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  “It would violate my covenant with God to bar mitzvah anyone who did not care enough to learn the language of his blessed forefathers.”

  AJ slumped in his chair. “You’re not going to . . . you mean—”

  “It isn’t that bad. You’ll attend my Torah tutorials this summer and we’ll postpone your bar mitzvah until the fall.”

  He’d never envisioned so harsh a sentence. Ginsberg left the room to inform AJ’s mom, who was waiting downstairs. His folks would have to explain to everyone that the party was off because their son was lazy and irresponsible. They’d have to cancel their vacation to the Canadian Rockies to stay home while he went to summer school, instead of summer camp. How could they trust someone who failed because he didn’t try? Although AJ prided himself on being too old to cry, he did so. Now he was weak as well as worthless. He choked on his shame until breathing was like sucking air through a soggy straw.

  “Did I hear you say my son is dumb?” In all his misery, AJ took heart hearing his mother’s voice through the door and quickly wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve.

  “You misunderstood me, Mrs. Jastrow.” The rabbi reentered his office.

  “Oh. Then maybe you’re saying I’m dumb.”

  With her rich red hair and canary yellow dress, his mom looked like the flame at the tip of an explosive fuse. Ginsberg retreated as if she might blow at any moment. “I didn’t say that either of you is dumb. Your son simply isn’t ready.”

  “He’s almost thirteen. He was ready for his bris, he’ll be ready for his bar mitzvah. It’s a matter of showing up.”

  “No, no! It doesn’t work that way. Albert cannot chant his haftorah. He can’t even read it.” He emphasized the words as if talking to a foreigner.

  Maggie wheeled around. “AJ, why can’t you chant this . . . this thing?”

  “I have a block. “

  “A block? Well, buster, you better unblock because two hundred guests are coming to hear you knock their socks off. And like any performer worth his salt, you’re going to give a hell of a show. I don’t want to hear excuses about not being ready.”

  “Mrs. Jastrow, three weeks is insufficient time for a student of Albert’s modest abilities.”

  “ ‘Modest abilities’?” She advanced until she was inches from his face. “AJ has always been an A student. So if he can’t do his havatorah—”

  “Haftorah.”

  “Exactly . . . then maybe it’s not his fault; maybe the problem is the sorry educational approach employed by this temple.”

  “I agree, that’s why I’m insisting—”

  “Herr Ginsberg, I read your C.V. when we hired you. I understand you studied in the most distinguished seminaries in prewar Europe. We must look like country bumpkins to you, but frankly, you’ll fare better if you remember that most of us in Hollywood prefer a more jovial Judaism.” He started to interrupt again, but she shushed him with a wave of her finger. “My husband and I have made a nonrefundable deposit for the ballroom at the Hotel Bel-Air three weeks from tomorrow. We’re celebrating AJ’s birthday that night and you’re cordially invited. If you can also bar mitzvah him that morning . . . perfect. If you can’t, we’ll survive.” AJ thought his mother was finished. “Unfortunately, if you insist on canceling the bar mitzvah, my Uncle Adolph—as in Zukor—will be deeply disappointed. AJ, come on, you’ve got a real school to get to.”

  Her topper had checkmated the rabbi. The temple’s elders wouldn’t offend the chairman of Paramount just because his nephew didn’t know an aleph from a gimel. AJ could see the man fume, but the anger had a shade he couldn’t identify. On the way to their car AJ’s relief was replaced by embarrassment that he needed an adult’s help. “Mom, how am I going to learn this thing?”

  “We’ll write it out phonetically and you’ll memorize it. That’s how I did it when I played a Spanish prostitute on Broadway. But whatever you do, don’t tell your father.”

  “Definitely not.” AJ could already picture his downcast eyes. “Thanks.”

  “Oh, fiddle-faddle.”

