Interview of William Fadiman

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 18, 1994

CEPLAIR

Okay, Mr. Fadiman, what I'd like to do is start by just reminding you of your birth date, which I have as December 31, 1908, in New York City.

FADIMAN

That's precisely right, yes.

CEPLAIR

Okay. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your parents, their background, your family life, etc.

FADIMAN

All right. I was born on New Year's Eve, which unfortunately, tragically at the moment, seemed like an odd day to be born, but that's when I was, in 1908. My parents were both from Russia. My father [Isadore Fadiman] was what was called a pharmacist in those days, before they used the word "druggist." To be a pharmacist in Russia, apparently, in those days was to be on the way to becoming a doctor, which he never did. He never got that degree, but he became a corner pharmacist, the kind who advises and counsels and took the place of many a doctor in those days, because they all lived in Brooklyn--which includes me. I came from Brooklyn, and to escape from Brooklyn is a curious thing. You don't escape by going very far away; you go take a subway and go to Manhattan. That was my dream, to live someday in Manhattan, which I did.

CEPLAIR

Were your parents forced to leave Russia or--?

FADIMAN

My father was an escapee from the draft. The draft in those days was run by a gentleman called the czar. He was the only boy in his family, and therefore all the sisters decided that he should escape the draft by living in America, which he did. He came here as a pharmacist, and died here as a pharmacist, actually. He had many drugstores. He wasn't very successful, but he was a charming, intelligent man. He liked to talk of himself as being from the Russian intelligentsia. That meant that my own background would have consisted of reading, or of having available to me at least to read, books by people like Gogol or Lermontov or Dostoyevsky or Gorky, so that I was quite familiar with Russian literature before I should have been familiar with American literature.

CEPLAIR

Was he political, your father?

FADIMAN

My father was not political at all. My father was an atheist in addition, which made it even more confusing to me. I've become an agnostic and/or an atheist myself through the years possibly as a result of that. My mother [Grace Fadiman] was what was called in those days a practical nurse. The word "practical nurse" doesn't exist anymore, but what it meant in those days was that she was a custodian, an aide, a helper to people who are ill. She came from a small village in Russia called--I can only pronounce it; I cannot possibly spell it--Stari Constantine. My father came from the much more pronounceable place called Minsk. He was the college boy. She was, I believe, with no education beyond grammar school.

CEPLAIR

She could read, though?

FADIMAN

She could read, and they spoke Russian only to confuse me. I have never understood Russian, never tried to. In any foreign household the way to let children not hear anything was to speak in the language that they were native to, of course. And both my father and mother spoke quite fluent Russian, and my father ultimately spoke an absolutely fluent English. My mother always spoke a good English, not a great English. Living in Brooklyn in those days was a curious world. I guess we were called lower middle class; I guess that's the phrase for us. But we never starved, never had any problems with money whatsoever. The drugstores stayed open in those days until eleven o'clock. The vision I would have was of my father taking the entire cash register upstairs and counting the money in it, because people paid by cash in those days. I, of course, was a helper in the drugstore. For example, I was not only a salesman, but I sold such unfortunate items as condoms. In those days we didn't discuss what the word was, of course. I pretended I didn't know what they were myself. I wasn't quite sure, but I know they were something one shouldn't discuss. I also remember selling sanitary napkins for women in the same way. They were carefully boxed to look like Christmas presents, I guess. I never knew what they were for, but I always pretended I did. And I also was very good at the soda fountain. We had a soda fountain in those days right in the store. My childhood was rather typical of being a Jewish boy in a neighborhood largely composed of not racist gentiles or not prejudiced gentiles but stupid gentiles, let us put it--nice, decent, stupid boys. I went ultimately to Boys High School, which in those days was one of the best high schools in the United States of America. There were two famous high schools in those days: one was the Boston Latin School in Boston, and the other was Boys High School in Brooklyn. I was deemed--I guess that's the word, deemed--smart enough to go to the school at Boys High, which was for bright students only. The reason I mentioned the word "Jewish" is because that was very important in Boys High. Most of the students, oddly enough, were Jewish and were bright. I guess I got in on both counts. I'm not quite sure how, but I did.

CEPLAIR

Did your parents speak Yiddish at all?

FADIMAN

Yes, my father spoke Yiddish and my mother spoke a little Yiddish, and I learned my Yiddish in Hollywood later, strangely enough--that is, I learned phrases in Yiddish. But fundamentally the foreign tongue was always Russian, and they spoke it to each other when they wished to exclude the three children. There were three of us, three boys. I was the youngest; I was the baby boy. I was named after William James--I'll explain about that much later--the famous psychologist at Harvard [University] in those days. My middle brother was Clifton Paul [Fadiman], taken from a telephone directory, and my oldest brother from an even greater telephone directory--a bigger one, I guess--called Edwin Miles [Fadiman]. Neither one ever used their middle name, of course, worth a hoot, but in those days it was important to have a nice middle name, and they came right from a telephone directory. My middle brother was famous in his day in many ways. He was the sibling I always revered and at one time disliked intensely because he was so successful and I was not. I ultimately overcame that stupidity and we became very dear friends and still are today. My oldest brother is no longer alive. But Clifton Paul, or Clifton, or Kip as he was called by his friends rather than Clifton, which is-- Who the hell can pronounce the word Clifton? I don't know. As some people who were living in that era may know, he was a literary editor of the New Yorker magazine for ten years, he was the editor in chief of Simon and Schuster, the publishing house, for about eleven years, and he was the famous master of ceremonies of something [a radio program] in its day called Information Please for about eight or nine years. He's still alive. He's now chairman of the Book-of-the-Month Club judges and has just won the National Book Award for lifetime literary achievement, which was something, since he's almost blind and he's reaching ninety. He lives in Florida, and we're dear, dear friends as well as brothers. I went to Wisconsin for a very curious reason.

CEPLAIR

Let me just get the date. I think that's 1926.

FADIMAN

Precisely. Nineteen twenty-six was the date. I went to Wisconsin for a curious reason. There was a man at that time in education named Alexander Meiklejohn. He was the president of Amherst [College], I believe, at that time--I'm not sure of myself--one of the smaller colleges. He was a liberal, if not a radical, and he was literally fired from Amherst for liberal ideas. Wisconsin, then and even now to some degree a populist state and one which believed in education and was quite liberal in its tendencies, offered him a job to form and head something called the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin. It was a total unit by itself. He had a total of 125 students all selected from all over the United States by Meiklejohn himself. Most of them were bright Jewish boys, to use a phrase I've used before. I was one of those. We lived in dormitories, about thirty youngsters in one dormitory and thirty in another, etc., with our particular tutor, who also lived there. So in a funny way we had a strange education: both day and night. That is, in the daytime we'd go to courses; at night we'd take our pipes--we all smoked pipes because God forbid we should smoke cigarettes--looking much older than we were, of course, and talk far into the night about the myriad subjects that young people would like to ask questions about of a learned tutor. For example, one of my tutors was a man named Lionel Trilling, who later on became the very famous Columbia University professor of English. We were curious. It was a two-year course. We were both accepted and rejected by the university itself, by which I mean the university didn't like us because we looked as if we were being favored specially. Why was this? Because we didn't take regular courses. What we did was something very odd. The first year we studied Greek civilization--clerical, ecumenical, religious, political, everything having to do with that civilization. Then the next year we studied our own American contemporary civilization using the same headings precisely and compared the two. This was not a regular university course, obviously. It was just two years. We were given full credit at the University of Wisconsin, where we emerged as if we had taken the normal freshman and sophomore classes, which we never did. I loved Meiklejohn. I loved the whole idea of that university. I revered education. I came from a background of the "intelligentsia," to use my father's favorite term, and books to me were a way of life.

