Hill of beans, p.22
Hill of Beans, page 22
But I wasn’t paying much attention to all that, because in the middle of everything was the raised platform with ropes all around it, where I knew that at any moment I was going to have to perform. Meanwhile, Bugs Bunny—he must have been nine feet tall—was dancing around in the ring:
The tall man with the high hat
And the whiskers on his chin
Will soon be knocking on your door
And you ought to be in.
“Abby! Abby!” That was Hedda. She was pulling on the sleeve of my robe. “Did I hear right? Did Jack just say he was going to Moscow? Why, that’s the capital of the Soviet Union! It’s full of Communists! Is that man sending him there? He’s practically a card-carrying member himself. I’ve got more questions for that boss of yours. Plenty of them.”
Any bonds today?
Bonds of freedom
That’s what I’m selling
Any bonds today?
“For example, something else Jack said. Just six months ago. About how he warned him. Warned who? The president? Pearl Harbor?” I felt my arm was about to come out of its socket, the way she was yanking at me. “Don’t you clam up on me. You were there. At Union Station.”
Just then, and luckily, a bell sounded, and a man in a white shirt and a little black bow tie climbed through the elasticized ropes into what I knew was a boxing ring. I looked closer. Broken nose, cauliflower ears. Ridge of bone above the eyes.
“Why,” said Hedda, “that’s Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom. Look at him. You can see the animal side.”
The bell rang three more times. “Ladeeeeze and gentlemen! Ladeeeeze and gentlemen! Welcome to our championship bout!”
“What championship bout?” asked Hedda. “Why am I always the last person to know what—Oh, there he is! You-hoo! Jack! Yoo-hoo! Jack Warner!”
It was the Chief, all right. He had jumped up at one corner of the ring and was waving his arms at the crowd. “All right, everybody! All right! Goddammit! They can’t hear me. Rosenbloom! Ring that fucking bell!”
But it wasn’t the ex-champ who operated the bell; it was Lorre, the actor, who had a little hammer that he brought down on the brass gong.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Listen, everybody! Lunch hour is over—and so is this rally. We’ve got pictures to make. Let’s get back to work!”
Before anyone could react, Miss Kaiser, who was mostly on the outside of her skimpy swimming suit, climbed up on the platform and began to parade around the ropes; she was holding a placard with a big number one on it. The crowd broke into whistles and catcalls, as if they were infantrymen at a base. She smiled with red lips and waved.
“I know who that is,” said Hedda. “And she’s no dumb blonde. Believe me, she knows plenty.”
The Chief turned to that card girl. “Get out of here and get out of here now,” he commanded. “Or you’re on suspension. That goes for the rest of you. You’ve had your fun. War or no war, this isn’t a charity.”
Slapsie, who was under contract at another studio, motioned to little Lorre, who struck the bell three more times. “Your attention, ladeeeze and gentlemen! In this corner, wearing green trunks, a former contender and local favorite, Abdul the Terrible Turk Maljan!”
I find it difficult to describe my emotions at that moment. It had been almost thirty years since I was last introduced in that manner, with the clang of the bell and the roar of the crowd. And it was a roar, louder by far than when I had stepped into the ring against Dummy Jordan, a fight I should have won but lost on points. I have a lot of friends in the Warner Bros. community.
“Are you really wearing green trunks?” That was Hedda.
But I was already pushing through the crowd and making my way to the ring. I was touched because the musicians were playing the “Istiklâl Marsi,” our national anthem:
Fear not, the crimson banner that waves
In this glorious dawn—
“Where do you think you’re going?” said the Chief as I started to climb onto the platform. “Go put your clothes on and get back to the office.”
“But Chief—”
“No buts—or you’ll be out on yours. Get moving.”
Slapsie Maxie once more cupped his hands to his mouth. “And in this corner, wearing blue-and-white trunks, the NCAA Intercollegiate Champion of 1929, the Battling Bantamweight, Julius Julius Epstein!”
“You’re the boss, Chief,” I said, while I started to climb back to the ground. “I guess I’ll just lose by default.”
