George Axelrod: Blackmailer

At first I used to take a tablespoonful of olive oil before I went to lunch with her. But it didn’t work. It did no good whatever and only gave me a mildly sickish feeling for the rest of the day. Now I just drink lunch with Lorraine, and assume that the rest of the day will be a total loss.

“See what you can do about getting us a table downstairs,” I told Miss Dennison. “I forgot all about it again.”

Then I went out to meet Lorraine.

None of this is very important or has very much to do with anything. What is important and does have to do with something is the fact that I was at Twenty One that day and saw Janis Whitney having lunch. With a friend.

Lorraine had had five martinis before we got around to ordering food.

Then she ordered a sixth drink and began to get a little noisy.

I looked nervously around the room. People at neighboring tables were beginning to turn and stare at us. Two captains were hovering nearby, waiting.

“You’re not paying attention to what I’m saying,” Lorraine said. “I can’t talk to people when they don’t look at me.”

“I’m listening to you, Lorraine. I’m hearing everything you say.”

Lorraine’s voice droned on in my ear. I looked surreptitiously around the room.

When I first noticed her sitting at the table against the wall my only thought was, What a pretty girl. It took a second or two to realize who she was.

“What are you staring at now, Dick?”

“That girl-the dark-haired one in the corner-do you know who she is?”

Lorraine did not know who she was. Nor did she care a damn.

“That’s Janis Whitney,” I said. “You must have seen her in pictures.”

Suddenly I was completely sober.

She hadn’t changed much in ten years. She was more beautiful now, if anything. She was talking in a very animated way to a dark, heavyset man with thin black hair plastered to his bullet-shaped head.

“I used to know her,” I said to Lorraine. “We used to be very good friends. Would you mind if I just went over to say hello?”

Lorraine minded strenuously.

I looked across the room again and saw that Janis Whitney and the dark-haired man were getting up to leave.

“I just want to talk to her for a minute. Find out where she’s staying. Please excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

I pushed my way past the crowd at the bar.

Janis and the dark-haired man were in the doorway, and the doorman was signaling for a car.

“Janis!” I called. “Janis Whitney!”

She apparently didn’t hear me.

A Cadillac limousine with a uniformed chauffeur pulled up and Janis and the dark-haired man got in.

“Hey-wait a minute!”

But I was too late.

I looked foolishly after them as the car headed up Fifty-second Street toward Fifth Avenue.

“That was Janis Whitney, wasn’t it?” I said to the doorman.

He nodded.

“Do you happen to know who was the man with her?”

“He’s a big agent,” the doorman said. “Name’s Max Shriber.”

I stood there in the sunlight blinking for a moment. A big agent-named Max Shriber!

Then one of the captains touched my arm.

“Mr. Sherman,” he said, in his discreet headwaiter’s voice. “The lady with you. I think perhaps she has had too much-to-ah-drink. She is beginning to create a disturbance. I wonder if you would…”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it immediately.”

I went back in, paid the check, got my coat, and piloted Lorraine to the street. I got her into a cab and finally poured her, protesting all the while, aboard a train bound for Westport.

Then I took a cab back to my apartment.

I lay down on the bed with all my clothes on.

The room spun a little when I lay down. I propped my head up with a folded pillow and after that it was all right.

When I woke up again it was dark.

I felt terrible.

I tried to move but it didn’t seem possible.

Six martinis and no lunch. I got up and went into the bathroom.

When I came back out again I was weaker but feeling better.

In a little while I had a glass of milk. It stayed down and I decided I might possibly live.

I looked at my watch. It was after nine. It seemed a little late to call the office and tell them I wouldn’t be in. But Pat knew I had been lunching with Lorraine. So that was all right.

I washed my face, combed my hair, made some coffee and sat in a comfortable chair sipping it slowly.

I had been too sick to think about Janis Whitney before. But now I was beginning to feel better.

I had been the first man Janis knew when she came to New York. This is a delicate way of saying that I was the first man in Janis’ life.

That was in 1940 and Janis was twenty-one. She’d had a season of summer stock at Provincetown and had come to New York that fall. She was living at one of those clubs for stagestruck girls on the upper west side.

The thing we had in common was the theatre. The only difference was that Janis had talent. I had absolutely none. I had held two jobs, assistant stage manager for a successful Wiman show, and stage manager for a straight play that ran three nights.

At the time I was laboring under the misapprehension that I was a writer. I had written a play.

Janis and I were convinced that it would be produced and that she would play the female lead. After I met Janis I rewrote it to make the heroine twenty-one instead of thirty. And I made her a brunette instead of a blonde.

Unfortunately it was not a very good play. I was suffering from a severe case of Philip Barry and the leading characters, Duncan and Phyllis (I think that’s what they were called-I had the good judgment to burn the only existing copy a few years ago) said things to each other like: “…fun, Dunc?” “Oh, very fun!”

However, the play did have a number of very tender love scenes and we rehearsed these almost nightly in my apartment on Tenth Street.

You did not have to be particularly astute to know that Janis Whitney was going to be a big star. She was a beautiful girl with soft, dark hair, greenish eyes and a wide exciting mouth. Her face was animated and she smiled easily. She knew instinctively how to dress and, most important of all, you could feel the impact of her personality when she entered a room.

And of course she had the one other thing.

The ambition.

The driving, compelling ambition. I do not pretend to have psychiatric training. I have only a superficial knowledge of the inner drives and conflicts that shape peoples’ lives. But in Janis the need for success was stronger than in anyone I had ever met.

And I know this: I was desperately in love with her. But at no time did it ever occur to me that we might possibly get married. We both accepted, without ever actually discussing it, that there was no place for marriage in Janis’ life.

Janis was going to be a star.

We both knew this. It was an accepted fact.

After Janis left for California I lost interest in the theatre.

I was twenty-five years old and had worked exactly six months during the three and a half years I’d been out of college.

That was when a friend of my family got me a job in one of the larger publishing houses.

I was surprisingly good at my work, and when I got out of the army I stepped into a fairly responsible editorial position. In 1950 I left to join Pat Conrad in establishing our own company.

I really thought that I had forgotten Janis. But I hadn’t.

I was sitting in the chair smoking a cigarette when the truth suddenly dawned on me. I was still in love with Janis Whitney and always had been.

I got out the phone book and looked up the number of the Carlyle Hotel. I called Max Shriber’s office. Mr. Shriber was not in. The operator did not know where he could be reached.