CEPLAIR

Can you tell us a little about Meiklejohn? What sort of person was he?

FADIMAN

Meiklejohn was originally either English or Scottish--I've forgotten which--I think. Rather dour and rather friendly in a curious, dour way, if one can use that expression--almost antithetic the two words are. And he had, as you gather, a tremendous reverence for education and a tremendous belief that his technique was the best in the world. And I thought it was at that time. He lasted only about six, seven years there, as I recall. He was beloved by all of us, all 125 of us. And occasionally when we meet each other in many different walks of life and mention the word Meiklejohn, there's something magical in the name. It brings back a smile and happiness. We knew we were separate, we knew we were special, and we knew we were different. We didn't know we were any better than anyone else, we just thought we were. But we liked that theory. And although we were scoffed at often by the other students because we were special, we had strength in ourselves and belief in what we were doing. And we knew that Meiklejohn must be right because we loved him, and kids of eighteen can fall in love very readily, which we all did.

CEPLAIR

Were you a particularly political group? I mean, that was the age of the Sacco-Vanzetti [case], etc.

FADIMAN

No. Yes, of course Sacco-Vanzetti was important. We weren't political except in our own individualistic ways. We never massed for anything or got together in a group or signed anything as a group. But to be there in the first place you had to be liberal, because you didn't take the regular education. To be liberal was to be political too, of course. For example, I've got a story. I was the editor of one of the literary magazines. I've forgotten. I think it was called the Wisconsin Lit. I'm not sure of myself. I wrote a very, oh, rather inflammatory editorial about a young couple, a boy and a girl, who had actually been sleeping together without being married. In those days that was almost as immoral as, I guess, killing your mother. I wrote a big editorial about that, explaining that this was fine. "Why not? Why shouldn't they be?" They were expelled. I lost, by the way. But never-theless, that was the kind of liberal point of view we had in those days. I also wrote some rather bad poetry which was published there and some equally bad short stories which were published there. They were signs of things to come, I'm afraid.

CEPLAIR

Did you know then that writing and books was going to be your life?

FADIMAN

I just knew words would be what-- I really wanted to go into publishing. I assumed I'd go to New York ultimately and get a job at a publishing house--which I never did, by the way. I'll explain why when I get to that era. But I thought that if I majored in English literature, which I did-- Oh, I've got a funny story about that. My English professor, one of my English professors, was a spinster named Julia Wales; I remember the name even after fifty years or so. Miss Wales gave me a B+, the highest B you could get so that it didn't affect my record, which was all straight A's. And I was furious at this, because this was my field, and I was pretty good, and I knew I was smart. I not only knew I was smart, I was obnoxious about it. I went to Miss Wales and explained that I thought I'd get an A. She said, "You got a B, you know." I said, "Yes." "The B won't affect your record, I'm sure." I said, "No." She said, "I gave you a B for a very good reason, Mr. Fadiman: because you expected an A. It may be the only B you'll ever get in your whole career." And it was, by the way. And later on as the years went by, how right she was. It was a good thing to point to that B and say I wasn't that good. I thought I was so smart. For example, we had to do what amounted to a master of arts thesis. Well, it wasn't really; it was in the B.A. tradition. I did a book about a fellow named Thomas De Quincey--naturally, because he was an opium eater, and I was good at that sort of thing. I wrote the whole book in about eight weeks and turned it in about ten pages at a time during the next year. I was supposed to take a year to do it. I thought that was so clever of me. That was why I was so resentful of getting just a B when I should have gotten an A. I knew I deserved an A. She knew it too, but she was quite right. Julia Wales was her name, and I could never quite forget it. The name is sort of symbolic of a straitlaced person, which she was.

CEPLAIR

After the two years with Meiklejohn, you then went into the regular university population?

FADIMAN

Yes, for a year or so. The reason for the year or so is I then decided I was the smartest man not only in Wisconsin, not only in America, but possibly in the entire world, and maybe some university would be good enough for my magnificent mind. So I thought that I would go to Europe, to a place called [University of] Heidelberg, which was very famous for two things: brilliance and dueling, you may recall. The dueling didn't matter to me, but the brilliance did. And the funny part of it is I borrowed $1,700 from a usurious aunt of mine, and I paid her some interest on it. I've forgotten what it was, only I paid it back. I arrived in Europe like a millionaire. I thought that people who came to Europe never bothered with their own luggage or something or other; somebody took care of it, some menial. Of course, I had no menial, nobody to take care of it. I left it on the boat. It took me five weeks to get it back. I went to Paris first for three days on the way to Heidelberg--having not been to Paris or Heidelberg--fell in love with Paris, and never left Paris for two years. I enrolled at the Sorbonne instead. I spoke German well, and French haltingly. I went to the Alliance Française, which then was a way of learning the language, and along with my colleagues I learned enough to get along, and I went to the Sorbonne. And I have only one story about the Sorbonne, because it's very illustrative of my ego. I worked with a man named [Henri] Bergson, a very famous professor in his day. He was a philosopher. When you entered the amphithéatre, or the amphitheater in which he taught, there were about three hundred people there the first day or two or three. And I was one of the three hundred eagerly lapping up the brilliance of this man. And about three, four, five weeks later, they dropped to about thirty or forty people; they just didn't show. And I, anxious to cultivate his favor, walked up to Professor Bergson and in my best French explained that I was so sorry that my colleagues didn't appreciate his intelligence and his wit and his vivacity and his knowledge. Then he grinned at me and answered me in perfect English, of course, knowing therefore that my French was not very good, and said to me, "You know, Mr. Fadiman, if there are four people in this room, if there are three, if there are two, if there is one who listens to me, I talk to that person or those persons. I do not talk to the rest. I don't care who comes or how many." And I learned for the first time that in France education was a very high, or rather ennobeling, profession, and you did it because you loved it. And he was quite right, because when I taught years later myself I understood what he was talking about. You picked out the one or two or three or four students who mattered, and you did, in a sense, lecture to them rather than to the mass who also took assiduous notes and came. He never took any kind of-- What's the phrase when you take--? What's the phrase when you count the number of people who are in the class?

CEPLAIR

Attendance.

FADIMAN

He never took attendance; he didn't give a damn. If they came, fine. If they didn't, it didn't matter. They were the losers if they didn't come, and he was quite right. I learned that shortly.

CEPLAIR

Did you study French literature at the Sorbonne?

