The Other Side of Me

SEVEN

I had never been inside a bus depot before my trip to New York in 1936. The Greyhound bus station had an air of excitement, with people going to and coming from cities all over the country. My bus seemed huge, with a washroom and comfortable seats. It was a four and a half day trip to New York. The long ride would have been tedious, but I was too busy dreaming about my fantastic future to mind.

When we pulled into the bus station in New York, I had thirty dollars in my pocket—money that I was sure Natalie and Otto could not spare.

I had telephoned ahead to the YMCA to reserve a room. It turned out to be small and drab, but it was only four dollars a week. Even so, I knew that the thirty dollars was not going to last very long.

I asked to see the manager of the YMCA.

‘I need a job,’ I told him, ‘and I need it right away. Do you know anyone who—?’

‘We have an employment service for our guests,’ he informed me.

‘Great. Is there anything available now?’

He reached for a sheet of paper behind the desk and scanned it. ‘There’s an opening for an usher at the RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street. Are you interested?’

Interested? At that moment my sole ambition in life was to be an usher at the RKO Jefferson on Fourteenth Street. ‘That’s just what I was looking for!’ I told him.

The manager wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘Take this to the theater in the morning.’

I had been in New York for less than one day and I already had a job. I phoned Natalie and Otto to tell them the news.

‘That’s a good omen,’ Natalie said. ‘You’re going to be a big success.’

I spent the first afternoon and evening exploring New York. It was a magical place, a bustling city that made Chicago seem provincial and drab. Everything was larger—the buildings, the marquees, the streets, the signs, the traffic, the crowds. My career.

The RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street, once a vaudeville house, was an old, two-story structure with a cashier’s booth in front. It was part of a chain of RKO theaters. Double features were common—patrons could see two movies back to back, for the price of one.

I walked thirty-nine blocks from the YMCA to the theater and handed the note I had been given to the theater manager.

He looked me over and said, ‘Have you ever ushered before?’

‘No, sir.’

He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you walk?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you know how to turn on a flashlight?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then you can usher. Your salary is $14.40 a week. You’ll work six days. Your hours are from four-twenty to midnight.’

‘That’s fine.’ It meant that I was free to have the whole morning and part of the afternoon to spend at the Brill Building, where the headquarters of the music business was.

‘Go into the staff changing room and see if you can find a uniform that fits you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I tried on an usher’s uniform and the manager looked at me and said, ‘That’s fine. Be sure to keep an eye on the balcony.’

‘The balcony?’

‘You’ll see. You’ll start tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’ And tomorrow I will begin my career as a songwriter.

The famous Brill Building was the holy of holies in the music business. Located at 1619 Broadway, at Forty-ninth Street, it was the center of Tin Pan Alley, where every important music publisher in the world was headquartered.

As I entered the building and wandered through the corridors, I heard the strains of ‘A Fine Romance,’ ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin,’ ‘Pennies from Heaven’…The names on the doors made my heart pound: Jerome Remick, Robbins Music Corporation, M. Witmark & Sons, Shapiro Bernstein & Company, and TB Harms—all the giants of the music industry. This was the fountainhead of musical talent. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern…They had all started here.

I walked into the TB Harms office and nodded to the man behind the desk. ‘Good morning. I’m Sidney Schech—Sheldon.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I wrote ‘‘My Silent Self.’’ You people were interested in publishing it.’

A look of recognition came over his face. ‘Oh, yes, we were.’

Were? ‘Aren’t you still?’

‘Well, it’s been on the air too much. Horace Heidt has been playing it a lot. Do you have anything new?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I can come back with some songs tomorrow morning, Mister…?’

‘Tasker.’

At four-twenty that afternoon I was in my usher’s uniform, escorting people down the aisle to their seats. The manager had been right. This was a job that anyone could do. The only thing that kept it from being boring was the movies that were playing. When things were slow, I could sit at the back of the theater and watch them.

The first double bill I saw there was A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The coming attractions were A Star is Born, with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and Dodsworth with Walter Huston.

At midnight, when my shift was over, I went back to my hotel. The room no longer looked small and dreary. I knew it was going to turn into a palace. In the morning I would take my songs to TB Harms, and the only question was which ones they would publish first—‘The Ghost of My Love,’ ‘I Will If I Want To,’ ‘A Handful of Stars,’ ‘When Love Has Gone’…

At eight-thirty the following morning I was standing in front of the TB Harms Publishing Company, waiting for the doors to open. At nine o’clock Mr. Tasker arrived.

He saw the large envelope in my hand. ‘I see you brought some songs.’

I grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’

We walked into his office. I handed the envelope to him and started to sit down.

He stopped me. ‘You don’t have to wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll look these over when I get a chance. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?’