“Like hell you will!” he shouted. “It’s one of them! You’re going to beat that Epstein bastard’s brains out—and not only that, I’m going to be your second.”
The studio orchestra struck up another tune, to which a few people in the crowd sang along:
Fight on, State
Strike your gait
And win!
Fight on, on on on on,
Fight on
Penn State!
Julius J. climbed into the ring, slipped off his robe, and began to dance around on his matchstick legs. He was indeed wearing blue-and-white trunks. Philip G., his twin, slipped between the ropes as well. But he kept his robe on and went to sit down on the stool opposite me.
Once more Karelena Kaiser, with a bullseye on her breast, pranced around the four sides of the enclosure, holding up the sign for round one.
“I admit it,” said the Chief. “This is good publicity for the girl. I had to promise her a part in Edge of Darkness. A STORY INCOMPARABLE OF A PEOPLE UNCONQUERABLE. She plays a Norwegian. German, Norwegian. What’s the difference?”
The referee beckoned to Julius J. and the Terrible Turk.
“Take his head off,” growled the Chief. “Chew up his liver. That’ll teach them to come in at noon.”
We walked up to Slapsie in the center of the ring. “I want a good, clean match between you two. No shlogn in the kichkes or the beytsim. Or in back of the kop. When I say tsebrekn, don’t give me any tsuris: break. In case of a untergeyn—”
“Untergeyn?” I inquired.
“Knockdown, shmegege: go to a neutral corner. Most important, oyshitn zikh at all times. Farsheteyn? Did I make myself clear? Any questions?”
We shook our heads.
“Okay, touch gloves and come out at the bell.”
We went back to our corners. Then at the same moment we both turned around and said, “What gloves?”
A thousand people broke into laughter. That was followed by a loud Honk! and who should climb into the ring but Harpo Marx. He had two sets of gloves around his neck and he went first over to J. J. E. and put them on him. Then he started over to my corner, where, instead of the Terrible Turk giving a massage to the executive producer of Warner Bros., the executive producer of Warner Bros. was giving a massage to me. He was chopping away at my legs with the edge of his hands like a butcher tenderizing a rump roast. Kill him, murder him, slaughter him, crucify him: that was what he was saying with each whack of his hand.
Up came Harpo and tied on the mitts. Then he reached out to shake hands with the Chief, and what came out of his sleeve was a fifth glove, followed by a waterfall of nuts and bolts and springs and sprockets and at last a big horseshoe made out of steel. Harpo plucked it up and stuffed it inside the glove. Gookie.
“Hey!” cried the Chief from where he was squatting. “We haven’t got all day. Let’s get this show on the road.”
With that, Julius J. stood up and so did the Terrible T. Miss Kaiser held up the sign once more and made a sort of bow to all four directions of the compass. Then Lorre, grinning like the murderer in M, struck the bell with his hammer.
Clang!
This is what happened next. The Battling Bantamweight, though he looked more like a flyweight to me, came buzzing out of his corner and rotating his gloves in the air. I stood there awhile and let him flick at my abdomen and my arms and the old iron chin. But I knew the Chief was in a hurry so I wound up to deliver the haymaker, at which J. J. E. began to backpedal and hide behind Slapsie Maxie, who I have a lot of respect for as a former world champ of my division. This was a frustrating moment. No matter which way the referee turned, Epstein stayed right behind him. Left. Right. Forward. Back. He stuck to Maxie just like a shadow—or, and suddenly this came to me, like the little tramp in City Lights. I’ll put it a different way: the whole thing had been scripted, like by a choreographer, but no one had given the lines to me.
“Kill him! Murder him! Wipe him off the face of the earth!”
Everybody—first Maxie and then Julius Julius—turned toward my corner to see who had uttered such terrible words. But I already knew, which gave me the opportunity to lash out like lightning and land my knockout punch.
Down went the Nittany Lion, flat on his back. What a shout from the crowd. But none louder than the one from my trainer or cut man or whatever.
“Drinks for everybody!”
In an instant Slapsie Maxie motioned me to a neutral corner and began the count.
“Eyns! Tsvey! Dray! Fir!”
