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  From twenty yards away Harry saw the guard ball his fists. He was enough of a loose cannon to pound dents into the actor’s syrupy-smooth features. “Hey, Bing! Can’t you make it to work on time?”

  Mike cooled it, and Crosby stuck his head out the car window. “Jastrow, get your butt over here.”

  Harry did, and got a juicy smooch on the forehead. He had negotiated all Bing’s deals with Paramount—and helped get him off scot-free after Crosby had pushed a piano out the window of a New York hotel suite during one of his benders. “How’s your game?”

  “I shot a seventy-seven at Bel Air yesterday and took Astaire for a C-note.”

  “Thank God we’re putting you back to work. You’ll get too good to play with me.”

  “I’m already too good. But your swing cracks me up.” Crosby glanced at his watch. “Damn, I am late!” He stepped on the gas and disappeared onto the lot.

  Inman sucked up the exhaust, then stared plaintively at Harry. “I guess you want an explanation?”

  “What’s to explain? It’s the first day of shooting, so Bing feels miserable that he’s neglecting his kids, and you’ve been a sourpuss for the last six months.”

  “You noticed?” Mike’s missing sense of humor was a casualty of his battle to kick binge drinking.

  “Hey, there are no secrets around here.” At least not from me, Harry thought. In addition to his other jobs, he was in charge of all operations on the lot and proud that everyone from secretaries to electricians sought him out with complaints, comments, and confessions. “Do us both a favor. In the future when you see Der Bingle, dig a hole and hide!” Inman was so grateful for not being fired he shook Harry’s hand till it hurt.

  Circling the lot checking the movies in production, Harry paused at Old New York Street, which was dressed as a turn-of-the-century slum. One of the studio’s top art directors, Fritz Kreter, was supervising the placement of rotting piles of garbage and screaming for more squashed fruit. Harry watched an apprentice hang tattered sheets to dry on lines between the buildings. “Hey, Fritz, the laundry’s wrong.”

  Kreter paled. “What’s the problem, Mr. J.?”

  “It needs to look sadder.”

  In their make-believe world, there was always a solution. “Greta, add slack to the line.” The now-drooping laundry looked pitiful—and authentic. “How’d you know?”

  “I was there.”

  The Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Harry had grown up in the decade before World War I, was a squalid, crowded, and cacophonous breeding ground for broken spirits. He’d escaped the slum through books, reading everything from dime novels to an old edition of Plato’s Republic. But his idylls were short-lived, because some young tough just off the boat was always prepared to take what little he had. Defending the street corner where he sold the New York Herald cost him more bloody noses than he could count. That penchant for dreaming—matched by a willingness to duke it out—proved ideal career training for the movie business.

  Only when he became a parent did Harry realize how little he knew about his folks. A month after he’d arrived from the Ukraine, Isaac Jastrow got a job laying bricks. He did it twelve hours a day, six days a week for the rest of his life, while his wife, Esther, hemmed dresses for the uptown German Jews who came to her neighborhood for bargains. On Sundays the Jastrows made babies, five in total, all of whom died young, except their firstborn son. Because his parents lacked the time and energy to understand their new world, Harry interpreted it for them. He shaped every significant family decision and grew addicted to dispensing advice. When he learned that businessmen rarely made strategic moves without consulting an attorney, his career plans crystallized.

  After graduating first in his class from NYU law school, Harry chose real estate law, accepting the mantra of Jewish immigrants that said owning property was the key to prosperity. In the midst of the Great Depression, however, his only prosperous client was the Broadway Theatre Company, which owned fifty screens in the five boroughs. Its president invited him to a premiere of Come On, Marines, a comedy about soldiers who rescue shipwrecked glamour girls. The poster looked dumb, but why hurt the man’s feelings?

  Halfway through the movie, Harry escaped for popcorn, but he halted before reaching the concession counter, his breath taken away by the sight of a woman waiting there—arms akimbo, shoulders back, hair flowing in the breeze of a table fan. Fleetingly they locked eyes. Somehow she looked familiar, but that wasn’t possible. He could never have forgotten so miraculous a beauty. She paid for her Tootsie Roll, took a healthy chomp, and had sashayed away when it hit him—she was in the movie. He had an instant to catch her. “You’re Mary, the nutty redhead with the big boobs.”