  She loved to imitate Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. People said they looked alike. As his mother drove west on Wilshire, AJ glanced back at the temple. Was Ginsberg staring at them from his window? Then it hit him—the rabbi’s expression in the office was the same one Rhett Butler wore just before he carried Scarlett O’Hara up the stairs to the bedroom. His skin crawled at the idea that a strange man found his mom sexy. But it didn’t faze her. “That rabbi’s a bully,” she warned. “I don’t ever want to hear of you bullying anyone. It’s a miserable trait.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Gentlemen, we have a crisis.” Barney Balaban grimly waved a letter in front of the three top vice presidents in Paramount’s movie division. “An hour ago I received this special delivery from Ted Gamble.”

  “What the hell does he want?” Harry spoke too quickly, his pitch too high. Gamble was president of the Theatre Owners of America, the organization of independent exhibitors whose antitrust complaints had fueled the Supreme Court case. Did he have a scoop on the verdict?

  Balaban put on thick reading glasses. “ ‘Dear Barney, I’m writing to you and the other studio chiefs about an issue of grave concern to my constituents. Television aerials are sprouting on roofs across the nation. Although there are only a million sets in home use, the medium eats away at our audience like a cancer. But we can halt its spread if we act together immediately.’ ”

  Harry smiled ironically. Next to divorcement, nothing incited anxiety among movie executives faster than a discussion about TV.

  “ ‘People are already complaining about the sorry programs available on television. How many hours of professional wrestling and bad variety acts can anyone watch! The station owners have only one recourse. They have begun offering hefty sums to independent producers for the rights to show their old films. Fortunately, the overwhelming supply of such movies remains with bastions like Paramount. We ask you to announce publicly that your studio will never sell or license its old films to any station. This stance will starve TV to death. Best regards, Theodore Gamble.’ ”

  “The guy’s overreacting,” Frank Freeman growled. At six foot five, with a shock of white hair, Paramount’s head of production resembled a snappish polar bear. “Movies are the finest entertainment known to man. Television can’t touch us.”

  “Isn’t that what vaudeville impresarios said about radio?” Balaban asked sourly.

  “And what silent movie stars said about the talkies,” Harry added. “No one can halt a technology as powerful as television.”

  His certainty was born of personal experience. Six months ago the Jastrows had splurged, spending four hundred dollars to buy a ten-inch Dumont. Maggie couldn’t keep enough coffee and Danish for visitors who came by for a peek and stayed for hours, and AJ’s popularity at school soared with his daily reports on last night’s shows. With TV in the family, Harry and Maggie stayed home more often, cuddling in front of the set in the dark. Harry still had carpet burns on his knees from “christening” the family room while the national anthem signaled the end of the day’s programming. God help the movies when the men who returned from the war discovered that television was an aphrodisiac.

  “Am I hearing you right, Jastrow?” Paul Herzog lived to fight. At thirty-seven, he was in charge of Paramount’s theaters and selling film to exhibitors. His muscled arms, washboard stomach, and broken nose were holdovers from his years as an amateur middleweight. “Are you saying that we should ignore the growth of TV?”

  “No, I’m saying we need to accept it and find a way to make it work for us,” Harry replied. “Gamble’s got his head in the sand.”

  “Have you ever sold any film?”

  “You know I haven’t. But people in our industry feel I know something about exhibition.”

  “What you know is what’s printed on contracts. I sold film—person to person, house to house. While you were attending some Fancy Dan college, I traveled the Midwes
t, sleeping in fleabag hotels, eating overcooked pork chops, getting to know local exhibitors.”

  “For the record, Paul, I went to City College. What’s your point?”

  “These men are scared. You would be too, Jastrow, if you had every dime invested in a building that could be crawling with cobwebs next year. They’re our partners and when you’re under attack, you don’t desert your allies. That’s how we won the war. Eisenhower understood that.”

  “And Eisenhower just sold his rights to television,” Harry countered. Ike’s sale of Crusade in Europe to ABC for a twenty-six-part teleseries distressed the studios. “How can you talk about loyal partners? The exhibitors sued us.”

  “Gentlemen!” Barney hated confrontation. He grabbed a bear claw from a pile of pastries and began wolfing it down. “The question is what do we do about this demand.”

  “We could certainly use the licensing revenues to prop up our profits, especially if box office continues dropping,” Harry noted. “And the movies in question are so old they’re practically worthless.”