At just that moment Lorre consulted his stopwatch and raised his hammer to ring the bell.
“Don’t you dare!” came that same voice from the corner of the Terrible Turk. “I’m warning you! Suspension!”
Mr. Moto had to think fast. He put down his hammer.
Just then, while everyone, including me, was distracted, somebody came up behind me and tapped my shoulder. Who should appear before me but Julius Julius Epstein, back on his feet and rotating his gloves like a fighting kangaroo.
“Foul! Foul! Foul!” That was the Chief. “It isn’t Julie. It’s the other one!”
What he meant was that he saw how Harpo, the corner of my fallen foe, J.J.E., had dragged him off to his stool and how his brother, P.G.E., had thrown off his robe and skipped to where I thought, as the winner, I was going to start blowing kisses.
“Forfeit! Low blow! Disqualification!”
But no one in the crowd paid any attention to my corner, whether he was the vice president for production or the executive producer or anything else. That was because—Clang!—the bell rang once more and the fight continued. What happened next was no different than what happened before: the jabbing, the hiding, the running, and then what in France they call the coup de grace. Down went Philip G., with his face full of a knuckle sandwich.
“Drop that hammer!” cried the Chief as little Lorre was about to hit the gong, and Slapsie Maxie continued the count.
“Finef! Zeks! Zibn!”
I started waving to the crowd and began my victory trot, when all of a sudden somebody tapped my shoulder again, and there stood what could only have been the fully recovered Julius J. I put up my dukes and so did he, and it looked like this fight was going to go on for all fifteen rounds, and maybe even more, when from my corner there echoed a spine-chilling cry:
“Enough of this crap! It’s my studio! It’s my lot! And I’m declaring the winner!”
Right through the ropes came Jack L. Warner. He marched up to where Maxie and me and whichever Epstein it was were standing. “Give me that arm,” he shouted, and grabbed hold of me by the wrist.
“Just a minute, please.” That was the other twin, I guess it was P. unless it was J. “Who do you think you are? The Marquess of Queensberry?”
“I’ll put you on a mattress, you queen, if you don’t get out of the ring and back to work.”
But the Epsteins did not move. Neither did I or Slapsie Maxie. We were all standing there in a row, wondering what to do next, when there was a loud honk and Harpo, who I always thought was my friend, came running right at me, winding up with that extra mitt on his fist to hit me with a roundhouse right.
My old reflexes kicked in. I ducked. One after the other, all the former fighters did the same thing: Slapsie Maxie, Julius J., and Philip G. That’s why, with a really terrible crunching sound, the blow landed right on the chin of the man who was the boss of the studio and the employer of all the men and women in the crowd. The horseshoe went flying off in one direction and the Chief flew backward in the other.
S. M. Rosenbloom went over to where he was lying, half in and half out of the ring.
“Eyns! Tsvey! Dray!”
The whole of Lot H was in turmoil. People were running this way and that. The fire engine was sounding its siren. From the corner of my eye I saw Hedda pushing her way toward the victim of the punch.
“Akht,” cried Slapsie Maxie. “Nayn!”
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Too late: the referee, in his white shirt and black bow tie, had just shouted, “Tsen!”
The fight was over.
Oh, the cheering! The hubbub! The hue and the cry! In the middle of the ring, the referee was raising not the right hand of the Terrible Turk but a hand each of the twins.
“The winners by a knockout,” he shouted, “the Epstein Boys!”
I turned to where Harpo was standing, even more silent than usual. “That blow was suspect,” I told him.
Slapsie stared down to where the defeated fighter lay dead to the world. He shook his head. “Dos Jackie, er geyt tzu dem letzn round up.”
Then a strange thing happened. While they were standing there, with their arms held high, the brothers turned to each other. “We’ve got it!” they both at the same time cried. “The words for the ending! Round up the usual suspects!”
“Jack! You! Jack L. Warner!” That was Hedda. She had pushed up to the side of the ring. She was lifting the Chief’s head and shouting right in his face. “Moscow? Next month you’re going to Moscow? And what about Pearl Harbor? You better tell me. You said you warned him. Warned who? About what? You can’t fool me. I already know plenty. Operation Z. Open your eyes! What is the meaning of that?”
