I told Lew I was leaving. We were in his office in New York. He came around the desk, took off his glasses. "You're doing what?"
"I'm leaving."
It was exhilarating-not quitting Lew, because I loved Lew, but taking control of my life and my career, choosing, saying, "I want to do this, not that."
That's freedom-that's all it really is.
He put his hand on my shoulder.
He said, "This is a mistake."
He said, "This is the best possible place for you."
He said, "Do you understand what kind of opportunity I have given you?"
Finally, when he saw my mind was made up, he went back around his desk, sat down, and said, "When you leave here, where do you think you're going?"
I said, "I don't know."
He said, "You mean to say you're going to quit MCA, and you don't even know where you're going?"
"Yes."
He said, "You're not as smart as I thought you were, Jerry."
Years later, after I had bought a house just up the street from Lew, some representatives of a fund-raising group came to see me. They said they wanted to honor me, throw me a dinner, blah, blah. They were flowery in their rhetoric as to me, but as you get older you come to understand the real reason you're chosen for such honors: because the committee of whatever thinks your name can sell tables. It's not you they are after, in other words, it's your address book. Five or six of them sat in the living room, explaining why I had been selected. It's you and only you, Mr. Weintraub; you are the only man who is worthy. I finally interrupted them, saying, "Look, there is another man far more deserving than me living just down the street. In fact, I would feel uncomfortable receiving such an honor with him unhonored."
They moved to the edge of the couch.
One of them asked, "Yes, yes? Who is it?"
"Just go three houses in that direction and ask for Lew Wasserman," I told them.
"But we already offered it to him," the man said. "It was Mr. Wasserman who sent us here."
In the spring of 1961, I married my high-school sweetheart. We had been a classic neighborhood couple. I was a football player, she was a cheerleader. We got married because getting married is what you did. We were young, inexperienced. We fought all the time, banged off each other like molecules in a vial. The breakup was my fault. I was a bad husband. I don't call it a mistake, because our son Michael, who is wonderful, my best friend in the world, came out of that marriage. He stayed with her in New York when I moved to LA. I think a lot of bad things were said about me, which, of course, only made him more curious to know his father. When he was twelve, he said he wanted to move to California and live with me. It was Michael's choice, but it upset my ex-wife terribly. I don't think she's ever gotten over it. And I totally understand that.
The marriage lasted just a few years. We lived on Saunders Street, in Rego Park, Queens. I was just starting my business, which meant I was insane with work. Hustling. The company was called Directional Enterprises. I had an office in a part of Midtown then dominated by show business types. The lobby was filled with small-time producers and writers and actors and various other hangers-on. In the beginning, I would take on anyone who happened through my door. I was always ready to make the small thing big, or the big thing huge. (A talent manager must be an optimist.) Animal acts, magicians, hypnotists, conjurers, saloon singers, dancers-I represented them all. Woody Allen had an office in the same building. He would ride the elevator with me and my clients-the juggler, for example-and overhear me saying things like, "We're going to build an event around you! You're not just a juggler, but an artist! Do you hear me? An artist!" I often wondered if Woody based Broadway Danny Rose on me and my more marginal acts.
I heard Paul Anka before he was Paul Anka-even then, he was a star-working on his great early hit "Diana." I signed four kids from New Jersey: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi, who called themselves the "Four Seasons." We went on a ballroom tour, the five of us-me being the Fifth Season-eating and sleeping in the van. We reached Chicago exhausted and starved. The manager of the ballroom, an old Chicagoan, said, "You guys are a mess, go next door, have a steak, a cocktail, my treat." "Sherry," which became the group's big hit, had just been released, and when we got back, the house was packed. We were supposed to get a percentage of the gate. "This is great," I told the manager. "Our first sellout!"
"Sellout?" He said, "Nah, no one was coming, so I just let these people in for free."
It was a crucial early lesson: Buy your own steak; it's cheaper.
On most nights, I was out till dawn, racing through Manhattan from club to club, scouting, booking, signing acts. I used to sit with Barbara Walters in back of the Latin Quarter, a famous Broadway hot spot owned by her father, Lou Walters. "Hey, Barbara, who's been filling the seats?" I'd ask her. I was in search of established acts, but was also trying to hit on the right package or trick to sell tickets. I have never been afraid to try even the craziest idea. Later on, I would sell Elvis tickets by advertising: "On sale Monday morning, 9:00 A.M., first come, first served." What does that even mean? Of course the first one gets served first. But I made headlines out of that. And everything I did was a limited edition. But what are they limited to? 82 million? 700 million? 455 million? I mean, there's no law about it. I think this is why I got along better with older men than with my contemporaries. When I told my ideas to people my age, they would wave me away, call me nutty. But when I brought these same ideas to people who had been around, such as Colonel Tom Parker or Frank Sinatra, they got it right away. They knew just who I was and just what I wanted to be. Not a junior agent, not a young man on a ladder to the executive suite, but P. T. Barnum!