  “That’s shortsighted,” Herzog countered. “And I’ll tell you why.”

  “I’ll bet you will,” Harry muttered to himself.

  “Television may be here to stay, but licensing will cannibalize business from our own theaters.” He smiled at Harry. “Assuming we still own theaters after the Supreme Court decision.”

  “Don’t even raise that specter.” Balaban turned white. With his jaundiced eyes, he looked like the glass of buttermilk from which he sipped. “I won’t tolerate negative thinking on that subject.”

  “Tell Gamble to get lost,” Harry advised. “This is an internal Paramount matter.”

  “Jastrow, you’re missing the big picture—literally. TV’s future isn’t in the home. The stations will never make enough money from advertising to provide decent entertainment. And nothing looks good on that tiny box anyway.” Paul circled the conference table, selling his idea as if it were next year’s blockbuster. “TV’s future is in the theaters. Hear me out. If we install large-screen television—I’m talking forty feet wide—in our showcase houses, we can broadcast special events like the Joe Lewis–Jersey Joe Walcott fight. People will pay a huge premium to see that kind of event, especially with a television picture that’s bigger than life. I’ve convinced the independent exhibitors to go with us on this. Let’s not anger them over the licensing issue and take the chance they’ll oppose us on theater TV. My advice, Barney, is to make the declaration they want loud and clear.”

  The round had ended, but Harry kept punching. “The whole value of TV is its convenience in the home.”

  “Suppose you’re right about the future, Harry,” Freeman interrupted. “We should buy ABC before Fox does.”

  “The FCC will never let a studio own a network. But we can accomplish the same thing by providing the programming. No one can do it better than us. Licensing our old films is a perfect stopgap until we can gear up for original TV production.”

  Herzog recoiled as if struck by a low blow. “That’s abject surrender—like selling A-bombs to the Russkies.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Maybe lawyers like you don’t love movies, Jastrow, but us guys in the trenches damn well do.”

  “What the hell do you know about trenches?” A 4-F deferment had kept Herzog out of the war, despite his fighting shape.

  Paul hovered. “Don’t you dare question my courage!”

  Harry rose to defend himself. “Then don’t insult my loyalty.”

  “Sit down, both of you!” Balaban shouted. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior.” When the intercom buzzed, Barney caught his breath. “Harry, your secretary says there’s an urgent call.”

  The connection was so bad that at first Harry couldn’t understand what Mel Cantwell was saying. He heard “seven to one,” but was that for or against? The static cleared. “We were scorched. They upheld the lower-court ruling and sent it back to the judge to establish procedures for divorcement.”

  Harry’s weak knee caved. “Bob Wright won’t quit until he makes us sell every one of our theaters.”

  “That’s the word.”

  Harry wanted to curse the Court, but his sense of equity didn’t allow him the satisfaction. “If you were on the bench, Mel, how would you have voted? Hollywood had a hopeless case.”

  “I know that, you know that.” Cantwell’s voice cracked. “Let’s hope your bosses reach the same conclusion.”

  CHAPTER 5

  AJ rolled the dice. Double threes teetered precariously on the edge of the board—and hung there. It clearly wasn’t his family’s day. He walked his top hat six spaces, till it landed on Boardwalk. “I’m busted, Ray.”

  Ray Stark savored a victory in Monopoly as much as the thrill of signing a hot new client. “You played with a lot of smarts, kid, but you should have built hotels on Marvin Gardens when you had the chance.”

  “I didn’t have enough cash.”

  “You had the cash, but not the guts to use it.”

  That hurt. Ray’s postmortem reflected his philosophy that you conquered the world before it conquered you. Although he and Dad looked at those things differently, they were best friends. The Rabbit—Ray had gotten his nickname because of his outsized teeth and cheeks and Munchkin size—was like a mischievous older brother. A few weeks ago he’d tried to sign an actress named Sarah Campbell, but Sarah’s niece, Bunny, was visiting for the day, so Ray had asked AJ to come along to keep the girl busy. He held Bunny’s hand on the Ferris wheel and plied her with cotton candy while the Rabbit retired to a nearby motel for his meeting. All hell broke loose, however, when his mom found out, screaming that Ray was going to hell for using a minor as a beard. That didn’t make sense because AJ was still too young to need a shave.