Amazingly, the Chief did open his eyes. He even blinked them. Then he said, “Huh? I don’t get it. Round up the usual suspects? Round them up for what?”
16
LOST IN A HAREM
Jack L. Warner: November 1942, Morocco
Those Ink Spots put a blindfold on me and stuck me on a horse! Don’t they cover the eyes of a condemned man just before they shoot him? I thought of a great gag. Two Jews are put in front of a firing squad. The Gestapo guy asks if they want a blindfold. The one Jew says, “Yes, please.” The other Jew gives him the elbow and says, “Shhhhah! Don’t make waves.” Didn’t I see in some picture how somebody—maybe it was the Emperor of Peru—was torn apart by horses? Is that to be my fate? Anyhow, we’ve been going for at least an hour and my ass is so sore I am starting to wish they’d take one of their sabers and chop off my head and get it over with. I’ve had enough.
“Listen, Leroy—” I begin, but just then a couple of these Pullman porters lift me up like a piece of luggage and set me on the ground. This is it, J.L. Say your prayers. “Dear Lord, don’t let Harry get his hands on production, or—”
Off goes the cloth that’s been covering my eyes. Cor blimey! I’m standing on what looks like a set by DeMille. There’s a big palace in front of me, three stories high, with funny-shaped windows, and a tower in the center, and columns everywhere; it’s all lit up by torches, and there are hundreds more of these caddies, all of them on horseback and dressed in red tunics and white turbans, and all of a sudden a brass band with horns and drums and cymbals starts playing—and it ain’t Duke Ellington, not by a long shot, but in its way it’s not so bad. I mean, if I were a snake I might come out of my basket. Now, as suddenly as they started they come to a halt, there’s a bang of a cymbal, but instead of a gun going off like in that Hitchcock picture with Lorre, all of the cotton pickers raise up their bright curving sabers and shout:
“Salut à le grand Général Patton!”
It all seems like a dream, right? As if I’ve been whisked off on some magic carpet, like in one of those pictures with Sabu. Plus, everybody is making a big mistake. But no one listens when I try to tell them who I really am. They lead me through this big courtyard to meet what they call the grand vizier, and he’s dressed in a white robe with a white hood, like a bigshot in the Ku Klux Klan: I’m not about to explain to him about the cemetery in Krasnashiltz! He gives me a smile with these huge gold choppers, a four-thousand-dollar job in Beverly Hills, and waves his arm that I should follow him.
Up the stairs we go, three flights, and the band follows right behind me playing what sounds like “The Whiffenpoof Song”; they keep tootling and drumming until we come to this long, narrow room, where the rest of the Klan, with those pointed hoods on their heads and gym socks on their feet, are sitting.
In the middle of the room I see another one of these fellows, dressed like the others, sitting on top of a throne.
The GV gives me a poke in the ribs. “You must bow to the sultan.”
So I give a bow, even though I remember from school somewhere that Americans are not supposed to do that before kings and queens and, I guess, sultans. His Highness beckons me forward and I cross all these thick red rugs with the band, like in a Mexican restaurant, coming right behind me, playing “A Tisket, a Tasket” and other hit tunes. Then they stop and so do I, and the Grand Dragon or whoever he is puts his hand out of his robe, and I don’t know whether to kiss it or shake it or give it a manicure. He says, “We are very pleased to meet the illustrious General Patton,” which comes out in perfect English, like the guy’s been to Oxford, and he looks a bit, with his little moustache above his stiff upper lip, like a Brit, except with a sul-tan, ha, ha! Casting department: Ronald Colman.
“Pleased to meet you, too, Your Excellence,” I say, sticking out my own hand, and all the pashas inside their stockings begin to mutter and murmur, and I look around to make sure they aren’t raising a cross or something, and the grand vizier says, “Do not touch.”
The sultan only smiles and says, with this BBC accent, “I have received your message, General.”
“What message? And I’m no general. I’m a colonel. A lieutenant col—”
“Why, this message.” So saying, he digs a piece of paper out of his bathrobe, puts on a pair of specs—now he’s Clifton Webb—and starts to look it over. “You say that this coming morning if there is no surrender you will destroy my city of Casablanca.”
