Getting Garbo Read Online Free PDF Page B

20,000 Years in Sing Sing, Each Dawn I Die, and I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Jack Warner liked those movies so much, that’s how he ran his studio. Anyway. The studio is located in Burbank, a small town in the San Fernando Valley invented by Warner. The studio guards are like prison guards, and Jack L. Warner himself is the warden. Writers are treated like convicts—locked down in their assigned cells from nine to six on weekdays and a half day Saturday. Rumors of a writers’ conspiracy to tunnel out for off-the-lot lunches were part of the Warners legend. Among the actors, long-term contract players felt like lifers—the harder you worked, the farther you were from ever getting out.
    You think I’m bullshitting, right?
    Well, not much.
    You could start out with a seven-year contract and still be there ten, eleven years later. How? Whenever you rejected a script or said no about anything, the studio suspended you. That meant off-salary—and they tacked the suspension time onto your contract. Bette Davis tried to escape by going to England to make movies, but the long arm of Jack Warner kiboshed that. Olivia de Havilland was more successful a couple years later. She sued the studio for involuntary servitude and a high court found in her favor: they could suspend, but they couldn’t extend. So now seven years is the longest sentence you can draw in the fair city of Burbank.
    I’ve only done three years. I owe them four more. We’ve been trying to get a release now while I’m hot in TV and a movie career is possible. Jack L. has personally said no to me in very graphic terms. So I figured that’s it. Breaking a Warner Bros. contract is slightly harder than busting out of Alcatraz.
    But here’s Nathan Curtis Scanlon, Esq. saying he’s found a way.
    â€¢ • •
    He struts across his spartan office with the ramrod posture of the West Pointer he once was. A decorated WWII and Korean War vet. Major Scanlon. Never mind the Chasen’s paunch that Nate has added since then. Nate Scanlon looks out the window down onto the Sunset Strip. Now Hollywood is his battleground.
    â€œIt’s in the small print,” he says. “You know what they say, God is in the details. That’s our out.”
    I still don’t get it. Warner Bros. invented small print—Nate taught me that when I first became a client. “They give you on page one of the contract what they take back on pages seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-four.” That’s why I need Nate. A cop to monitor the robbers.
    â€œThey were a day late.” He says it like he’s revealing the secret of the world.
    â€œA day late—to do what?”
    â€œTo pick up your option for the next year of the contract.”
    â€œBut they started paying me the extra dough anyway, a big hundred-and-fifty dollar a week raise, which brings me to fifty cents above the minimum wage. And I cashed the checks—”
    â€œDoesn’t matter!” He pivots to face me. For Nate Scanlon, breaking the Warners contract would be more than just a business coup. He’s back at Inchon, trying to free a POW. “They were a day late with their official notification. So the entire contract is no longer binding. It’ll take a tussle in court, but we’re going to win this one. You’ll be a free agent. Count on it. And I’ve already got an offer in my back pocket from Burt Lancaster’s company for you to set up shop over there. You’re going to be a great big movie star!”
    So far nobody’s made the big jump from TV to the movies. I’m ready and willing to be the first. I savor the prospect for a delicious moment.
    Then something Scanlon said plays back in my head. “So what’s the big hurry—with the divorce, I mean?”
    â€œEverything depends on that. We must get Addie to sign off on final divorce terms before she gets wind of the possibility of a