  The young woman turned and stared. “Excuse me?”

  “You are, aren’t you?” His mouth swept him down the drain. “If you’re not, I’m truly sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. But it wasn’t an insult. Mary—the character, I mean—is a knockout.” He squinted. “It is you. Can I have your autograph?”

  She burst out laughing. “Are you always so suave?”

  “No one’s ever used my name and suave in the same sentence.”

  She signed a napkin Maggie Nolin and handed it to him. “Is this what you want?”

  “For starters.” He couldn’t believe how bold he was in her presence—and how sexy it felt. Where was the insecure guy from Hester Street?

  Maggie tossed her candy aside. “Let’s blow this place.”

  She’d probably played a gangster’s moll in an earlier film, Harry figured. “Don’t you have to stay for the press or the producers?” he inquired. “If you do, I’m happy to wait.”

  “No, I pretty much go where I want, when I want. Otherwise, I get into a rotten mood.”

  Tonight she wanted ice cream. He suggested Rumplemeyer’s, near the Plaza, which allowed a long walk uptown to impress her. As she finished his sundae, Maggie confessed that her real name was Margaret Rose Kimmel. Although she’d grown up in Chicago, she qualified as a fringe member of Hollywood royalty because her mother was Adolph Zukor’s youngest sister. But her real hero was her father, who’d died when she was twelve. He’d been the city’s district attorney and had taken her to court for big trials. Harry tasted the hot fudge on her lips when they kissed good night.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Jastrow.” The bombshell actress vanished. “Are you going to turn out to be another of the cads I always find so appealing?”

  “No one’s ever used my name and cad in the same sentence.”

  They kissed again . . . this time, whipped cream.

  Four months later Harry and Maggie married at Temple Emanu-el on Fifth Avenue. She chose New York over Chicago to accommodate her uncle Adolph’s busy schedule. At the reception Zukor offered Harry a position in the studio’s legal department. It paid twenty-two dollars more a week, and his bride thought he might enjoy it. Within a year he’d restructured the leases on all Paramount’s theaters—saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars—and had negotiated the purchase of two independent theater chains. He quickly gained expertise in the legal thicket of relations with exhibitors and became known as “Zukor’s boy.” Meanwhile, Maggie’s acting career bottomed out, and after giving birth to AJ, she settled into the long-running role of wife and mother. The same day they purchased a house in Brooklyn, the chairman handed Harry a ticket on a train west to interview for a position under Barney Balaban, the studio chief and Zukor’s heir apparent.

  In 1939 the Paramount lot could barely contain a thriving thirty-acre city in which five thousand people scrambled to film fifty-five movies. Harry’s first impression was of the bikes. Everyone pedaled somewhere, delivering something that someone else needed ten minutes ago. Sweating in his heavy tweed suit, he asked his guide if he had time to change. Instead, the young man directed him to the wardrobe department, where a savvy dresser fit Harry in the same tropical glen plaid that Bob Hope had worn in The Cat and the Canary.

 
At fifty Barney Balaban resembled everyone’s rich uncle. Dressed in subtly blended shades of gray, the chief greeted him formally. Balaban was cautious about Zukor and preferred hiring executives with unquestioned loyalty to him. “Adolph tells me you’re a legal eagle . . . and a mensch.”

  “He’s being kind.”

  “Adolph? I don’t think so.” Balaban assessed him from head to toe. “I like your suit.”

  Welcome to Hollywood.

  Film executives invariably broke the ice discussing movies they’d seen recently, a topic that revealed both taste and access to screenings. “What did you think of Gone with the Wind?” Balaban asked.

  “My wife couldn’t make the screening. She threatened divorce if I went without her.”

  “It sets a new standard. Selznick did a magnificent job.”

  “In New York we screened The Wizard of Oz,” Harry offered. “It’s magical.”

  “It’s not going to do any business.” To players like Balaban, a film’s box-office performance defined its quality.

  “Whether it does or not, it’s still a wonder.”

