The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up by David Rensin Read Free Book Online

brother joined the army, one the navy, and one the marines to avenge our brother’s death, and we moved to California, where my brothers were being trained. My mother came to California right from the hospital so she could be with her children. I later entered the army.
    My first day at William Morris, I took the streetcar from Gramercy Place, got off at Cañon Drive three or four blocks away, and walked to the office. I carried my lunch in a brown bag, probably a chicken salad or tuna fish sandwich my mother had made.
    My wardrobe was one pair of slacks, a bow tie, a regular tie, and a sport jacket I’d bought at Jerry Rothschild’s, a top haberdashery. It cost forty dollars. I took home twenty-one dollars and forty cents a week and paid off my jacket at two dollars a week.
    It wasn’t my first job—before William Morris I’d worked at the Pennsylvania Drug Company in New York, delivering prescriptions for a nickel a delivery; I was lucky if I made fifteen bucks a week—but I guess I’d always been interested in show business. Back East when I was nine and ten, I would take milk bottles to the grocery store, collect the money, then take a streetcar to the Riverside Theater on Sunday afternoons to see the talent shows. Sometimes on the weekend I’d go to the Loews State Theater on Broadway and see Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra. I’d see Mickey Rooney or Judy Garland at the Strand. I’d go to the Music Hall. When I started at William Morris, my interest showed. I’d even come into the office on Saturday. I was the only mailboy, but I was told that if I worked out well, they’d like me to be the first trainee in the Los Angeles office.
    My uncle Johnny’s two sons also worked in the office, but I didn’t want people to think I’d gotten the job just because I was his nephew. I wanted to get ahead on my own. As it happened, Abe Lastfogel became my mentor, so I didn’t have to be wholly identified with my uncle.
    An agent named Ben Holzman was also like a father to me. He handled Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor and the Marx Brothers. Every Monday night he’d take me to the Orpheum Theatre.
    At the end of my first day they gave me the keys to a 1941 Ford twoseater coupe to take the mail to the post office. We were at 202 North Cañon, and the post office was a few blocks away. I said, “I’d like to go, but I’m only fifteen and I don’t have a driver’s license.” Then I started to worry. Can I still work here? They promised to work out something, and Doris Appel, a girl who worked in the mailroom, got the job of driving me to the post office at night. When I had to deliver something to a studio, I took the streetcar into Hollywood, then walked to Columbia and RKO and Paramount to pick up checks. I got to know everyone in town, as well as what our clients earned. Knowing that information was a stepping-stone to my being promoted: when I served coffee to a group of agents having a picture meeting, one said so-and-so got three thousand a picture, and the other said, “No, it’s thirty-five something.” I said, “Sir, it’s thirty-eight fifty,” and I was right.
    When I was older, I got to drive Lana Turner to meet L. B. Mayer. Both the guard and the receptionist said, “Oh, hi, Mr. Brokaw. Hi, Miss Turner.” Being greeted by name, particularly in front of Lana Turner, was very impressive.
    I also used to pick up Marilyn Monroe, on Harper Avenue and Fountain, and take her early in the morning to her acting coach at Twentieth Century Fox. She was going around with Johnny Hyde then. I took her out often on job interviews. I remember selling her for fiftyfive dollars a day for a movie. Paramount used to have an audition room where people would perform; they could see you, but you could not see them. I took Marilyn there and I asked the man in charge, “Would you be interested in her?”
    He wasn’t. He said, “She’s just another blonde.”
    When she scored big, I ran into him one day. His