Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... Read Online Free PDF Page A

pizzazz was phony baloney. That I understood this didn’t matter.
    So when these two colorful characters told me they were going to open their own office, asking if I wanted to come along with them, I jumped all over it. Both their secretaries opted to stay with Universal because each, having been with the parent company more than ten years, was fully vested in the rich MCA pension plan. I heard the universe speaking loud and clear, telling me that Freddie and David would get to the top, telling me to bet on them, and if I was clever I could ride their coattails to success. Of all the agents that were flushed out into the larger world the day MCA’s doors closed, these were the two that would make it big-time.
    A woman entering show business in the sixties was nothing more than a scribe—not even. I was only a tad more noticeable because I was attractive and had a sense of my own style, even on a limited budget. I inherited vanity from my father and cared deeply about my appearance. I was also a flirt and always anxious to be thought of as pretty by men. Flirting was, sadly, one of the few ways to be noticed in an office back in the day. A nice smile and a clever remark went a long way toward helping a woman realize even the smallest of ambitions.
    One didn’t—I certainly didn’t—get an opportunity right away to demonstrate that my trendy hairdo framed a head with a brain in it, and although my two bosses were ready to acknowledge that I might have a brain, they weren’t ready to acknowledge it financially. Men got cash for Christmas; I got a handbag. It was a beautiful handbag, bought for me at Bendel’s by Freddie’s beautiful wife, Polly. I peeked inside with trepidation, hoping to find a check for even a hundred dollars, but there was none. Worse, I was still called on to fill in as a babysitter as a favor. You know what “favor” means.
    *   *   *
    The women’s movement didn’t fully get under way until Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Prior to that women were invisible or, if noticed at all, seen mainly as sex objects—certainly not as people with leadership potential. For most, work was only a means to an end. I, however, yearned for a meaningful career, a way of life, and I was beginning to understand just how impossible that was. I heard a little voice saying, Hey, wait a minute here. I’m just as smart as some of these palookas. I want the same chance they got. This had nothing whatever to do with sisterhood. I was thinking exclusively of myself.
    Fortunately for me, the bet that I made paid off. Freddie Fields and David Begelman started a company that grew to be one of the two or three largest agencies in the world. Although at the start they took advantage of my office skills, often leaving me at the end of a long day with enough typing to keep me working until midnight, I never once complained. (Sometimes one of them would come back at about ten with a thank-you and a buttered roll from Danny’s Hideaway.) I sucked up and soaked in everything. I had my eye on the summit from the start, and, by making the compromises to my marriage that I found necessary, I did in fact ride their coattails to success. A good part of the reason it happened had everything to do with Judy Garland.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    How Good Is Real?
    Suddenly Judy Garland is standing in front of me. She has walked into the reception area of Freddie Fields Associates all bundled up. This very cold December afternoon at the end of 1960 is one that I will never forget. Thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Liza is with her. Judy’s hair is short. Not as I remembered her. Liza’s hair is halfway down her back. Not as most of you have ever thought of her. Judy, who has met Freddie only once at that point, has come to the office in order to meet his partner, David, to see exactly whom she has gotten back into business with. It is a red-letter day