Haywire by Brooke Hayward (android based ebook reader .txt) 📕

the whole field. He was by far the outstanding man in the entire agency field in California, but he was never quite satisfied with himself. He was always reaching for something further. I was perhaps perfectly happy to be the top agent in town, but he not only wanted to be an agent, he wanted to be a creator and he wanted to be a producer and he didn’t want to stick to any one thing even though he was a success in it.

“I remember at one time when he was married to your mother and you were all out in the country, she insisted that he could not have any telephone calls. And he just couldn’t stand it. It was too much for his blood, so he used to go to the drugstore or country store, maybe half a mile away, and call up the office to find out what was going on. The theatrical world and the agency world was his world. It was his life. I was amused by your mother’s attempts to keep Leland in line. I think if she hadn’t done that she still would have been married to him until he died.”

Henry Fonda:

“He could sell the proverbial snowball to an Eskimo. He didn’t show any interest in me until he saw me in New Faces. Then, when he did, it was typical of him that he took over. The summer of 1933 I was playing summer stock at the Westchester Playhouse in Mount Kisco—your mother momentarily gave up Hollywood to come back and play in Coquette with me, Kent Smith, Myron McCormack, Mildred Natwick, Josh, and Josh’s sister Mary Lee. It was one of the all-time summer theatre triumphs.

“In the middle of that summer at Mount Kisco, I got a wire from your father, asking me to come to California. I wired him ‘No.’ I wasn’t interested in films; I still hadn’t hit New York the way I wanted to. He wired me back—I’ll never forget it—one of those telegrams that just went on for page after page, clipped together at the top—all the reasons why I was an idiot, and why I should come. I wired him back with the one word ‘No.’ Then he got me on the telephone. I hadn’t been home to Omaha for a long time, so I’d taken a week off and flown home for a visit. Somehow your dad knew that’s where I was. Your persuasive father. He said, ‘It won’t cost you anything. I’ll pay for your goddamned airplane fare and your hotel. You’ll meet some people and it’ll be easy for you to make a decision. Don’t be an idiot.’

“So I wound up flying out to California. He met me at the airport. It was terribly hot, in the middle of August; I remember that I had on a seersucker suit, which was wilting on me. He took me to a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I went in to shower and shave and clean up; when I came back out again, he was in the front room with Walter Wanger. I’d never heard of him before. He had no idea who I was either, or whether I was any good. We sat there, and within half an hour or so I was shaking his hand on a deal your father had sold him. He had dragged Walter Wanger over, and I don’t know what he’d said, but I was shaking hands on a deal for one thousand dollars a week. And it was my deal: I could go back to my beloved theatre in the winter and come out the next summer to do two pictures for one thousand dollars a week. I went down in the elevator with your dad and out on the sidewalk in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, still in shock. I turned to your dad and said, ‘There’s something fishy.’ I just couldn’t believe it. And he laughed and laughed. That’s how I got here.”

Josh Logan:

“He used to insult the heads of studios while settling one haunch on their desk corners. ‘Sam,’ he would say, ‘why don’t you stop cheating the public and do a good picture instead of just talking about it? Now, I have a writer …’ Or, ‘Harry, stop convincing people you’re ignorant. I know you’ve got more sense than they give you credit for, and I’ve been explaining that to Garbo, but she doesn’t believe me. Why don’t you put her in a picture that—Hold it! I’ve got just the one for you!’ ”

• • •

The new house was in the mountains above Beverly Hills on a wild tract of ranchland belonging to the Doheny family. It was at the end of a rutted dirt road called Cherokee Lane (now a four-lane highway). In those days (1946), as far as the eye could see there was nothing but mountains covered with scrub oak and sagebrush and occasionally a plume of white yucca; off to the west was a perfect view all the way to the ocean, and on a clear day we could see Catalina Island.

The land rose from the dirt road up to the house in a series of deep terraces defined by brick retaining walls and paths: on the first level was a row of pepper trees beside the garage, then up some brick stairs was a tangerine and grapefruit grove where the path split into two further sets of stairs, which continued on, circling a steep flowering slope as they went, and passing on the right a guest house and on the left a sunken garden planted with gardenias and roses. At the top, set well back by lawns and olive trees and a wide brick terrace with a spectacular view, was the house with its back to the mountain that rose behind it. It was a small, unpretentious, one-story house; Mother spent some time remodeling and enlarging it before we could move in. She said she bought it just for