  “Another game, kid?”

  “I hope those guys on the Supreme Court die. Dad did great, but they had their minds made up. I bet the attorney general paid them off.”

  Ray laughed. “You’re watching too many gangster movies. How about hearts?”

  It was that or homework. “Deal.”

  Shortly after seven P.M. Harry pulled into a driveway two streets above the Beverly Hills Hotel, killed the engine, and stared at his New Orleans colonial. Sandwiched between a new French Regency and a half-finished Georgian, the house somehow fit perfectly. Maybe the lush foliage knitted the styles together. Because of the boom in postwar construction, it had taken two years to build and had consumed much of the Jastrows’ savings. Ninety-nine nights out of a hundred it was his haven. But tonight it was a two-story headache with a thirty-year mortgage. For the right offer, he’d sell on the spot, take off to a deserted island, and live under palm trees and stars.

  Harry’s fantasies of escape had begun in the war. Before each battle he planned his exact route, even took the first steps, then remembered the guys who counted on him—and the fate of the soldier in The Red Badge of Courage. His commanding officers bragged that no one hung tougher than Lieutenant Jastrow. But the urge to run and hide had accompanied him back to civilian life, growing more frequent the higher Harry rose at Paramount. Last week he’d skipped out of work early, driven to Long Beach, and watched ships steam from the port to faraway places. That was just crazy. He needed to talk—but to whom?

  Balaban had reacted to the verdict by disappearing into the bathroom for fifteen minutes. When he’d emerged, he’d instructed—no, ordered—Harry to call Robert Wright and cut a deal in which Paramount sold a partial interest in their wholly owned theaters to the independents. It was the compromise Harry had previously proposed but Balaban couldn’t hear it. They had to move, Barney claimed, before Warners or Fox got the same bright idea—as if those guys weren’t already scheming to save their butts.

  When Harry trudged into the kitchen, Maggie was loading their dishwasher. The damn thing was a waste of money because you had to scrape every plate clean before putting it in. “You must be wrecked,” she said softly.


  He welcomed her hug, sudsy hands and all. “The news is all bad.”

  “AJ’s playing cards with Ray. I’ll get him so you guys can work. Come up as soon as you’re finished.” She started to leave. “Here’s the good news . . . I love you.”

  Harry’s immediate concern was that the verdict would provoke a steep sell-off in the stock of Paramount and the other majors, so he had called Stark earlier, seeking advice on the best angle to place on the Court decision. Although he was now a successful agent, Ray had started as a publicist at Warner Bros. and possessed shrewd instincts for dealing with the press. Harry scanned his draft release, which expressed “profound disappointment” with the ruling but emphasized the studios’ “respect for the law”—as if they had a choice. An “acceptable compromise” would hopefully enable them to maintain control of most of their theaters. Harry added a line stressing the solidarity of the companies.

  “That should calm down Wall Street,” Stark noted.

  “What are you doing with your portfolio?”

  “Selling every movie stock I own.”

  Harry smiled for the first time all day.

  “I covered Vince Golden at Variety, as well as Peter Dames at the Journal,” Ray explained. “The New York Times, Box Office, everyone’s putting a good face on it.” He paused uncomfortably.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “I got this strange call from Mark Sillman at Film Weekly. I didn’t pay much attention because the guy’s a maverick and the paper’s a rag, but he got a tip that the studios were furious that their legal team blew the case. He mentioned Cantwell in D.C.—and you.”

  “Me?”

  “Especially you—something about your not being aggressive in going after Bob Wright at the hearing. I killed the story, saying I spoke to Nick Schenk at MGM and Jack Warner and they blamed Truman because he hates Hollywood. Sillman bought my explanation.” Stark paced the room. “But we need to find out who fed him the information before they feed you to the fish.”

  “Check out Spyros Skouras,” Harry advised. “When I proposed my settlement idea, he complained I was a ‘fellow traveler’ with exhibitors.”