Jerry Weintraub - When I Stop Talking You

I knew I would not stay long in the page program, or climb the ladder to the executive suite. I would stay until I got what I needed, then move on. Various jobs, that's what interested me. That could be my coda. Various experiences, various adventures.

Within a year of starting at NBC, I traded my blue coat and golden braid for a blue blazer. I was now working in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency. It was a grind. I was there early and stayed late, reading and sorting mail, delivering packages and studying the politics of the place. Grunt jobs are often the most instructive-they allow you to flow through an organization unnoticed, a corpuscle or cell moving in and out of the heart and lungs. William Morris was probably the most storied talent agency in New York, founded in the 1800s, when its hottest clients had been magicians, escape artists, song and dance men. Its mailroom was legendary, known in the business as the mailroom, a breeding ground for the future business talent of Hollywood. Michael Eisner, Bernie Brillstein-they all came through the William Morris mailroom, a credential worn in Hollywood as some wear the Legion of Honor.

I'm always hearing from people who say they worked with me in the mailroom at William Morris, but the odds are slim-I was only there for two months.

One afternoon, I went to lunch at the Park Central Hotel on Sixth Avenue. It was a notorious spot. Arnold Rothstein, the father of the Jewish underworld, had been shot in a room in the hotel, and Albert Anastasia, the boss of Murder Incorporated, had been shot in the barbershop off the lobby. It was a showbiz hangout, a haunt of managers and agents. I sat alone in the corner. Two young executives were at the next table talking in voices you could not help but overhear about a job that had just opened at MCA, the talent agency run by Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman. Their conversation was detailed and specific. One of the men said the posting was in the TV department, and that the man hiring was named Dick Rubin.

I finished my meal, went back to the mailroom, and called Dick Rubin. When his secretary answered, I said, in the coolest voice possible, "It's Jerry Weintraub for Dick Rubin." A minute later, when Rubin got on, I said, "Dick, Jerry Weintraub. I hear you're looking for someone in TV. Well, I am over here at William Morris and none too happy."

I went for an interview the following afternoon. MCA-Music Corporation of America -was a talent agency founded in the 1920s by Jules Stein. Lew Wasserman, who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and started, like I did, as an usher in a movie theater, joined the company in the 1940s. He spent years in the trenches, working his way up. By the time of my interview, he was living and working in LA, but you could still feel his presence in the New York office. It was Wasserman's company.

Dick Rubin was surprised by how young I was. I had really played it up on the phone, giving him the impression, probably, that I was an agent-not a kid from the mailroom. But I have a skill for interviews, and I got the job. Just like that, I went from making twenty-five dollars a week to making over seventy-five. My immediate boss was a big-time TV executive named Hubbell Robinson. He produced a bunch of shows, including the Ford Theatre, which was very prestigious. I was called Robinson's assistant, but was really a glorified secretary. I sat at a desk outside his office, fetched coffee, ran errands. In the interview, he asked me a bunch of questions, like "Can you type?" and "Can you take dictation?" and "Do you know shorthand?"

"Oh, yes, sure, absolutely"-of course, I could do none of that stuff.

In the first weeks, whenever Robinson asked me to type something, I would get one of the girls in the secretarial pool to do it for me. If he dictated a letter, I would listen carefully, run out, and dictate whatever I could remember to one of the girls. This worked for a time. Then, one day, Robinson asked me to take down what he described as a "very important letter." I went into his office with my pad and pencil, crossed my legs, assumed the position. He cleared his throat, then started: "Dear Mr. Muckety Muck, re: the matter of December 4 blah, blah, blah…" I followed as best as I could, but was soon left behind. He talked for two or three minutes-a long time-then said, "Okay, Jerry, read it back."

I sat up, turned over the page, and started, "Dear Mr. Muckety Muck, re: the matter of December 4," stumbled, stammered, then said, "Well, after that was something about a contract, or a litigant, or an out-of-country actor…?"

He looked at me like, you know, what the heck? then said, "Do you know shorthand, Jerry?"

"No."

"Can you type?"

"No."

"What did you think would happen when you got in here and sat down, and I started giving you this letter?"

"I don't know," I said. "I guess I was hoping it would just come to me, that I would suddenly know how to do it. I've heard of even crazier things happening."

He asked me to leave. There were meetings and discussions. After lunch, I was called back into Mr. Robinson's office. He said, "Look, Jerry, we're not going to fire you. We like you-we like having you around. We think you're going to be great. But stop trying to take dictation and stop trying to type. We'll get an assistant for that. We're promoting you to junior agent."

What lesson do I take?

Be willing to be lucky.

Look at me. I had stumbled from chance to chance, emerging each time not only intact but with a better title and a bigger salary. I was one of the suit-wearing agents of MCA now, with clients of my own, making a hundred dollars a week. But I think it was more than luck. I think I was being tested, as everyone is tested in this business, the object being-even if the bosses don't mean it consciously-to see who can think on his or her feet, who can survive. The job of an agent is, in part, anyway, to bullshit and schmooze: How better to find talent than by seeing who can talk his way into a career? From usher to mailroom to secretarial pool to my own office.

It was like falling up a flight of stairs.

I had gotten back together with my high-school sweetheart-the girl who sent me the care packages in Biloxi. She was working as a secretary in the LA office of MCA. I called her every few nights on the WATS line, a party line that kept the East Coast and West Coast offices of the company in contact. You dialed Canal 6-0083-212 and a second later an operator picked up: "MCA, Beverly Hills."

So one night I am at my desk in New York, feet up-I always did have excellent taste in shoes-talking to my future ex-wife, and we get into one those awful screaming fights you only have when you're a kid. Five minutes later, you can't even remember what it was about.

I come to work the next morning, seven, seven-thirty. I was usually the first one in. I sit down, and, before I can take a sip of my coffee, the phone rings. It's the switchboard. "Is this Jerry Weintraub?"

"Yes."

"Please clear your lines. Lew Wasserman is calling."

I had never met Lew Wasserman. I mean, he was the president of the company, the voice speaking from the burning bush, and I was a pissy junior agent.

I did the math. Seven-thirty in New York. Making it… six-thirty, five-thirty… For the love of God, why is the president of the company calling me at four-thirty in the morning?

I wait, listening to the static on the line, to the beating of my own heart, then he comes on-big, booming voice.

"Is this Mr. Weintraub?"

"Yes, sir."

"What department are you in, Mr. Weintraub?"

He was showing me that he knew I was a peanut.

"Commercials."

"Were you on the WATS line last night with your girlfriend, Mr. Weintraub?"

"Yes."

"Do you know for how long?"

"Well, no, but it seemed like forever."