FADIMAN

I studied French literature and mostly philosophy. That kind of fascinated me. But I also used to read a lot of French literature. I read Mallarmé. I knew all about Mallarmé--I thought I did. I knew all about Baudelaire--I thought I did. I knew, oh, lots of things--I thought I did. And the funny story about it, in a funny way, after two years-- Oh, I also was there during a very curious period. That was the Hemingway period or, if you want to call it, the Gertrude Stein period--people whom I knew very slightly. I've got a very funny sexual story to tell you about that. I also thought I knew everything about sex, having never gotten laid at all, but I thought I knew. I'd read Krafft-Ebing, I'd read Havelock Ellis, I knew all about it. And I lived for three months with two homosexuals and never knew it at all. I didn't know they were homosexuals, thought they were very good friends, that was all. That was funny. And then there's another story about me in a famous café, the Café du Dôme, which was the literary café of its era, frequented by American expatriates largely. I thought I was not only smart, if not brilliant, but also the handsomest man in the world, and I could make any girl I wanted to, of course. I saw this very attractive woman at another table with another woman, and I made a bet to my friends at the table of, I think it was, five francs--it was worth a dollar, a dollar and a half in those days, which was pretty good money--that I could make her, either make her in a profound sense or at least make her like me just by going over there. They all laughed at me and didn't tell me why. I went over and in my best French asked for the privilege of-- "May I buy you a drink?" I said to the attractive woman. And she said, "Of course." And she looked at her friend, and her friend nodded. I sat down and then began talking in French about how beautiful she was, how charming she was, how much-- In French. And the friend got very restive during this, as if I was excluding her, which I was. But finally the object of my particular desire stood up and very loudly and in French first, in essence, "I wish you would leave this table, sir. I'm not interested in what you are saying." Then she said the same thing in English, perfect English, and my friends were rolling on the floor. I learned only later that these were two very famous lesbians, and of course, obviously, were not the slightest bit interested in what I had to say at all and thought that I was a funny little boy. I lost my bet, but I learned a lesson. Those were things one didn't talk about in those days.

CEPLAIR

So this was--what?--1929, 1931, approximately?

FADIMAN

Yes, about that. No, 1926, '27, '28-- I guess it was '28-'29, because I graduated in '30.

CEPLAIR

From Wisconsin?

FADIMAN

Yes. I must tell you that story. In a sense, when I got back, to get credit I had to be interviewed by the head of the French department. The head of the French department then, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a man who had graduated from a Swiss university and spoke fluent French and fluent English, fluent German, everything, I guess. And he said, "Do you know anything about Racine and Corneille?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Fine, here's a blue book. Fill it with all you know about Racine and Corneille," handed me a book, and left me alone with all the books in front of me that I could possibly use if I wanted to use them. I never did, I may remark. And I wrote about Racine and Corneille. And he came back once and he said, "Tell me about Paris." I talked about Paris, what it meant to me. And he said, "Fine," and then he left. Then about four weeks passed and not a word as to what credit I was going to get. So I was really very disturbed. I finally called him up, and I said, "This is Mr. Fadiman. You may recall I'm the young man," etc. He said, "Yes, I do recall." I said, "Have you had a chance to look at my blue book?" He said, "No, I don't intend to." I said, "I don't understand." He said, "Well, I'll tell you. We talked a little about Paris, you recall?" I said, "Yes." He said, "That's all I wanted to know. I don't care what you know about Racine or Corneille. I'm sure you do. That's all, Mr. Fadiman. You're okay." It's a nice story--humbling but nice. Anyway, I got out of Wisconsin finally with a pretty good record and a Phi Beta Kappa in my junior year, which was a big event. The reason that that was important to me was that my brothers had gotten it their senior years, and I was determined to get it my junior year, and I damn near died to do it. It cost me $14 to get that little gold medal of honor from the Phi Beta Kappa, which, by the way--just making it sort of an ellipsis-- Many years later when I was at Columbia [Pictures Industries] in motion pictures and sat down at the conference table at my first job in Hollywood, almost, I think, one of my friends looked at me because I was proudly wearing my Phi Beta Kappa key on my vest. In those days, one did with a chain. He leaned forward, and I looked anxious to tell him all about it. He said, "May I look at your Kiwanis key?" And then I knew I was in the wrong place, and I never wore it again. But it was great when I got it that time. I came to New York City, which was a big world to me. Do you have any questions before I get to New York City?

CEPLAIR

No.

FADIMAN

Of course, I was going to be a publisher and be a word man. I was sure of that. I was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and I was a Phi Beta Kappa, and I was personable, and I just knew I could do it. That was what to do. And my brother by then, I think-- At that point he was the literary editor of the New Yorker. I believe so.

CEPLAIR

What was your older brother doing at that time?

FADIMAN

My older brother lived in Paris, strangely enough. And although I saw him in Paris--not much--he was very careful to let me have a life of my own. He was a producer of pictures, of documentaries such as The Einstein Theory. In those days, to do a picture about those was a daring thing to do. He produced documentaries of a significant nature, and to me-- He always wore a cane and was very rich, I thought. He wasn't really, but I thought he was. And he lived in Paris--and that was important to me--because he married a girl who decided to live in Paris. She was a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn also, but she decided to live in Paris.

CEPLAIR

Movies didn't interest you in those days?

FADIMAN

Not particularly, no. As a matter of fact, I think I was scornful of them because that was not writing. That was writing for a different purpose, but writing was writing, which I revered and admired enormously. Oh, I wrote a novel there, a bad novel, too.

CEPLAIR

In Paris?

FADIMAN

In Paris, which was never published--deservedly so, I'm sure. As the years went on I wrote other things that were slightly better, but that novel was a terrible expression of vanity. Also, I forgot to tell you, in college I won a literary contest sponsored by Harper's magazine. And I remember seeing the opening sentence of the actual title of it, because I won a prize for it. It was called "The Student Sitting atop His Intellectual 'I,'" or something like that. I determined to be scornful of every writer of the world except those who were intellectuals, of course. It took me a long time to realize that the rest of the world was peopled by people, not intellectuals and nonintellectuals. That didn't matter; they were just human beings. It took me a long time, but I learned it, thank God. To revert, now I'm back in New York looking for a job. And my brother gave me some very sound advice. He said, "You know, when you go to see any of these people you look for a job from, I'll send you with a letter, of course. And you'll be afraid of them. Don't be. If you can imagine all of them in a toilet, sitting on a toilet seat just as you sit, it will be easier for you." I did, and he was quite right.

CEPLAIR

The Depression didn't have much impact on you?

FADIMAN

Well, I'll tell you about the Depression. The Depression hit me in one sense-- Ultimately, after I had my first job at RKO-Pathé, the company was called, I became an assistant story editor to a woman named--an unbelievable name--Carrington North. I don't know whether she was a lesbian or not, but I think she was. I'm not sure. But she was an extraordinary, striking woman, and very bright. And she and I got along dandy. About the Depression: I did save $250, and I put it in something called the Bank of the United States, which of course failed. And I can still see myself standing in line with hundreds of others waiting to get my money out. It took me about four years, and I think I got about $80 or $90 dollars back. But that was my first impression of the Depression. I was sad.

CEPLAIR

Yes. Well, I have you down as working for the Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau. Does that ring a bell?

FADIMAN

Yes, there was an organization called that, I think.

CEPLAIR

Somewhere I read that you had worked there before you went to RKO.

FADIMAN

Yes, I did. I worked for a man named George T. Bye, who was the head of the Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau. He had an odd idea. He thought for the first time--I guess the first time in those days--an agent could make money out of selling literary material to motion picture companies. No one had ever thought of that for some silly reason. I don't know why. And he formed this thing with the resounding name of the Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau. And I was it, really.

CEPLAIR

What were you supposed to do?

FADIMAN

I went around with galley proofs in my hand before the actual books were out to the New York film editors or story editors of the major companies and tried to interest them in sending out to the coast with a recommendation. I did pretty well.

CEPLAIR

Were these by well-known authors?

