The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up Read Online Free PDF Page B

number of applicants. At least we wouldn’t be getting the high school dropouts; we’d get people who were educated and ready to face the next step in life.
    AUERBACH: They’ll kick me in the ass for saying this, but the truth is that the reason a college degree became important was not to have to accept every minority applicant. That’s where it started. At some point you could no longer say no to minorities, because you would face legal problems, so they required a degree.
    WEISS: The day it was decided that you had to be a college graduate bothers me. Abe Lastfogel didn’t go to college. Normie Brokaw didn’t go to college. I didn’t go to college. Being street smart is not dependent on having a higher education. David Geffen is well known for having gotten into the program by saying he had a college degree when he didn’t. He didn’t reveal that until much later, but had I known then that he didn’t have a degree—after I got to know him to some extent—I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. Anything .

     
THE WAGES OF WAR
     
    WEISS: I went into the service in early 1941. It was not a European pleasure trip. I didn’t think about a show business career, only surviving. I was in Italy with an infantry division. Bob Dole was in my outfit. I was discharged in September of 1945. While I was gone, the Morris office put aside 10 percent of my weekly salary each week so I’d have a few dollars when I got out. I made next to nothing, so it was 10 percent of nothing—but it was better than nothing.
    I got my job back, but after four and a half years William Morris had changed and so had I. I was married and a different man from the one who had gone to war. War makes you grow up fast. Now I had a great interest in facing rather than avoiding responsibilities. I wanted only to be in the business. I loved the company in a way I can’t describe.

     
LEARNING THE TRADE
     
    ELKINS: The learning opportunity was there for anyone who wanted to take advantage of it. I was unquestionably an ambitious guy. My one-liner is that I was the only guy in the office who wasn’t there to get laid. Not totally true: A lot of other people weren’t there for that reason, and I did want to get laid. But it was my love of theater that propelled me and made me want to make it work for myself.
    LEON: If you showed some promise, you were assigned to a desk and you worked for an agent. You listened in on all the phone calls and got to learn a little bit about the business.
    WEISS: I was asked to handle publicity and do less office-boy stuff. That didn’t mean sending items to Walter Winchell. When an actor was booked, I got their picture and a bio and made sure at least a week in advance they were mailed to the venue. It was a lot of work because we booked acts all over the country.
    After publicity I became an assistant to Sam Bramson, who booked clubs. Sam already had a secretary. My job was to find a chair to sit in, hang around, and learn. His job started late in the afternoon, with clients like Joe E. Lewis, Harry Richmond, Sophie Tucker, and a lot of lesser stars. They played the Copacabana, the Latin Quarter, and whatever the other clubs were. I can see how Sam might have thought I was a monumental pain in the ass, but he was a saint. He tolerated my bothering him and his secretary with endless questions. I also went with him on the rounds after work, and in those days there were three shows a night, the last being at 2 A.M. Sam always ended the night at Lindy’s, and I’d go with him. All the Runyonesque guys were there. I got to know all the racket guys, the gamblers and the shylocks. The bosses were tough guys, but they loved the business.
    I’d get home at four o’clock in the morning. I diapered the baby and went to sleep. What kind of life my wife had, I don’t know. For me it was cockeyed, but I loved every second of it.
    I also worked very closely with an agent named George Wood. Having George as a friend could