I gave him my best professional songwriter’s nod. ‘Right.’ I would have to wait another twenty-four hours for my future to begin.

At four-twenty I was back in my uniform at the RKO Jefferson. The manager had been right about the balcony. There was a lot of giggling going on up there. A young man and woman were seated in the last row. As I started toward them he moved away from her and she hastily pulled down her short dress. I walked away and did not go upstairs again. To hell with the manager. Let them have their fun.

The following morning I was at the Harms office at eight o’clock, in case Mr. Tasker came in early. He arrived at nine and opened the door.

‘Good morning, Sheldon.’

I tried to judge from his tone whether he had liked my songs. Was it just a casual ‘good morning’ or did I detect a note of excitement in his voice?

We stepped inside the office.

‘Did you have a chance to listen to my songs, Mr. Tasker?’

He nodded. ‘They’re very nice.’

My face lit up. I waited to hear what else he was going to say. He was silent.

‘Which one did you like best?’ I prodded.

‘Unfortunately they’re not what we’re looking for just now.’

That was the most depressing sentence I had ever heard in my life.

‘But surely some of them—’ I began.

He reached behind his desk, took out my envelope and handed it to me. ‘I’ll always be glad to listen when you’ve got something new.’

And that was the end of the interview. But it’s not an end, I thought. It’s just the beginning.

I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon going around to the offices of the other publishers in the building.

‘Have you ever had a song published?’

‘No, sir, but I—’

‘We don’t take on new songwriters. Come back when you’ve had something published.’

How was I going to get a song published if publishers wouldn’t publish any of my songs until I had a song published? In the weeks that followed, when I was not at the theater I spent my time in my room, writing.

At the theater, I loved watching the wonderful movies we showed there. I saw The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, My Man Godfrey, and Shall We Dance? with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They transported me to another world, a world of glamour and excitement, elegance and wealth.

My money was running out. I received a check from Natalie for twenty dollars and I sent it back. I knew that without the additional income I had been earning, and Otto not working, life would be even more difficult for them. I wondered whether I was being selfish in thinking of myself when they needed help.

When my new batch of songs was ready, I took them to the same publishers. They looked at them, and gave me the same infuriating answer: ‘Come back when you’ve had something published.’

In one lobby, a wave of depression hit me. Everything seemed hopeless. I did not intend to spend my life as an usher, and no one was interested in my songs.

This is an excerpt from a letter to my parents, dated November 2, 1936:

I want all of you to be as happy as possible. My happiness is an elusive balloon, waiting for me to grab it, floating from side to side with the wind, across oceans, big green meadows, trees and brooks, rustic pastoral scenes and rain-swept sidewalks. First high, barely visible, far out of reach, then low, almost within reach, blown here and there by the vagaries of a playful wind, a wind one moment heartless and sadistic, the next gently compassionate. The wind of fate, and in it rests our lives.

One morning, in the lobby of the YMCA, I saw a young man about my age sitting on a couch, furiously writing. He was humming a melody, and seemed to be writing a lyric. I walked up to him, curious.

‘Are you a songwriter?’ I asked.

He looked up. ‘Yes.’

‘So am I. Sidney Sheldon.’

He held out a hand. ‘Sidney Rosenthal.’

That was the beginning of a long friendship. We spent the whole morning talking and it was as though we were soul mates.

When I went to work the following day, the theater manager called me into his office. ‘Our barker is sick. I want you to get into his uniform and take his place until he gets back. You’ll work days. All you have to do is walk up and down in front of the theater and say, ‘‘Immediate seating. No waiting for seats.’’ The job pays more.’

I was thrilled—not because of the promotion, but because of the raise. I would send the extra money home.

‘How much does it pay?’

‘Fifteen-forty a week.’

A dollar a week raise.

When I put on the uniform, I looked like a general in the Russian army. I had nothing against my job as a barker, but could not stand the boredom of saying, ‘Immediate seating—no waiting for seats,’ over and over and over. I decided to dramatize it.

I began to yell, in a stentorian voice, ‘An exciting double feature—The Texas Rangers and The Man Who Lived Twice. How does a man live twice, ladies and gentlemen? Come in and find out. You’ll have an afternoon you will never forget. Absolutely no waiting for seats. Hurry, before we’re sold out!’

The real barker never did show up and I kept the job. The only difference from before was that I now worked mornings and early afternoons. I still had time to go see all the music publishers who were uninterested in my songs. Sidney Rosenthal and I wrote a few songs together. They received a lot of praise and no contracts.

At the end of the week I would usually find myself with only ten cents in my pocket. I had to get from the theater to the Brill Building, and I had to decide whether to have a hot dog for five cents and a Coca-Cola for five cents and walk the thirty-five blocks, or have a hot dog, no Coke, and take the subway uptown for a nickel. I got used to alternating the routine.