FADIMAN

No, just anybody whom the publisher would entrust the Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau to present. The Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau represented people like Heywood Broun, a very big columnist in his day; Westbrook Pegler, a very reactionary man but a very good writer in his day; Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a column in those days. I can't remember other names, but they were distinguished literary names--not great names but journalists of the first order. And I began to respect the written word more and more and more, and I was determined to be a part of that world. Also I was getting 10 percent of everything I sold, which was pretty good. I lasted there for a while, until the Depression hit so hard that George T. Bye, my boss, took me to what was then called a speakeasy, where you could drink during Prohibition days. And he used a phrase I'd never heard before. He said, "I have to let you go." I didn't know what that meant. What he meant, he was firing me, but he just had to let me go. So he fired me, and I was rather surprised at that, naturally. But I think the next job was at RKO-Pathé. Then I came to RKO-Pathé.

CEPLAIR

Why did you not get into publishing directly? FADIMAN Because publishing I knew a lot about by then. Because I'd been around and around and around with all the publishers. I knew how to get them to give me their particular material for motion pictures. And I felt that publishing was a gentleman's game for gentlemen who didn't want to make a living, and I wanted to make a living. By living I meant like $100 a week. "Someday, if I'm lucky, I'll make $5,000 every year. That will be a lot of money." Because at the Author's Motion Picture and Radio Bureau I think I got $35 or $40 [a week], I've forgotten what. Something like that. I felt the real money seemed to be in that glamorous place called Hollywood, which I didn't want to go to. That was ridiculous, because only cretins lived there, of course. But I did want to get the money from them, so I thought I would start by going to this place where they gave you I think $75 a week, at RKO-Pathé. I was the assistant story editor. My job was to read and correct, if necessary, the synopsis of the written material that other readers would write. And I got a very cute idea. I said to myself, "I can write as well as these readers. Why don't I write under another name and pay myself?" I think they got $20 for every piece they did. So I had an income of about $90 a week instead of $65 that way, or $75, which was all right and legitimate. Nothing wrong with my doing it, because they were perfectly good things, I assure you. I did that, and I worked very hard. I lasted there a year or two, I think. I think I resigned.

CEPLAIR

Yes. Then I have you going to Leland Hayward.

FADIMAN

Oh, that was an interesting job. Leland Hayward was a fascinating person. He was a top agent in New York and the only agent in New York at that time affiliated with a Hollywood agency, which was headed by another man named Myron Selznick--a very big agency. Leland had an office on Madison Avenue in a penthouse--very unusual. And he was the best-dressed man I ever saw in my life, handsomest man I've ever known in my life, and a totally charming man. He ultimately married, among other people, Maggie [Margaret] Sullivan, the actress. He also married "Slim" Hawks--I've forgotten her first name--Howard Hawks's ex-wife. He was a gentleman, a bon vivant, who dined at the Colony Restaurant. The Colony was one of the nicest restaurants I guess in the world in those days and possibly the most expensive. I must tell you my first story when I met Leland Hayward and got the job. We talked briefly, and he said, "Fine. I'll see you on Monday. Sonny, before you go, I wanted you to do something for me." I said, "Fine." He said, "Read that." And he handed me a piece of paper this way with some typing on it, and I turned it around to read it. He said, "Don't turn it around." I said, "I can't read it upside down." He said, "Learn. Learn to read other peoples' memos upside down on a desk and you'll be a big, successful agent." A very interesting lesson in those days. I learned, I may remark. The other story about Leland that was funny was this one occasion when I did resign because I got a big offer from Samuel Goldwyn, where I worked for one year in New York. I told Leland why I was leaving, and he said, "What are you getting?" And I said, "One hundred and fifty [dollars] a week, I think." He said, "Really? I can get you more." He suddenly became an agent, got on the phone in front of me, talked to Sam Goldwyn, and got me another $25 a week, which was a nice farewell.

CEPLAIR

So you'd been at RKO, then you'd done the same sort of thing for Columbia, then you went to Leland Hayward, and then you went to Sam Goldwyn, and then you went to MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer].

FADIMAN

Right.

CEPLAIR

Why did you go back to story editing? Why didn't you stay as an agent?

FADIMAN

Well, because I began to make more money.

CEPLAIR

As a story editor?

FADIMAN

Yes, $50 more, which was a lot of money in those days. A hundred dollars more was certainly a lot of money. Getting it at Metro, when I finally got to Metro, that was really big money. The Samuel Goldwyn story has some interesting stories about it. Mr. Goldwyn was an odd man. As you know, he was a curious man with his vocabulary, also. He always called people by some name he invented; he never remembered their real name. He called me Mr. Rosenthal. For a full year he called me this just before he fired me at the end of the year, and always Mr. Rosenthal. Some thirty years later out here in Hollywood, I went to the wedding of one of his grandsons, and Mr. Goldwyn was there. He came across the room and said, "Hello, Mr. Rosenthal." He remembered me always through the years as Mr. Rosenthal, always did. And I never tried to deceive him in any way. It didn't matter.

CEPLAIR

Why did you only last a year with his studio?

FADIMAN

You know, I cannot answer that with either great honesty or great dishonesty. He didn't like me for some reason. I don't know why he hired me. I had a contract for one year. At the end of the year he just said, "No, I don't want you anymore." And he never hired anybody else, incidently. That job disappeared. That's not the point, but I guess he just didn't like me.

CEPLAIR

Did you like story editing better as the years went on?

