The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (15 page)

BOB SHAPIRO
became president of worldwide production at Warner Brothers. He is currently a producer (
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Empire of
the Sun, Black Beauty, My Favorite Martian
).

AMBITION

THE MAN WHO LOVED SHOW BUSINESS

General Artists Corporation, New York, 1962

SANDY GALLIN

I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Lawrence, Long Island. My mother was a housewife; my father was a builder. I was in love with show business. I always wanted to be Paul Anka, Fabian, Ricky Nelson. In high school I’d been offered a few record contracts, but I knew my mother was going to put her head in the oven if I didn’t go to college. During my senior year at Boston University I finally realized that I wasn’t a pretty boy, so I switched gears and decided I wanted to work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. My fantasy was to live in Hollywood, be rich, have a big house, and have stars know me, like me, and recognize me on the street.

My cousin Ray Katz, a big-time manager with the firm that handled Jackie Gleason, Allan Sherman, Jack Carter, and Eva Gabor, said that if I wanted to learn about show business, the best place to start was a mailroom. William Morris was going to hire me, they said. I waited three weeks, then they told me I wasn’t qualified. I cried hysterically. I was
very
disappointed.

I shared a dingy one-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills with my brother, his roommate, and my mother, who moved in because she was getting divorced. I took a job in Gimbel’s training program. My rise was meteoric. In six weeks I got three raises and eventually made $375 a week. They announced I would be manager of the third and fourth floors. When I got home that night, I got a call from Larry Louis, the controller at GAC, where I’d also applied to the mailroom. He said I could start on Monday for $50 a week. I didn’t think twice. I was the happiest person in the world. The next morning I told my boss at Gimbel’s I was leaving.

I was the first kid in the GAC mailroom training program and was happy as a clam, sorting and delivering mail and doing errands for the agents. At night I went to secretarial school for speed writing and typing. Within six or seven weeks I decided that I wanted to work for Abe Newborn in the Legit Department, or Buddy Howe, who was head of the whole company and ran the Variety Department; or Tony Ford, who was the head of Variety Television and Television Packaging. Eventually I chose Tony Ford because he serviced
The Ed Sullivan Show
. I became friendly with a secretary named Rose, who helped me convince Tony Ford’s secretary to quit. Then Rose would ask Tony Ford to interview me.

When the time came, I told Tony I had graduated from Boston University and that I would be his slave. He said, “Well, I don’t know if that would work.”

I begged. I said, “I promise that I will not let you down and that I’ll be here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, if you give me the opportunity.”

He said yes—and then he made me keep my promise.

I was a great assistant but a horrible secretary. Tony dictated in the morning. While I rolled his calls, I dictated to Rose whatever he had dictated to me. She was a spectacular secretary, a great, hip girl. She could type a letter in two minutes. Anyway, it’s not like the correspondence was difficult. It was like: “Dear Shirley MacLaine: Enclosed please find your three copies of
The Ed Sullivan Show
contract. Please sign and return two.”

Because I serviced them when they appeared on TV, I got close to many of the very big stars: the Supremes, Nancy Sinatra, Phyllis Diller. After eight months, when GAC brought in some of the MCA agents and acts after MCA broke up, they made me a junior agent. I got all of the Goodson-Todman game shows and
The Tonight Show,
and I assisted Tony on
The Ed Sullivan Show, The Garry Moore Show
, and
Kraft Music
Hall
.

Once, I went to see Paul Anka at the Waldorf-Astoria. I had a 104-degree fever. I wound up in the hospital with mononucleosis, and it got so bad, it turned into hepatitis. When I came back, I got a $150-a-week raise, which was unheard of, and they made me a full agent. It was 1963, and going to work was just like going to a party.

SANDY GALLIN
became a senior vice president and board member of GAC, then ICM, before leaving in 1969 to pursue personal management and production for thirty-six years. Along the way he guided Cher, Joan Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Mac Davis, Mariah Carey, Patti LaBelle, the Pointer Sisters, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor. He also produced twenty-one movies and thousands of hours of television—specials, series, and movies—and had a very successful production company with Dolly Parton. Gallin recently spent one year in Las Vegas as chairman and CEO of Mirage Entertainment and Sports. Today he produces Broadway shows (
Hedda
Gabler, The Shape of Things
) and pursues his love of designing, building, and remodeling houses.

SONS OF THE TRIPLE CROSS

William Morris Agency, Los Angeles, 1961–1963

BARRY DILLER, 1961 • JOHN HARTMANN, 1961 • GARY EBBINS, 1961 •
MICHAEL MCLEAN, 1961 • LARRY FITZGERALD, 1962 • HERB NANAS, 1963 •
STAN ROSENFIELD, 1963

We
called
ourselves
the
Sons
of the
Triple
Cross.
Look
at
the
William
Morris
logo.
There
are
four Xs.
The
first
three
stand
for
WMA.
The
fourth
stands
for
the
truth—about
the
other
three.

—John Hartmann

JOHN HARTMANN:
I spent my Saturdays in Brantford, Ontario, at the movies. It cost a quarter. I’d see a cartoon, a newsreel, a serial, a feature, maybe a live stage show. I also acted in school.

My family eventually moved to Los Angeles. After Boston College I followed them on the last TWA prop flight between New York and the coast. It was the summer of 1959. I walked two steps down the gangway and looked around. I’d just left drizzly, dark, ugly old New York, and I was now in the middle of sunshine and pastel buildings. I became a Californian in that moment.

At home I shared a room with my younger brother Phil. He was in high school, and we collected funnies, then we’d try to crack each other up, tossing jokes and one-liners. When my father pounded on the wall—“Stop that laughing in there!”—we’d clamp the pillows over our faces. Phil imitated all the Jonathan Winters records—he could do it perfectly—and he could crack me up anytime. Even though he’s gone now, I’ve always been his most hysterical fan.