The tall man with the high hat
And the whiskers on his chin
Will soon be knocking on your door
And you ought to be in.
“Abby! Abby!” That was Hedda. She was pulling on the sleeve of my robe. “Did I hear right? Did Jack just say he was going to Moscow? Why, that’s the capital of the Soviet Union! It’s full of Communists! Is that man sending him there? He’s practically a card-carrying member himself. I’ve got more questions for that boss of yours. Plenty of them.”
Any bonds today?
Bonds of freedom
That’s what I’m selling
Any bonds today?
“For example, something else Jack said. Just six months ago. About how he warned him. Warned who? The president? Pearl Harbor?” I felt my arm was about to come out of its socket, the way she was yanking at me. “Don’t you clam up on me. You were there. At Union Station.”
Just then, and luckily, a bell sounded, and a man in a white shirt and a little black bow tie climbed through the elasticized ropes into what I knew was a boxing ring. I looked closer. Broken nose, cauliflower ears. Ridge of bone above the eyes.
“Why,” said Hedda, “that’s Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom. Look at him. You can see the animal side.”
The bell rang three more times. “Ladeeeeze and gentlemen! Ladeeeeze and gentlemen! Welcome to our championship bout!”
“What championship bout?” asked Hedda. “Why am I always the last person to know what—Oh, there he is! You-hoo! Jack! Yoo-hoo! Jack Warner!”
It was the Chief, all right. He had jumped up at one corner of the ring and was waving his arms at the crowd. “All right, everybody! All right! Goddammit! They can’t hear me. Rosenbloom! Ring that fucking bell!”
But it wasn’t the ex-champ who operated the bell; it was Lorre, the actor, who had a little hammer that he brought down on the brass gong.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Listen, everybody! Lunch hour is over—and so is this rally. We’ve got pictures to make. Let’s get back to work!”
Before anyone could react, Miss Kaiser, who was mostly on the outside of her skimpy swimming suit, climbed up on the platform and began to parade around the ropes; she was holding a placard with a big number one on it. The crowd broke into whistles and catcalls, as if they were infantrymen at a base. She smiled with red lips and waved.
“I know who that is,” said Hedda. “And she’s no dumb blonde. Believe me, she knows plenty.”
The Chief turned to that card girl. “Get out of here and get out of here now,” he commanded. “Or you’re on suspension. That goes for the rest of you. You’ve had your fun. War or no war, this isn’t a charity.”
Slapsie, who was under contract at another studio, motioned to little Lorre, who struck the bell three more times. “Your attention, ladeeeze and gentlemen! In this corner, wearing green trunks, a former contender and local favorite, Abdul the Terrible Turk Maljan!”
I find it difficult to describe my emotions at that moment. It had been almost thirty years since I was last introduced in that manner, with the clang of the bell and the roar of the crowd. And it was a roar, louder by far than when I had stepped into the ring against Dummy Jordan, a fight I should have won but lost on points. I have a lot of friends in the Warner Bros. community.
“Are you really wearing green trunks?” That was Hedda.
But I was already pushing through the crowd and making my way to the ring. I was touched because the musicians were playing the “Istiklâl Marsi,” our national anthem:
Fear not, the crimson banner that waves
In this glorious dawn—
“Where do you think you’re going?” said the Chief as I started to climb onto the platform. “Go put your clothes on and get back to the office.”
“But Chief—”
“No buts—or you’ll be out on yours. Get moving.”
Slapsie Maxie once more cupped his hands to his mouth. “And in this corner, wearing blue-and-white trunks, the NCAA Intercollegiate Champion of 1929, the Battling Bantamweight, Julius Julius Epstein!”
“You’re the boss, Chief,” I said, while I started to climb back to the ground. “I guess I’ll just lose by default.”
“Like hell you will!” he shouted. “It’s one of them! You’re going to beat that Epstein bastard’s brains out—and not only that, I’m going to be your second.”