FADIMAN

Yes, and I'll tell you why. One, I began to appreciate the extraordinary power of motion pictures, which was extraordinary in those days. Second, I began to appreciate the difficulty of learning to write in a circumscribed medium, where you had 127 pages to write in, or 130 pages in those days, possibly, at the most, where everything had to be exact in terms of climaxes, in terms of carefully contoured methods of diverting normal writing into abnormal activities. I thought that was quite an art, and it was. And then I got a lot of money, which was like $200, $300, $400, $500 a week, something like that. It was enormous. When I got to Metro, which was on-- Which was quite a place to be. I was in New York story editing at Metro uniquely in the novel or fiction form. There was another man named Bertram Bloch, who was a playwright, who was the play editor. He was the man who handled plays. I handled practically everything else. I'd go to the theater occasionally too, but that wasn't what I was interested in. I was interested in the novel in book form. And my word began to matter suddenly in West Coast Hollywood, where the mysterious people like Mr. [Louis B.] Mayer lived, people whose names I just knew, [but I] never met them till I began to go there, and [then I] met them once or twice, that was about all. One of my stories has to do with a story called Gone with the Wind. One of the things I did was to go to publishers in New York City and try to read the material that hadn't yet been assigned for printing, still in manuscript form. I one day went down to Macmillan, way down near Greenwich Village, and I said to the man, Harold Latham, the editor, "What have you got, Harold, that I haven't seen?" He said, "Not much. Well, I've got one thing. Follow me." And I did. He brought me in the back room where there was a huge packing case over the top, and there was a manuscript, typed, about, oh, I guess a little under two million words at that time before it was edited. I said, "What's the name of that?" He said, "It's called--a strange name--Gone with the Wind." I said, "That's an odd name. Who wrote it?" He said, "A woman. You've never heard of her," and he gave me the name of the author [Margaret Mitchell]. And I said, "Is it going to be a big book?" He said, "I think it will be the biggest book we've ever had in years." I said, "Really?" He said, "I tell you what. You're a young man. Can you read fast?" I said, "Yes." He said, "If you can read everything in this packing case in forty-eight hours and get it into a taxi, you can have it and bring it back to me." I said, "It's a deal." And I did. I got in a taxi-- Now, I had readers in those days who worked for me, but this was a special assignment, and I knew no one could do it quite as rapidly as I. And I read night and day. I read for about twenty-four hours straight, and I wrote a fifty-two page synopsis--which I think is still somewhere in the file somewhere at Metro--and I sent this to somebody unknown to me then named Mr. Mayer saying, "Dear Mr. Mayer, I think this will make one of the greatest movies of all time." No answer. Finally I got a telegram back saying, "Suggest you tell story of Gone with the Wind to Nicholas Schenck." Nicholas Schenck was the chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer living in the East. A legend. No one ever saw him. He lived somewhere in Long Island. He rarely came to the offices, but he was God. I'd never seen him. I found out where he lived, and I called him up and said, "I'm coming to visit you. Mr. Mayer wants me to tell you a story." He said, "Fine." So I got on the train to Long Island somewhere. I've forgotten where he lived. I was met at the train by a chauffeur and limousine, and we started to drive to Mr. Schenck's house in this Long Island town. We drove for about two miles, and I said to the chauffeur, "When do we get to where he lives?" The chauffeur said, "You've passed most of it already." He owned miles of territory. We got to a house finally. Big gate. The gate opened, and I was ushered in by a butler to Mr. Schenck's room. I'd never met Mr. Schenck. Mr. Schenck was in bed with a cold, sneezing, with orange juice all over the place, napkins of all kinds. And in the corner was a woman, who turned out to be his wife, with the unbelievable name of Pansy. Her name was Pansy. She sat in the corner and gave him an orange juice when he needed it. I stood there pretty nervous. In the first place, to tell the story of Gone with the Wind was impossible, and to do it in an hour and a half or a half hour was ridiculous, and I knew it. And I'd never done that before. I knew he wouldn't read anything; I'd gathered that. You tell stories to him. So I stood there uncomfortably. He said in this accent, which I think I can imitate rather well, "You like this story?" I said, "Yes, I do, Mr. Schenck." He said, "Make a good movie?" I said, "Yes, I think it will." He said, "You sure?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Aha. Tell." So I told. I left out half, I'm sure, but I did a pretty good job--at least I thought I was pretty good--in about forty minutes. Pretty nervous. Told it all through, and not a word. He kept sneezing in between, asking for orange juice. Pansy would get up and give him a drink, and he would stop me. It was a very tough business. I got all through, and he said, "Aha. You really like it, eh?" I said, "Yes, I do, Mr. Schenck." He said, "You think it will make a picture, eh?" I said, "Yes, I think it will." "The publishers like it?" I said, "Yes, they think it's going to be a big book." He said, "What do you think?" I said, "I think it might be a big book--I'm not sure of that. But I think it's going to be a great movie." He said, "Ah. All right. Listen, how long have you been in the business?" And I said, "About five years." He said, "Aha. A young man, eh?" I said, "Well, yes." He said, "Ah. Listen. Ready, young man?" I said, "Yes." He said, "One: Gone with the Wind. What kind of a crazy title is Gone with the Wind? No title. Two: everybody dies, eh?" "Well," I said, "a good many people." He said, "Too bad. It's about war, eh? Who likes war? Nobody likes war, eh?" I said, "Well, that's true. It's about war." He said, "Young man, no. Tell Mr. Mayer no." So I got out of the room--still nobody asked me even if I wanted a drink of water--went back to my office and composed, I thought, a pretty clever telegram. I said, "Have discussed and told story of Gone with the Wind to Mr. Schenck. My impression is he is not--" What did I--? "My impression is he is not enamored of it." Some word that nobody would understand out in Hollywood, I thought. Anyway, that was it. Years passed. You probably know the rest of the story yourself. Anybody does who follows the film industry. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [sold] it [to] David [O.] Selznick, who made the picture. For $4 million we bought the whole film. It was sold to David Selznick for $52,000, then a big price. It's a nice story in its own--

CEPLAIR

What other literary properties do you remember handling for MGM?

FADIMAN

Well, one was something very funny. Somebody came to us and said they'd like to take a play we owned--which we never made, which we thought we made a mistake in--called Green Grow the Lilacs. They wanted to do something called Oklahoma! or some strange title for it. And I said, "Why don't we sell it?" He said, "I'll tell you why we don't sell it." Mr. Mayer then told me this later on. "You don't sell anything in case someone makes a big success out of it. Why be a fool? We don't need the money." And that was Oklahoma! It probably was sold, of course.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 18, 1994

FADIMAN

While I was in New York with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, I also headed and had a pretty successful--NBC [National Broadcasting Company], I think it was--radio show called Deadline Dramas. What was Deadline Dramas? Deadline Dramas was a show composed of myself, who was the master of ceremonies, and a writer, Robertson White, and unfortunately a lady whose name escapes me who was known as a lady storyteller of children's tales. The way this particular thing was presented in those days was rather odd. This is way back, of course. I would come in with a single sentence, which was selected by me from those presented by the audience, who had sent them in to me. A dramatic sentence such as "This is the story of a man who loved ten women and married the twelfth." I was just making that one up; that was not it. They would be given five minutes, during which time I filled the air with my prosaic personality, with anything I could think of, while they conferred on how to handle and invent an entire three-act play ending with "I married a woman. I married the twelfth woman, although I loved ten others." And it was quite successful in its day--lasted, oh, almost a year. The story I like to tell about that one is on Thursday nights, when I got paid, I would take my two actors to 21, which was the elegant establishment of restaurants in New York City. And everybody knew my name because I was the head of this particular Deadline Drama. I got a fine table. On the day that the last one was performed and I was fired therefore--closed, in other words--I went back to 21, and long before I got there they had the news. I got no table; they couldn't find a place for me that night. I learned a little about what was later on to be in Hollywood. I learned a little about that: that fame is a very, very ephemeral object, and you can't have it all the time, and people only paid attention to you when you were successful, never when you were unsuccessful. I learned that very swiftly.

CEPLAIR

Was there any big difference between the four companies for whom you worked in New York: RKO, Columbia, MGM? Or was it basically the same?

FADIMAN

They're basically the same except in size, and therefore size meant money, and money meant power. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer obviously was the biggest one, meaning if they wanted to buy something--an actor, a writer, a director, anything, or a piece of property, otherwise a play, let us say--if they said they were interested, we waited for them always. When I say "we," the agents did, because they had the highest price. But Samuel Goldwyn was number two. RKO-Pathé was a very small company. In those days our stars were named Helen Twelvetrees and William Boyd. But they also discovered two other people named Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO-Pathé. It was a good company, but it just wasn't big enough. It disappeared.

CEPLAIR

And Columbia was also a small operation in those days.

FADIMAN

Yes. I worked for Columbia later on in Hollywood. It was very different. One [reason] was [that] Jack Cohn in New York and Harry Cohn, his brother--two brigands of the first order--were respective heads in their respective parts of the country. They didn't even like each other as brothers, but they suffered each other because they needed each other.

CEPLAIR

Your Gone with the Wind story seems to indicate that the studio bosses really didn't necessarily rely on your story judgment.

FADIMAN

Well, they did for many years. I was under contract for a long time. That was a particular personal story about one or two things that didn't work, but most of the things seemed to work very well. I was lucky.

CEPLAIR

So they trusted your judgment?

FADIMAN

On the whole they did, yes. On the whole they trusted my judgment.

CEPLAIR

Now, about 1942, it seems, you move to Hollywood. Is that--?