I'll give you an example.
Around 1963, I had an idea drifting through my head. I wanted to put on a softball game at Yankee Stadium, in which Elvis would captain a team against a team captained by Ricky Nelson. I had booked Ricky Nelson at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, but did not know anyone with the Yankees, or anyone with Elvis. I just figured the idea would generate the relationships. I called Dan Topping, who owned the Yankees. It took some persistence, but he finally agreed to meet me. We met in his office at the stadium. I said, "Mr. Topping, I want to rent your facility."
At first, he thought I was crazy. In those days, no one rented out stadiums. But when I made the pitch, his tone changed. "That's pretty interesting," he said. "Do you actually know Elvis Presley?"
"No," I said, "not yet."
"And besides, what makes you think that tens of thousands of people will pay to watch Elvis play softball? Do you understand how big this place is?"
"Sure," I told him. "I've been scalping your box seats for years."
"Come with me," he said, "I want to show you something."
He brought me down the ramp and out onto the field, then stood me at second base. "Look around," he said.
Have you ever stood in an empty baseball stadium? It's unbelievable, all those seats, each representing a person who has to be reached, marketed to, convinced, sold. It was intimidating, and it stayed with me. Whenever I am considering an idea, I picture the seats rising from second base at Yankee Stadium. Can I sell that many tickets? Half that many? Twice that many? In the end, the softball game did not come off, but neither did Dan Topping think I was crazy. An idea is only crazy, after all, until someone pulls it off.
Within a year or two, Directional Enterprises was putting on shows all across the country. I had a hit at the Brooklyn Paramount, a fantastic theater. One night, after curtain, two guys come in, big guys in flashy suits. One of them steps forward, the talker, you know the type. This is how it's gonna be, this is what you're gonna do. "From now on," he says, "me, you, and him is partners."
I consider, sort of confused, then say, "But I don't want partners."
"You don't understand," he tells me. "You're in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is our neighborhood. We get a piece of whatever happens in our neighborhood. So we're now partners."
I was tough, but not stupid tough, and now I was scared.
"Ask around," the man says, "find out who we are, and we'll be back tomorrow to work out the this and that."
I raced home in a panic and called my father. He had been around; he knew and had dealt with tough guys before. He grew up in the Bronx, after all, where if you were in business, there was really no avoiding the underworld. He had met Abe Reles and Meyer Lansky-all the players in the Jewish mob. He said, "Jerry, Jerry, take a breath. Calm down. It's okay. It's the way of the world."
"What do I do?" I asked.
"Tell me the story," he said. "Slowly, all the details. I want to see if I can figure out who these guys might be."
When I finished, he said, "Okay. Let me talk to somebody. You'll hear from me soon."
An hour later, he called back and said, "You are to be at [such and such a bar] on the Upper East Side tomorrow at 9:00 P.M., where you will meet a man. Talk to him. He will help you."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Just see him."
"Okay."
"And Jerry."
"Yeah?"
"Don't be late. If you piss him off, it's not an angry letter he's going to send."
The next night, I went to the club on the East Side, a strip bar on First Avenue right out of The Sopranos. Someone took me to a room in back, where I was introduced to the man my father had told me about. He was the boss of one of the New York crime families. He was a tough man-I mean, you would not mess with him-but he had a code, and he played by that code, and he had an air of nobility. He was alone at his table, with a plate of food and a bottle of wine. The room was filled with his lieutenants. He said, "Sit." He had a size twenty-two neck and a giant head, like a head on an old Roman bust. He was huge-it was like someone came in every few hours and injected him with pasta. But he had a face, this great, kind, very human face, and I liked him immediately. I was scared, but I liked him. He poured me a glass of wine and said, "So tell me, what's the problem?"
"Well, these two guys came to see me in Brooklyn where I have a show going and they told me they're going to be my partners."
"Yes, so?"
"I don't want partners."
"But it's their neighborhood," said the boss. "You're taking money out of their store-you gotta give them a percentage."
"I don't want to."
"You don't want to? Why not?"
"Because I don't want to be involved in anything illegal," I said. "I pay my taxes. I just want to make my money and live my life."