The studio orchestra struck up another tune, to which a few people in the crowd sang along:
Fight on, State
Strike your gait
And win!
Fight on, on on on on,
Fight on
Penn State!
Julius J. climbed into the ring, slipped off his robe, and began to dance around on his matchstick legs. He was indeed wearing blue-and-white trunks. Philip G., his twin, slipped between the ropes as well. But he kept his robe on and went to sit down on the stool opposite me.
Once more Karelena Kaiser, with a bullseye on her breast, pranced around the four sides of the enclosure, holding up the sign for round one.
“I admit it,” said the Chief. “This is good publicity for the girl. I had to promise her a part in Edge of Darkness. A STORY INCOMPARABLE OF A PEOPLE UNCONQUERABLE. She plays a Norwegian. German, Norwegian. What’s the difference?”
The referee beckoned to Julius J. and the Terrible Turk.
“Take his head off,” growled the Chief. “Chew up his liver. That’ll teach them to come in at noon.”
We walked up to Slapsie in the center of the ring. “I want a good, clean match between you two. No shlogn in the kichkes or the beytsim. Or in back of the kop. When I say tsebrekn, don’t give me any tsuris: break. In case of a untergeyn—”
“Untergeyn?” I inquired.
“Knockdown, shmegege: go to a neutral corner. Most important, oyshitn zikh at all times. Farsheteyn? Did I make myself clear? Any questions?”
We shook our heads.
“Okay, touch gloves and come out at the bell.”
We went back to our corners. Then at the same moment we both turned around and said, “What gloves?”
A thousand people broke into laughter. That was followed by a loud Honk! and who should climb into the ring but Harpo Marx. He had two sets of gloves around his neck and he went first over to J. J. E. and put them on him. Then he started over to my corner, where, instead of the Terrible Turk giving a massage to the executive producer of Warner Bros., the executive producer of Warner Bros. was giving a massage to me. He was chopping away at my legs with the edge of his hands like a butcher tenderizing a rump roast. Kill him, murder him, slaughter him, crucify him: that was what he was saying with each whack of his hand.
Up came Harpo and tied on the mitts. Then he reached out to shake hands with the Chief, and what came out of his sleeve was a fifth glove, followed by a waterfall of nuts and bolts and springs and sprockets and at last a big horseshoe made out of steel. Harpo plucked it up and stuffed it inside the glove. Gookie.
“Hey!” cried the Chief from where he was squatting. “We haven’t got all day. Let’s get this show on the road.”
With that, Julius J. stood up and so did the Terrible T. Miss Kaiser held up the sign once more and made a sort of bow to all four directions of the compass. Then Lorre, grinning like the murderer in M, struck the bell with his hammer.
Clang!
This is what happened next. The Battling Bantamweight, though he looked more like a flyweight to me, came buzzing out of his corner and rotating his gloves in the air. I stood there awhile and let him flick at my abdomen and my arms and the old iron chin. But I knew the Chief was in a hurry so I wound up to deliver the haymaker, at which J. J. E. began to backpedal and hide behind Slapsie Maxie, who I have a lot of respect for as a former world champ of my division. This was a frustrating moment. No matter which way the referee turned, Epstein stayed right behind him. Left. Right. Forward. Back. He stuck to Maxie just like a shadow—or, and suddenly this came to me, like the little tramp in City Lights. I’ll put it a different way: the whole thing had been scripted, like by a choreographer, but no one had given the lines to me.
“Kill him! Murder him! Wipe him off the face of the earth!”
Everybody—first Maxie and then Julius Julius—turned toward my corner to see who had uttered such terrible words. But I already knew, which gave me the opportunity to lash out like lightning and land my knockout punch.
Down went the Nittany Lion, flat on his back. What a shout from the crowd. But none louder than the one from my trainer or cut man or whatever.
“Drinks for everybody!”
In an instant Slapsie Maxie motioned me to a neutral corner and began the count.
“Eyns! Tsvey! Dray! Fir!”
At just that moment Lorre consulted his stopwatch and raised his hammer to ring the bell.
“Don’t you dare!” came that same voice from the corner of the Terrible Turk. “I’m warning you! Suspension!”