FADIMAN

Yes. The reason I went to Hollywood was not because I wanted to go to Hollywood ever. I liked being in New York. I liked being apart from Hollywood and yet being a part of the industry. And I was important in New York, and I was nobody in Hollywood, because I was known to my own company only, of course. But my son [Jeffrey Fadiman] had developed tuberculosis. In those days you cured TB, if you were rich enough, either by sending yourself or the person involved to Egypt or to Tucson. I sent him to Tucson. Tucson was near Hollywood. He was there for two, three years. I wanted to have a chance to see him more frequently. He was two or three years old. I therefore applied for the job of being transferred from New York to Hollywood. They took me rather swiftly, which I was pleased about, and I got to Hollywood that way.

CEPLAIR

What was it like?

FADIMAN

Well, the first week I rehearsed going by auto--because I didn't use cars much in New York City--from my home in Westwood to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. I rehearsed every day how to get there so I wouldn't be embarrassed. That's the kind of world it was for me. I liked it almost immediately. In the first place, I got paid a lot of money. I forget the figure, but to me it was a lot of money. I had a two-year contract at that time, which ultimately became a longer one. And I became sort of-- "The culture kid" was the expression for me. I was young and I was cultivated. And I spoke French, which is a terrible thing to do. Just barely. These people were curious people in Hollywood. Anybody of the tycoons who lived in Hollywood in those days was really not a motion picture maker; he came from another world entirely. Sam Goldwyn came from one world, Mr. Mayer came from another world, Harry Cohn from a third world, Jack Warner from a fourth world, and so forth. There were four or five companies, and they had only one thing in common: they all loved motion pictures. The story about Harry Cohn is particularly interesting. The joke about Harry Cohn is that he could tell a bad picture because he'd get a pain in his butt. And it's true; he could, and he did, and he would know when it wasn't a story he could possibly sell for popular reasons. The others were equally talented in knowing and understanding the culture of the masses, and they dealt with the masses. They did understand much more than the current graduates or M.B.A.'s who are heads of studios. These men were as common as the people they sold their pictures to. But in addition to that they had a business streak which the others didn't have, obviously. And they were clever and witty in their own way. They weren't witty in the conventional Noel Coward way. They were witty in a heavy-handed way, but they had so many people who laughed at their jokes for money that they began to think they were witty.

CEPLAIR

Well, you must have had to have thought about the masses as well. I mean, and given up some of your intellectual--

FADIMAN

Yes, yes, I did. I began to lose my intellectuality. I've got some funny stories about Hollywood in terms of the-- For example, the time of the McCarthy era.

CEPLAIR

Well, let's wait until we get there.

FADIMAN

Yeah.

CEPLAIR

So you came as West Coast story editor, and then you became head of the MGM story department.

FADIMAN

Correct.

CEPLAIR

Now, what did that job entail?

FADIMAN

I had a staff of about forty-five or forty-seven writers under contract in those days and a reading staff of about twelve, fourteen people. And we read in, oh, six or eight different languages. We covered, as the expression was, all of Europe as well as New York and other publishing centers that had English publications, such as London. We were a mighty force. We spent a fortune. We spent millions of dollars. Millions in those days was a phrase used with considerable deference. And we did; we spent a lot of money. We bought lots of things. We didn't make them all, but we bought them. We could afford it.

CEPLAIR

And your job was what? To oversee the synopses and--?

FADIMAN

Oversee all the material we bought and recommend it for discussion on-- I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday mornings we had a story conference in which all the executives would meet--about fourteen of us--in one room from various departments. And I invented a system. I knew they wouldn't read anything, because they wouldn't; they wouldn't even read the synopsis sometimes. But they would listen. They liked movies. I'd present a kind of a verbal movie. I'd trained an actress. Her name was Harriet Frank. Later on her daughter [Harriet Frank Jr.] and Irving, Irving something--

CEPLAIR

Ravetch.

FADIMAN

--Irving Ravetch married each other and were quite successful. Harriet would tell the story walking up and down the room like an actress, and then she'd leave the room, because she wasn't fit to be present while the brilliant minds discussed it. And we discussed the story, to either buy or not to buy it. My best story is Thomas Mann, which I will tell you here right away. I was at my desk one day when Mr. Mayer phoned down to me and said, "You ever hear of a man named Thomas Mann?" I said, "Yes, I know Dr. Mann." He said, "Really? What's he do?" I said, "He's a novelist." He said, "Is he any good?" I said, "Yes, he's quite good." He said, "Where is he?" I said, "In Santa Monica right now." He was then. He said, "What's he doing?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "What's he get?" That's the important question. I said, "He's never worked for pictures. I can't tell you what he gets." "You think he'd like to work for films?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Get him. Whatever he costs, get him." He said, "You know that--" and he named a story, the name of which escapes me. Some middle European story we bought many years ago called an original, meaning unpublished. And he said, "You think he'd like that?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, tell him about it, anyway." And I said, "Fine." So I called Dr. Mann, whom I knew slightly, and I said, "Dr. Mann, this is Mr. Fadiman at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. I don't think you like writing for pictures, probably. I'm sure you don't. But we do have a story with a European, a middle-European background"--I didn't tell him it was no good--"and we'd like you to consider writing it for us." He said, "Well, send it over." I said, "Well, I have a different system here, Dr. Mann. We tell the story. Would you mind being present while we tell it?" And he was so amused at this idea that he said, "Why not." So the famous day dawned. Dr. Thomas Mann sat at my right, Mr. Mayer at the very far end of the table, and the others along the side, and my Scheherazade told the story. It was a terrible story, and there was a terrible silence when she finished. And I said, "Thank you very much, Harriet," and she left the room. Not a word was said, the men on both sides of the table listening with their ears to what Mayer would say but also looking with their eyes to what Mayer would have felt. They wanted to do the right thing. He didn't know what to say. He said nothing. He was waiting for Dr. Mann to say something. And Mann was stubborn, wouldn't talk. Finally I turned to him and said, "Dr. Mann, I'm afraid Mr. Mayer would like to have your reaction to this." He said, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, I see." He clicked his heels and bowed and said, "Mr. Fadiman," and he walked the length of the table, "Mr. Mayer, gentlemen, there have been two mistakes made today: one, that you invited me; two, that I came. Thank you." And he left. Silence in the room, not a word. No one knew what to say. I knew that eventually Mayer would turn to me. Finally he said, "Well, Bill, what did that mean?" I said, "Well, I guess he didn't like it, Mr. Mayer." He said, "What do you mean 'didn't like it'? What's he get?" I said, "I don't know what he gets." "You mean you never asked him?" I said, "No." "You never offered him?" I said, "No." I really took a long chance, you see. "So you mean you didn't offer him anything?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, how do you know, then?" "Well, he doesn't like it, Mr. Mayer. He doesn't like to write for pictures, anyway, and he doesn't like this story. Money wouldn't be the answer to Dr. Mann." He said, "Oh," as if it was a revelation, you see. And I knew that my life was at stake. We broke up, and then I began to get calls in my office from the various members of the board saying, "Don't worry, it's okay." Everyone thought I was going to be fired, you see. I wasn't fired. He never referred to it. But that's one of my great stories, I think, about Hollywood, about the reality of a great artist who was called, and "What does he get?" was a very important thing. He used that phrase once more for me once when the prince of Wales lost his job as the king of England. Remember that time? He said, "What's he doing?" I said, "I don't know. I think he's going to the Bahamas." He said, "What's he get?" I said, "I don't know, but he's a very rich man, Mr. Mayer." He said, "What do you think?" I said, "What do I think what?" He said, "What do you think about his working as the European head of our company? I don't want him to do anything; don't misunderstand me. I just want him to be the prince of Wales." I said, "I don't think so, Mr. Mayer." He said, "Well, think about it." And that was all. Nothing ever happened. But that same man said to me once in a true statement, he said, "You know, we're having trouble with our heavies, with our evil people. We get letters. He can't be a Jew, he can't be Italian, he can't be Mexican, he can't be a Spaniard. What the hell can he be? We're in trouble with all these people. We get letters." And I said, "Yes." He said, "Why can't we buy some country, for God's sake, so we can make the bastards who we want them to be." I said, "That's not a bad idea." He never did it, but he had that kind of a mind.