  Harry’s boldness scored. At the end of the interview Barney gestured to the scripts neatly piled in his office. “We’re creating art here. The novel is finished. People don’t have the time to read. They want their stories in two-hour chunks. And radio’s peaked. This is our time.” He paused ceremonially. “I’d like you to join me in making the next five years the best ever for Paramount.”

  This was Harry’s beshert, the uniquely satisfying “meant-to-be” that all men seek but few find. Two hours later he called Maggie and told her to hire a moving van.

  Two years later his dream almost came to an abrupt end.

  Hours after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Harry enlisted in the Marines. In early 1942 he was officially commissioned a second lieutenant—unofficially, cannon fodder. Guadalcanal, New Guinea, New Britain—he landed on some of the sorriest real estate on earth. But that didn’t stop the Japanese from killing and dying to protect it. Once ashore, combat was chaos, ordered only by the dual goals of keeping his platoon alive and curing his crotch rot and dysentery.

  Then came Tarawa. It was supposed to be a cakewalk, but just to reach the beach he wound up humping seventy pounds of pack and weaponry through a quarter mile of knee-deep water under a hailstorm of enemy mortar fire. By the second day he could smell death in his canteen water. Body parts bobbed obscenely in the ocean. On the final day of the battle, his point man disappeared. Dodging machine-gun fire, Harry found the soldier sinking in quicksand. Saving him was like pulling taffy. Just when he’d succeeded, a Japanese sniper in a breadfruit tree shattered his knee with a single rifle shot. The field surgeon fused it too tightly, but since the guy had operated on twenty men that day and saved only six, Harry never complained.

  He earned a Purple Heart, which his son displayed to all his friends, an honorable discharge—and a bonanza for his career. With so many young men off fighting, the corporate pyramid at Paramount was underpopulated. He rose rapidly to a seat among the handful of men who determined what made America laugh, cry, and cheer.

  A nineteenth-century Spanish don would have felt at home in Harry’s office. The scrolled sofas and chairs were deeply upholstered, and intricate mosaic tiles decorated the floor. Entering through the back door, he set his briefcase down on an antique desk once owned by General Santa Anna and studied the flash reports from key Paramount houses. Thursday was Dish Night in theaters around the nation, so admissions on the Randolph Scott western Albuquerque should have ticked up, but the offer of free Melmac had failed to spur much activity. The headline in Variety proclaimed, PAR’S $31,668,709 NET PROFIT IN ’47 SECOND ONLY TO ’46.

  But it was old news. All over town, 1948 was shaping up as a lousy year. Box office for the industry was down 19 percent in the first quarter. That projected to a loss of a billion admissions by year’s end. Harry hadn’t expected a continuation of the bonanza of the war years, when Americans had packed theaters to escape from death and destruction, but the accelerating slump was alarming. With their survivors’ mentalities, Zukor and Balaban hunkered down, assigning him the job of cutting the studio’s overhead. Every day he fielded calls from agents irate at his canceling the contracts of writers, directors, and producers who’d loyally served Paramount for years. He assuaged and explained—but felt guilty as hell.

  While the studio kissed off the little guys, the big shots told it to get lost. Balaban wanted to make a five-year deal with Cary Grant, so yesterday Harry had called his agent. “Why would I do that when I can gouge you on each new picture?” he’d laughed. And stars like Grant weren’t satisfied with huge salaries. With Uncle Sam taking nearly 90 percent in taxes, they demanded “ownership” to get more favorable capital-gains treatment. The contract system was kaput. Five years from now all the talent would be freelance, driving up the prices for the guys in demand.

  By nine A.M. Harry was already buzzed and bothered, so when his secretary, Anita Benitez, entered the office, he put on a positive face. “Como estas, Anita?”

  “Muy bueno, boss. How was your table last night?” The Jastrows had celebrated Maggie’s thirty-fifth birthday at La Rue on the Strip; to get a table, Anita had harassed owner Billy Wilkerson until he’d guaranteed them his personal booth.

  “Perfect! About nine o’clock, Bogie walked in with Lauren Bacall and saw us sitting in ‘his’ spot. It was as if the king of England had found a couple of commoners eating bag lunches on the throne.”