Mr. Moto had to think fast. He put down his hammer.
Just then, while everyone, including me, was distracted, somebody came up behind me and tapped my shoulder. Who should appear before me but Julius Julius Epstein, back on his feet and rotating his gloves like a fighting kangaroo.
“Foul! Foul! Foul!” That was the Chief. “It isn’t Julie. It’s the other one!”
What he meant was that he saw how Harpo, the corner of my fallen foe, J.J.E., had dragged him off to his stool and how his brother, P.G.E., had thrown off his robe and skipped to where I thought, as the winner, I was going to start blowing kisses.
“Forfeit! Low blow! Disqualification!”
But no one in the crowd paid any attention to my corner, whether he was the vice president for production or the executive producer or anything else. That was because—Clang!—the bell rang once more and the fight continued. What happened next was no different than what happened before: the jabbing, the hiding, the running, and then what in France they call the coup de grace. Down went Philip G., with his face full of a knuckle sandwich.
“Drop that hammer!” cried the Chief as little Lorre was about to hit the gong, and Slapsie Maxie continued the count.
“Finef! Zeks! Zibn!”
I started waving to the crowd and began my victory trot, when all of a sudden somebody tapped my shoulder again, and there stood what could only have been the fully recovered Julius J. I put up my dukes and so did he, and it looked like this fight was going to go on for all fifteen rounds, and maybe even more, when from my corner there echoed a spine-chilling cry:
“Enough of this crap! It’s my studio! It’s my lot! And I’m declaring the winner!”
Right through the ropes came Jack L. Warner. He marched up to where Maxie and me and whichever Epstein it was were standing. “Give me that arm,” he shouted, and grabbed hold of me by the wrist.
“Just a minute, please.” That was the other twin, I guess it was P. unless it was J. “Who do you think you are? The Marquess of Queensberry?”
“I’ll put you on a mattress, you queen, if you don’t get out of the ring and back to work.”
But the Epsteins did not move. Neither did I or Slapsie Maxie. We were all standing there in a row, wondering what to do next, when there was a loud honk and Harpo, who I always thought was my friend, came running right at me, winding up with that extra mitt on his fist to hit me with a roundhouse right.
My old reflexes kicked in. I ducked. One after the other, all the former fighters did the same thing: Slapsie Maxie, Julius J., and Philip G. That’s why, with a really terrible crunching sound, the blow landed right on the chin of the man who was the boss of the studio and the employer of all the men and women in the crowd. The horseshoe went flying off in one direction and the Chief flew backward in the other.
S. M. Rosenbloom went over to where he was lying, half in and half out of the ring.
“Eyns! Tsvey! Dray!”
The whole of Lot H was in turmoil. People were running this way and that. The fire engine was sounding its siren. From the corner of my eye I saw Hedda pushing her way toward the victim of the punch.
“Akht,” cried Slapsie Maxie. “Nayn!”
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Too late: the referee, in his white shirt and black bow tie, had just shouted, “Tsen!”
The fight was over.
Oh, the cheering! The hubbub! The hue and the cry! In the middle of the ring, the referee was raising not the right hand of the Terrible Turk but a hand each of the twins.
“The winners by a knockout,” he shouted, “the Epstein Boys!”
I turned to where Harpo was standing, even more silent than usual. “That blow was suspect,” I told him.
Slapsie stared down to where the defeated fighter lay dead to the world. He shook his head. “Dos Jackie, er geyt tzu dem letzn round up.”
Then a strange thing happened. While they were standing there, with their arms held high, the brothers turned to each other. “We’ve got it!” they both at the same time cried. “The words for the ending! Round up the usual suspects!”
“Jack! You! Jack L. Warner!” That was Hedda. She had pushed up to the side of the ring. She was lifting the Chief’s head and shouting right in his face. “Moscow? Next month you’re going to Moscow? And what about Pearl Harbor? You better tell me. You said you warned him. Warned who? About what? You can’t fool me. I already know plenty. Operation Z. Open your eyes! What is the meaning of that?”