CEPLAIR

Did you supervise the writers, as well?

FADIMAN

Yes.

CEPLAIR

Were you responsible for hiring and firing them?

FADIMAN

Well, I've got a story about that. We had a producer named Sidney Franklin who did the Greer Garson films, the so-called prestige or distinguished films. He asked me to recommend a writer for a certain project--I've forgotten which one it was--and I did know of a brilliant writer who had never written for films. But I felt he would do this particular job. His name was Countee Cullen. He was a Negro poet. It never occurred to me that he was black. That's the point of the story. It never occurred to me. I wasn't being smart, I just didn't think of it. He said, "What's he get?" And I found out, $500 a week, which in those days was fairly good. I gave him a ten-week contract and brought him out. And I never thought about him being black; it never occurred to me. And Countee Cullen came to see me. We talked, and I said, "I'd like you to meet Mr. Franklin. He likes to have tea with his new writers." Countee Cullen said, "Fine," and he went upstairs to meet with Mr. Sidney Franklin at tea. I introduced them to each other, and they seemed to like each other--no word mentioned about his being black--and with that I left them. And I met Eddie Mannix. Eddie Mannix was the general manager in charge of labor relations. Because he was a big, tough man, strong, he could handle it. And he said, "How are you doing with your new writer?" And I said, "Fine." He said, "Who is he?" I said, "A fellow named Countee Cullen." I never mentioned he was black. He said, "Okay. Hope Sidney likes him." I said, "I'm sure he will." I left then. About two days later, my buzzer rings, and I fly upstairs to Mr. Mannix's office. He said, "On that Sidney Franklin picture, that guy you hired?" I said, "Yes." He said, "I've got bad news." I said, "What do you mean, Eddie?" "We're canceling the picture. Too expensive." Well, that I understood. I said, "Gee, that's too bad." He said, "Well, do what you can. What did you give him, a contract?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Okay. Do what you can." So I called Countee Cullen in. It's difficult to explain that Hollywood's crazy, but I said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Cullen, but we're not going to make the movie at all. I owe you $10,000, I'm going to give you $5,000." He was very pleased, and he said thank you. I said fine, and he left. About four days later my buzzer rings again, and I race upstairs, and Mannix says, "About that-- What's the name of that picture?" And I said, "I've forgotten." He said, "Oh, yes, the Franklin picture." I said, "Yes." He said, "We decided to put it back on schedule now." And then it hit me. I said, "Oh." That's all I said. I walked out. I learned.

CEPLAIR

There were no black writers in Hollywood motion picture studios then, were there?

FADIMAN

No, no. If that's political, then I was political to that extent.

CEPLAIR

Tell me about what relations you had with the writers. Were you responsible for assigning them projects? Or did--?

FADIMAN

I was responsible for recommending them, which was almost the same thing, because by the time we'd get to the stage where we'd say "Joe Smith"-- We had many writers under contract in those days, you see. They were there for forty weeks out of fifty-two. I mean that they were paid for forty weeks out of fifty-two and had two- or three-year contracts. My job was to keep them as occupied as I could in terms of decent business tactics and at the same time to convince the producers involved that they could use this one instead of that one--that although we had this one, "This one's under contract--why not use him? He's a pretty good fellow. He's a funny man"--if that's what they wanted, let's say a comedy man. So I was a very great friend of the writers as well as a person who could hire them in the first place. For example, I put a new system in. I wanted new writers in who had never written for Hollywood at all, and I wrote a form letter to the heads of the English and/or writing departments of all the universities I could think of in the United States. I offered them, in those days, $75 a week for six months, then $100 and so forth, up to about $250, something like that. And I got six writers that way. They sent in what projects they were doing, I recommended them, and then we got them under contract. And some of them-- One was a famous one later on, named Isobel Lennart, and four or five others whose names escape me-- But they were all pretty good, and they stayed on.

CEPLAIR

One of the things that I've found as I've looked through the MGM script material is that it seems to be no less than six or eight writers who worked on virtually every script.

FADIMAN

That's explained by the fact that we had writers under contract, and I'll tell you how that system worked. Someone would say, "You know, we have to have some funny scenes in here." I said, "Harry Ruskin's the man for a funny scene," if he was the one involved, let's say. Or Irving Brecher was the man for a funny scene. So they would get into it. Now, in those days we didn't have to give credit, you see. Later on we had to assign credit through the [Screen] Writers Guild. Up till then we could assign credit-- We would decide whether Mr. Brecher, let's say, or Mr. Ruskin would get any credit at all. It was up to us, us being myself, largely. It wasn't anybody's fault. I wasn't attempting to be a king of the mountain, but I knew the most about the work. But the reason there were five or six writers under every Metro project was because we had to use, if we could, people who got $1,000 a week or $500 a week or $2,000 a week and were doing nothing.

CEPLAIR

So it wasn't a matter that they, the original people, were actually necessarily writing bad scripts?

FADIMAN

Not at all. There were sections, for example, that we thought could be done better. When I say "we," the producer and/or I together would say, "This could be funnier" or "This could be more dramatic" or "This could be more melodramatic" or "This could be sadder, and I know somebody who's very good at sad stories and so do you" and then name someone. Some writer's name escapes me at the moment. Let's say a woman named-- I'm trying to remember. Sonya Levien was very good on grown-up stories. She was really adult; she was an adult person.

CEPLAIR

And did writers resent that, that they would be moved in and out of projects?

FADIMAN

No, because they-- The word "hack" then was a word not used as a degradation word. It was a method of writing. For example, when Hank [Herman] Mankiewicz came out here, Hank sent a telegram to Ben Hecht saying, "Dear Ben," or words to this effect--I saw it once--"come out here. This is a gold mine. They don't know nothin' about nothin'." Something, some derogation. And he was quite right. And Ben Hecht came out and got, in those days, $5,000 a week, which is a fortune. I've got a story about Ben Hecht which is kind of entertaining, I think. He worked for Sam Goldwyn. Sam Goldwyn didn't like Ben Hecht and didn't want to use him ever, but one day we had a project in shooting which needed some work in the last three weeks of shooting. It really needed a lot of rewriting. It just didn't turn out well. And Ben was the fastest writer alive. He could write anything for money. And Sam said to me, "Who can you think of?" I said, "Well, only Ben Hecht." He said, "No. Who else can you think of?" And I said, "Nobody." He said, "I don't like Ben Hecht." I said, "I know." He said, "What does he want?" And I told him $5,000. And he said, "Well, find out." And I did. I came back with a funny story. I said, "Sam, Ben will do this, and he'll do it in three weeks, too. He wants $5,000 a week, but there's something else he wants." Sam said, "What's that?" "He said he wants you to deliver the checks to him at the end of every week personally." That was what Ben asked for. And Sam said, "Argh! What does he think, the son of a bitch? I don't want him, I don't want him, I don't want him!" I said, "He can do it in three weeks, Sam." He said, "All right, put him on. I'll do it." And he did. He did it very cleverly. He delivered it every week when the secretary was there and Ben was out to lunch. He wouldn't do it personally, but he did it.

