said, getting up.

I sold five stories last month, said Sammy, under a different name, because I’m under contract over here.

He made no bones about it. He was glorifying the American rat. He put his arm around my neck affectionately as he walked me to the door.

Here’s a hot one Lubitsch told me, he said.

I heard that three weeks ago in “21,” I told him when he finished.

Just one more tip, he said. If you want to get into the real dough out here, write something on the outside. Write a play. Like me. When I get it produced it will be twenty-five hundred a week and my terms.

I’ll do it tonight when I get home, I said.

Eight weeks later, when I was still waiting for an assignment, I get a little printed notice in the mail: Mr. Samuel Glick requests the pleasure of my company at the opening of his play,
Live Wire
, at the Hollywood Playhouse.

Sammy’s car picked me up that night and brought me to his apartment. He was having a cocktail with Public Beauty Number One. Sixty million people would hock their lives to shake this girl’s paw, and here was Sammy gurgling champagne with her.

Well, the play was really pretty good. The scene was a radio station and there was plenty of excitement and fireworks. All the time I keep thinking this seems awfully familiar. And then I think maybe I just dreamed it, like people do sometimes.

One or two people yell, Author, author! and Sammy takes a bow, and someone sets a basket of roses on the stage, and all of a sudden it is a big success and I am sitting next to a hit author, and everyone is stepping over me to shake his hand, and he is modestly denying that he must have worked very hard on it, saying it just came easy, three or four nights’ work, and then every one is amazed, and someone says a new genius has come to Hollywood, and Sammy says, Oh, I wouldn’t say that exactly.

Going out the lobby, Sammy said he was thirsty, and I said come up to my place and have a drink; but Sammy said, How about the Brown Derby? because he wanted to see more people.

And the Beauty said, The Vine or the Beverly Hills? I guess she would have liked to go to both.

So we got to one or the other, and it took Sammy ten minutes to get to a table, so many people flocked around him and his favorite star, and all the time I’m trying to think where I saw this play before.

Finally, when the Beauty said, Excuse me, I have to comb my hair, and went out to the ladies’ room—even movie idols do—Sammy said, Well, Al, you haven’t told me what you think about the play.

I think it’s just like something else I’ve seen, I said.

You’re pretty smart, he said.

All of a sudden it came to me:
Five-Star Final!