  The phone rang. “Mr. Cantwell calling from D.C.”

  Harry grabbed the receiver as Anita discreetly slipped out.

  “Hold on to your hat. The decision’s coming down today.”

  Harry took deep breaths. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes . . . well, almost.”

  “I thought they’d forgotten about us.” Or hoped they had. “Any hint of which way it went?”

  “That it took them so long is a good sign. It meant they listened to you. I’m headed over to the Old Ebbit to sweat it out. I’ll phone as soon as I hear.”

  There was no time to collect his thoughts because Harry was due at his weekly staff meeting with Balaban and the other senior movie executives. He decided not to alert anyone until he had decisive news, in case Mel’s information proved wrong. Gathering his files, he glanced at a photo on his desk of his family on a vacation in the Baja, their arms around the three-hundred-pound marlin they’d landed after a two-hour fight. Harry did a quick calculation. If he floored it, he could reach the Mexican border in three hours. In Ensenada it was easy to get new identity papers, then disappear into the hills. . . . The picture frame crashed to the floor. He cut himself on the broken glass.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Sheket!”

  AJ blinked under the stony stare of Rabbi Leon Ginsberg. “I made a mistake, huh?”

  “Do you not understand the meaning of the word silence?”

  AJ shuddered. Everything about the new rabbi was creepy—his German accent, the cloud of cigarette smoke suspended over his steel-wool hair, even the thick soles of his shoes, which looked like they could stomp someone to death. After escaping the Nazis, Ginsberg had been unemployed for a long time because there were too many émigré rabbis for the Jews in America. Maybe that’s why he was always in a bad mood. After finally getting a job at Beth Israel Temple, he had cracked down on the Hebrew school’s lax standards. It was just AJ’s luck to be among his first guinea pigs.

  “You are butchering our language.”

  He suspected that the rabbi was right, but it was hardly a crime. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Call me Rabbi. I am not a general. How old are you?” He knew the answer because he was testing AJ for his bar mitzvah in three weeks.

  “I’ll be thirteen on May twenty-second, Rabbi.”

  “Thirteen?” Ginsberg feigned disbelief, but the guy was no Edward G. Robinson. “I have yeladeen who read Hebrew better. Your instructor warned me that your preparatio
ns were shoddy. But what I am hearing simply will not do. Open your prayer book and try again.”

  “Baw-ruck a taw—”

  “Bah-ruch.”

  AJ hated failing. He had always reached milestones ahead of schedule, crawling at six months and walking at ten. By the time his family had moved to Los Angeles, he already knew how to read, so the principal had proposed skipping him directly into second grade. His parents had hesitated, but AJ had seen a chance to reach middle school a year early and had convinced them. He’d studied hard, competed aggressively, and held his own with his older classmates. But Hebrew seemed like a waste of time—after all, no one spoke it—so he shirked assignments. “Ku-ma a-do-noy, vei-fut-zu.”

  “Ve-YA-fut-su.”

  “Right. I knew that. Ve-YA-fut-su, oy-be—”

  “ ’Oy-be’? I don’t see any ‘oy-be.’ I see an oy-ve-khah.”

  Ominous silence. “Should I continue?” The man puffed and puffed on his cigarette, silently choosing his next form of torture. Maybe Ginsberg had learned his third degree from the SS. AJ decided to focus on something other than his interrogator, which was how Richard Conte had handled his inquisition in A Walk in the Sun.

  Golf was his favorite pastime, so AJ stared out the window to Los Angeles Country Club, across the street, and imagined the approach shot on the hole that bordered Wilshire Boulevard. He’d never played the course, because no Jews or film people were members, but after passing it on the way to school every day, he guessed he needed to hit an eight-iron from the bottom of the hill. The rabbi looked to see what had him so entranced. A foursome in knickers walked down the fairway. Boy, it must drive Ginsberg nuts after all the Nazi persecution to wind up a wedge shot away from another group of anti-Semites.

  “Look at me, Albert!”

  The man was meaner than Himmler. “Yes, sir—I mean, Rabbi.”

  “We Jews are the chosen people. Do you understand that?”

  Dad said people were special because of what they did, not how they were born. “I’m not sure I agree with—”