I never expected to be a professional actor, but at Santa Monica College I ended up winning a couple of Best Supporting Actor awards, got an agent, and stumbled around to fruitless auditions. I blamed my agent for my lack of success. I was so upset that I decided to find out what an agent was
supposed
to do, and applied for a position in the William Morris mailroom.

I never heard back.

In 1961 I decided to move back to New York to rise from the streets and become a star. I was literally leaving the campus to drive east, with barely enough money to survive, when this older woman I’d befriended in class called out to me. I didn’t want to stop. She ran after me. She said, “I heard you’re going to New York to be an actor.”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” I said uncertainly.

She said, “No! Don’t do it. It’s not for you. That’s a terrible life. I know. My husband is an agent at William Morris.” Then, “Have you ever thought of being an agent?”

“Well, actually, I applied there. Never heard back.”

“Talk to my husband,” she said. “He’ll set up an interview.”

It didn’t take much to convince me.

For the interview I wore my one mohair suit, my chain-link watch, my pinkie ring, and my one good shirt with monogrammed initials. I didn’t need a college degree; they were just looking for cheap manpower at fifty bucks a week. But once in the building, I saw the hustle and the bustle, and I was really excited.

BARRY DILLER:
Of all my Beverly Hills kid interests, the entertainment business was the one I was
most
interested in. I interviewed with the very nice and mildly passive head of Personnel, Mr. Leff—he wore a bow tie—who’d done my family friend Danny Thomas the favor of meeting with me, and the greater favor of hiring me on the spot. I was nineteen.

GARRY EBBINS:
My dad, Milt Ebbins, was a personal manager, and most of his clients were clients at the Morris office: Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Peter Lawford, Mort Sahl, Vic Damone.

HARTMANN:
Milt was the guy who dressed Marilyn Monroe for the night at Madison Square Garden when she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” He went to the hotel and she was there, naked, and he had to help her into her dress. Imagine this little, bald Jewish guy down on his knees—she had no underwear on—shimmying her into the dress, looking right into her full frontal nudity.

EBBINS:
My dad never had a real office. Instead he’d put on a suit and go to the Morris office. He’d spend hours making calls, stalking the halls. For a long time I thought my dad worked there. Sometimes I’d go with him. I got to know a lot of the agents, especially the boss, Mr. Lastfogel. He was about five foot three, and all the furniture in his office was scaled down because of his height. I knew him as Uncle Abe. When I was little, I’d play on his office floor. Later my dad would leave me in the waiting area, and I’d talk to the switchboard operators and the receptionists.

I started working at the Morris office in the late 1950s, when I was fifteen. I wasn’t thinking about being an agent; my dad just wanted me to earn my own money. I cleared $41.20 a week. Other guys in the mailroom were Frank Sinatra Jr.—for the summer; we were best friends—Joe Wizan, Sanford Lieberson, Marty Elfand. We all brought our lunch and ate it in the conference room, around the big table, and playacted about making deals. It got to be a ritual. The only tough part for me was that nobody else knew my name. They only knew me as “Milt’s kid.” For a while I didn’t have an identity at all.

LARRY FITZGERALD:
One of my best friends and I were in a band—he was the drummer, I was the bass player—and he moved from our hometown of Oakland, California, to New York City to be an actor. I followed him. We did summer stock in Massachusetts, then came back to New York. But I couldn’t find a job, and I didn’t like the city. To get home I drove the actress Vivian Vance’s Caddy to Los Angeles. There I did odd jobs and had a pretty good time as a young bachelor. Robert Vaughn was part of our group. This was before
The Man from
U.N.C.L.E. One day he said, “Why don’t you become an agent? I’m with William Morris. I’ll call my guy over there.”

His guy was Rowland Perkins. I got half an hour, which was a lot for a big agent. He explained that agents were basically salespeople. He said, “Do you think you’d like this?”

I said, “Sure.”

He said, “Are you a college grad?”

“Oh, yes,” I lied. “USC.” Luckily nobody ever checked. Rowland told me I had to meet the Personnel people, Kathy Krugel and her boss, Ed Levy. Just to be safe, I also applied to the telephone company to be an installer. They made me take a big test, which I failed. Luckily, I got the Morris job.

MIKE MCLEAN:
My parents were from Ogden, Utah. My mother did Busby Berkeley films and was the lead dancer in a sequence that won an Academy Award in a film called
The Great Ziegfeld
. My father started as a mailboy at the studios and worked himself into the Extra Casting Department, then became a casting director. The last thirty-five years of his career he was the senior vice president in charge of talent at Twentieth Century Fox.

I had summer jobs in the Fox mailroom and as a tour guide. I worked in the Greens Department, landscaping. Show business was our life, but I went to Santa Monica College to study oceanography and marine biology, then I enlisted in the Coast Guard. When I got out, I needed a job. My dad called somebody at William Morris. During the interview Ed Levy asked me
really important
things, like “Can you drive a car?” Yeah, right. I figured the mailroom was a way to make some money and maybe find myself.

HERB NANAS:
I’d done some off-Broadway, some summer stock as a teenager, then, on the spur of the moment, I went into the military with a bunch of guys from the Bronx. I’m from that PS 80 crowd on Mosholu Parkway: Penny Marshall, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Howard West, George Shapiro.

After the military I had a wife and three kids. I moved to Los Angeles. I was twenty-two. I wanted to act again and started a theater group on Vine Street called the Company of Angels with Vic Tayback. But we struggled because at the time the actor stereotype was all Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson—and we looked nothing like them.