A few days after I started working as a barker, business at the theater began to pick up.

I was out in front of the theater, yelling, ‘You won’t want to miss Conquest, with Greta Garbo and Charles Boyer. And there’s another treat for you—Nothing Sacred, with Carole Lombard and Fredric March. These are the world’s greatest lovers, who will teach you how to be great lovers. And admission is only thirty-five cents. Two lessons in love for thirty-five cents. It’s the bargain of the century. Hurry, hurry, hurry, get your tickets now!’

And the customers came.

With the next films, I had even more fun. ‘Come and see the most fantastic double bill in the history of show business—Night Must Fall, with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell. Keep your overcoats on because you’re going to get cold chills. And with it, as an extra treat, is the new Tarzan picture,’ at which point I gave a loud Tarzan yell, and I watched people from a block away turning around to see what was happening, and coming back toward the theater and buying tickets. The manager was standing outside, watching me.

At the end of the following week, a stranger walked up to me.

‘Where is the son of a bitch from Chicago?’

I did not like his tone. ‘Why?’

‘The manager of the RKO Theater chain told all the barkers we all have to come and watch the bastard and do what he does.’

‘I’ll tell him when he comes back.’ I turned away and said, in a conversational voice, ‘Immediate seating inside. No waiting for seats. Immediate seating inside. No waiting for seats.’

The advantage of working days was that while I still had time to see the music publishers, my evenings were free, and at least three times a week I went to the theater to see plays, sitting in the cheapest balcony seats. I saw Room Service, Abie’s Irish Rose, Tobacco Road, You Can’t Take It With You…The variety was endless.

Sidney Rosenthal, my new friend, had found a job, and one day he suggested, ‘Why don’t we pool our money and get out of this place?’

‘Great idea.’

One week later we left the YMCA and moved into the Grand Union Hotel on Thirty-second Street. We had two bedrooms and a living room, and after the little room at the YMCA it seemed like the height of luxury.

In a letter Natalie reminded me that we had a distant cousin living in New York who had a checkroom concession at the Glen Cove Casino, on Long Island. She suggested that I give him a call. His name was Clifford Wolfe. I called him and he could not have been more cordial.

‘I heard you were in New York somewhere. What are you doing?’

I told him.

‘How would you like to work in the checkroom for me, three nights a week?’

‘I’d love it,’ I said. ‘And I have a buddy who—’

‘I can use him, too.’

And so three nights a week Sidney Rosenthal and I went out to Long Island to the Glen Cove Casino and earned three dollars apiece checking hats and coats. We also scrounged as much food as we could from the buffet table.

A car carrying other employees of the casino picked us up and took us to Long Island, an hour and a half away. At the end of the evening, when we were through working, we were taken back to our hotel. The extra money I made I sent to Natalie. She invariably sent it back.

One evening, as I walked into the checkroom, Clifford Wolfe stared at me, frowning. ‘That suit you’re wearing…’ It was torn and shabby.

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t you have anything nicer?’

I shook my head, embarrassed. My wardrobe would have fit into a briefcase. ‘I’m afraid not.’

‘We’ll take care of that,’ he said.

The next night, when I arrived at Glen Cove, Clifford Wolfe handed me a blue serge suit and said, ‘I want you to go to my tailor and have this fitted for you.’

From that time on, whenever I went to Glen Cove I wore Clifford Wolfe’s suit.

The inexplicable changes in my moods continued. I was either unreasonably elated or suicidal. In an excerpt from a letter to Natalie and Otto, dated December 26, 1936, I wrote:

At the moment I haven’t much heart for this fight. Whether I am going to stick it out, I don’t know. If I were more sure of my ability, it would be so much easier.

One month later, I wrote:

Well, as far as songs are concerned, it looks as if we might click. Chappell heard one of our new numbers, told us to rewrite the bridge and bring it back. They are quite particular and their liking our numbers is encouraging.

I had had two episodes of my disc tearing loose, and both times I had been in bed for three days. It was in the middle of a period of euphoria that my future opened wide. It was on one of my rounds in the Brill Building that I encountered a short, dapper man with a friendly smile. I had no idea then who he was. He happened to be in the Remick office when the manager was listening to one of my songs.

The manager shook his head. ‘That’s not what we’re looking—’

‘This could be a big hit,’ I implored him. ‘When love is gone, love is gone, the stars forget to glow, and we can hear much sadder songs than we were meant to know…’

The manager shrugged.

The stranger with the friendly smile was studying me. ‘Let me see that,’ he said.

I handed him the sheet of music and he scanned it.