He sat there for a moment, thinking, then said, "Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to tell these guys not to bother you. But, in return, you have to promise me something: You're never going to do anything illegal. In your whole life. What the world considers illegal."
He said this slowly, deliberately, letting the words sink in. He was a bright guy. I think he graduated from Fordham.
I said okay.
"No," he told me. "You have to promise it. You will never get involved with anything illegal inside or outside this country, because if you do, I'm coming back and taking a piece of everything you have."
"Okay," I said. "I promise."
"You're sure that's what you want?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You know, Jerry, you could make a lot of money doing stuff with us."
"Well, I want to see if I can make a lot of money doing stuff without you."
He looked at me, sizing me up, then said, "I want you here tomorrow at seven o'clock."
I went back the next night, drank with the boss, then the guys came in. The boss sat them down and said, "Let me explain something to you two. Jerry is now my nephew. He is under my protection. Nobody touches him. Nobody gets near him. In fact, if anything happens to him while he's in Brooklyn, you two guys are responsible."
After that, I could not go to the bathroom in Brooklyn without these two guys following to make sure I did not trip and bang my head on the toilet.
Even after the show closed, I continued to stop by the club on the East Side to say hello to the boss. We started a friendship that lasted the rest of our lives. He flew to Beverly Hills for my son Michael's Bar Mitzvah. The boss is still around. He's an old man now, but is still being watched by the FBI.
Sometime in the late 1970s, I had a conversation with Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Bros. He wanted me to put in some money so we could buy the Westchester Premier Theatre, which was near his house. By then I had long worked with Sinatra and Elvis, and many others, so it made sense. We could fill it up with top-drawer entertainment. "Beautiful," I said, "start writing the papers." A few days later, I get a call. It's the boss. He says, "Meet me at the Grotto. We need to talk." He meant the Grotto Azura, one of the oldest restaurants in Little Italy.
We sat in the main room, the boss with his back to the wall.
He said, "Jerry, you broke your promise."
"What promise?" I asked.
"Remember," he said, "you promised you would never get involved with anything illegal."
"Yeah," I said, "but I kept that promise."
"No, you haven't," he said. "You're buying the Westchester Premier Theatre, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, who do you think owns the Westchester Premier Theatre? We do, through waste management. We have the garbage contract. And we have seats there we don't manifest. That's illegal. And I'm not getting out of the theater just because you're buying. Which means you will be involved in something the world considers illegal."
"Oh, shit," I said. "What should I do?"
"Don't buy it."
The next morning, I called Steve Ross and told him, "I'm not buying into this theater, and neither should you."
When I told him why, he dismissed me, saying, "Oh, come on, don't be ridiculous."
So I didn't buy into the theater, and he did, and it gave him a lot of trouble.
Over the years, as I booked acts, I became friends with the guys who ran the resorts in the Catskills, in the Poconos, in Vegas. Now and then, they would turn their theaters over to me for the thirty or so dead nights that followed New Year's. Nothing is selling anyway, why not give Jerry a shot? I would invent shows out of nothing, the wilder the better, parties and extravaganzas, packaged and marketed like mad. It became my trademark: "A Night in Paris," "A Night in London." Nutty stuff, scrap. I had an act I had been trying to break forever: Kimo Lee and the Modernesians, a sword dancer, a singer, and two girls swaying in grass skirts. I had them booked in the Latin Quarter, in New York City, for $750 a week, but wanted to move them to the next level. Then, one day, I get a call from Morris Landsbergh, who sort of ran the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I say sort of because Landsbergh was really just a front for Meyer Lansky. Landsbergh would walk around the casino all day in a blue coat, hair parted, saying, "Hey, how are ya," "Nice to have ya." "Hey, thanks for coming!"
"Jerry, I'm in a jam," Morris tells me. "I need an act for Christmas. What do you got?"
This is the moment: three lemons line up in the slot machine and you wait to see if the fourth will drop.
"How much can you pay?" I ask.
"Fifty thousand dollars a week," says Morris.
Okay. This was real money. At the time, the highest-paid performer in Vegas was the opera singer Mario Lanza, and he was getting fifty a week. Frank Sinatra and those guys were getting twenty-five.
"Oh, sure," I say, "I've got something."
"Well…"
"Well, what…?"
(I'm thinking.)
"What do you have?"
"Well, I will tell you what I have…"
(Still thinking.)
I had been reading James Michener's Hawaii. I had never been to Hawaii, but I loved the book. My mind was filled with volcanoes and pigs on spits, shiny dwarf apples shoved between their teeth, and, at the same time, I had this act I was trying to break, so naturally I concoct.