Amazingly, the Chief did open his eyes. He even blinked them. Then he said, “Huh? I don’t get it. Round up the usual suspects? Round them up for what?”
16
LOST IN A HAREM
Jack L. Warner: November 1942, Morocco
Those Ink Spots put a blindfold on me and stuck me on a horse! Don’t they cover the eyes of a condemned man just before they shoot him? I thought of a great gag. Two Jews are put in front of a firing squad. The Gestapo guy asks if they want a blindfold. The one Jew says, “Yes, please.” The other Jew gives him the elbow and says, “Shhhhah! Don’t make waves.” Didn’t I see in some picture how somebody—maybe it was the Emperor of Peru—was torn apart by horses? Is that to be my fate? Anyhow, we’ve been going for at least an hour and my ass is so sore I am starting to wish they’d take one of their sabers and chop off my head and get it over with. I’ve had enough.
“Listen, Leroy—” I begin, but just then a couple of these Pullman porters lift me up like a piece of luggage and set me on the ground. This is it, J.L. Say your prayers. “Dear Lord, don’t let Harry get his hands on production, or—”
Off goes the cloth that’s been covering my eyes. Cor blimey! I’m standing on what looks like a set by DeMille. There’s a big palace in front of me, three stories high, with funny-shaped windows, and a tower in the center, and columns everywhere; it’s all lit up by torches, and there are hundreds more of these caddies, all of them on horseback and dressed in red tunics and white turbans, and all of a sudden a brass band with horns and drums and cymbals starts playing—and it ain’t Duke Ellington, not by a long shot, but in its way it’s not so bad. I mean, if I were a snake I might come out of my basket. Now, as suddenly as they started they come to a halt, there’s a bang of a cymbal, but instead of a gun going off like in that Hitchcock picture with Lorre, all of the cotton pickers raise up their bright curving sabers and shout:
“Salut à le grand Général Patton!”
It all seems like a dream, right? As if I’ve been whisked off on some magic carpet, like in one of those pictures with Sabu. Plus, everybody is making a big mistake. But no one listens when I try to tell them who I really am. They lead me through this big courtyard to meet what they call the grand vizier, and he’s dressed in a white robe with a white hood, like a bigshot in the Ku Klux Klan: I’m not about to explain to him about the cemetery in Krasnashiltz! He gives me a smile with these huge gold choppers, a four-thousand-dollar job in Beverly Hills, and waves his arm that I should follow him.
Up the stairs we go, three flights, and the band follows right behind me playing what sounds like “The Whiffenpoof Song”; they keep tootling and drumming until we come to this long, narrow room, where the rest of the Klan, with those pointed hoods on their heads and gym socks on their feet, are sitting.
In the middle of the room I see another one of these fellows, dressed like the others, sitting on top of a throne.
The GV gives me a poke in the ribs. “You must bow to the sultan.”
So I give a bow, even though I remember from school somewhere that Americans are not supposed to do that before kings and queens and, I guess, sultans. His Highness beckons me forward and I cross all these thick red rugs with the band, like in a Mexican restaurant, coming right behind me, playing “A Tisket, a Tasket” and other hit tunes. Then they stop and so do I, and the Grand Dragon or whoever he is puts his hand out of his robe, and I don’t know whether to kiss it or shake it or give it a manicure. He says, “We are very pleased to meet the illustrious General Patton,” which comes out in perfect English, like the guy’s been to Oxford, and he looks a bit, with his little moustache above his stiff upper lip, like a Brit, except with a sul-tan, ha, ha! Casting department: Ronald Colman.
“Pleased to meet you, too, Your Excellence,” I say, sticking out my own hand, and all the pashas inside their stockings begin to mutter and murmur, and I look around to make sure they aren’t raising a cross or something, and the grand vizier says, “Do not touch.”
The sultan only smiles and says, with this BBC accent, “I have received your message, General.”
“What message? And I’m no general. I’m a colonel. A lieutenant col—”
“Why, this message.” So saying, he digs a piece of paper out of his bathrobe, puts on a pair of specs—now he’s Clifton Webb—and starts to look it over. “You say that this coming morning if there is no surrender you will destroy my city of Casablanca.”