CEPLAIR

So you're basically saying that the writers understood the system. They understood that they were being paid a lot, and they really didn't mind being shifted around that way.

FADIMAN

I think most of them. I mean, Faulkner didn't like it, people like that, of course. Scott Fitzgerald didn't like it. But fundamentally they all "sold out." Sometimes they had nothing to sell out with; they just were good hacks in the old-fashioned sense of the word hacks. They could do anything if you paid them enough, and they made a lot of money. See, writers never make much of a living. If a writer makes $5,000 a year, even today it's a lot of money, believe me, as just a writer. He may write a book and get a $5,000 advance. That's the end of it. He may get a $10,000 advance. That's the end of it.

CEPLAIR

Did you respect the quality of the writing at MGM?

FADIMAN

Oh, yes, because I knew what they were doing. I respected it in a strange way. They could turn the thoughts of people into entertaining activities in a way that was understood by the masses rather than the classes, and that's hard to do. That's an art, because that demands a denigration of what you want to do in the first place if you're a fine writer, if you're a quality writer. Now, we didn't always get quality writers. We often got hacks deliberately who could do a good job on anything. But some of them were greater than others, that's all. Some were cleverer than others, smarter than others, brighter than others.

CEPLAIR

Who were some of the writers, the screenwriters, that you had the most respect for--I mean, who you thought were just very, very talented?

FADIMAN

Sidney Howard.

CEPLAIR

And he was a playwright, actually.

FADIMAN

Yes, but he also wrote for Hollywood, of course. Everyone wrote for Hollywood in those days. It was a natural thing to do.

CEPLAIR

Because of the money.

FADIMAN

Because of the money. You can write a play, and it can fold up in twenty-four hours, whereas you get a contract for six months, it would last six months. Oh, let me see if I can think of some of the others. Dalton Trumbo was a first-rate writer and a first-rate man. I'm trying to remember some of the others. Waldo Salt was a first-rate writer.

CEPLAIR

Was the story department held in great esteem in the studio? Did they acknowledge how important the story was?

FADIMAN

Yes, it was an important department. We had a big staff, and we were significant in many ways.

CEPLAIR

Were you paid the equivalent of other department heads, do you think?

FADIMAN

Yes, I think not quite, a little below, but not much below. I was an important-- When I say "I," anybody at the head of the story department was a man of consequence in those days. When Life magazine did a whole pictographic study of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, I got as much space--my picture, etc.--as anybody else did, because that was an important part of the world. The stories mattered a great deal. They really did.

CEPLAIR

To whom did you report directly? Was Mannix your immediate supervisor?

FADIMAN

Well, usually indirectly to Mr. Mayer. Usually I'd report to a man named Bennie Thau, who was an executive who once said to me-- I said, "I want to produce a picture." He said, "Fine, you can do it if you want to, but remember, you're as good as your last picture. The other way, you're as good as your last job, and your job is good. Stick where you are. Take my advice." And he was right. Because I did produce two or three pictures eventually somewhere. I've forgotten where, I think Columbia.

CEPLAIR

Now, according to this, in January 1947 you became executive assistant in charge of stories and writers at RKO [Radio Pictures].

FADIMAN

That's right.

CEPLAIR

How come you left MGM?

FADIMAN

That was when Dore Schary was there, wasn't it?

CEPLAIR

At RKO.

FADIMAN

That's why I left MGM, because Dore Schary was a close personal friend, and I worked with him very well, and I wanted to be with him. And I got an increase in salary, I think, of $100 or $200--I've forgotten which in those days--and a long-term contract. And I was executive assistant in literary matters, close to the head of the studio, in other words. Dore was the head of the studio. And we did some good things there. He was a good man.

CEPLAIR

So you got more money and more power?

FADIMAN

More money and more power.

CEPLAIR

Even though RKO wasn't as big as MGM?

FADIMAN

Well, power's very important. Let me tell you a funny story about power. I used to go to Romanov's for lunch--Romanov's was a then famous restaurant--on Wednesday or Thursday, I've forgotten what day. I always had the same table, etc. You passed by a long bar before you got to the seated table. And I was invariably greeted by at least a dozen people saying, "Hiya, Bill, hiya, baby, hiya, sweetie, hiya, kid," and then I'd go to the place and have my lunch. Mike Romanov, who was a cynical man, came to me one day and said, "Bill," he said, "you want to bet $100?" And I said, "On what?" He said, "Well, it will take me five minutes. I've got to spread the rumor in the restaurant that you've been fired from Metro. Then I want you to go back across the bar and tell me how many people say hello to you." I said, "Mike, I'm not going to do it." And I learned a lesson right then. I never did it. And he was quite right. I was powerful because I had that title, not because I was good or bad. The title mattered. And I could spend lots of money and give lots of people lots of cash, and that was valuable.

CEPLAIR

Just as you got to RKO, two of their most important employees were unfriendly witnesses [before the House Committee on Un-American Activities]. Scott and--

FADIMAN

Adrian Scott and--

CEPLAIR

And Edward Dmytryk.

FADIMAN

Eddie Dmytryk, yes.

CEPLAIR

Can you tell us when the subpoenas came and what went on at that studio as a result of that?

FADIMAN

Well, nothing went on, because most of them went to England, as you know, or Mexico.

CEPLAIR

No, before they testified. They testified October 1947. But before then, was the studio very upset about them getting the subpoenas? Were they thinking that they were going to have to fire them even before the testimony?

FADIMAN

Well, who was the head of the studio at that time?

CEPLAIR

I think Peter Rathvon.

FADIMAN

Yes, well, Peter Rathvon was a respectable and conservative Republican personality. And as I remember Peter Rathvon, he was against what is called subversion, or communism, in those days. It wasn't communism. What was it called? Socialism, I guess.

CEPLAIR

It was communism.

FADIMAN

It was communism. Therefore, I think he probably, although I'm not sure myself, would have said that they should be fired.

CEPLAIR

You wouldn't have had any connection-- Would they have come to you and asked you about it?

FADIMAN

Now, I wasn't involved in that sort of thing ever. I was friends with many of the writers, of course, but I wasn't involved. I've only got one tiny story about my own subversive activities. When I went to Columbia and they went through my record, they discovered that I had given $5, a check, to some theatrical alliance of people who believed in radical plays [the Actors Lab], and I had to defend myself suddenly. And I said I'd do it again, and they said, "Well, my God, do you realize that they're communists?" I said, "No, I didn't know they were communists. I just thought they were writing good plays." But that sort of thing went on. That's about all.

CEPLAIR

So once you explained it, there was no other problem with that?

FADIMAN

I'm afraid I can't give you any problems, because the only-- Oh, yes, I've got one thing. During the McCarthy era at Metro, I had to do the following as the head of the story department when we hired Joe Smith, let us say, as a writer, a new writer, a new name. I was to phone a certain number in Washington--I didn't know what the number was, by the way--and give the name of the writer and say what he was to get: "Seven [hundred] fifty [dollars] a week, Joe Smith." There would be a small moment of silence and about two minutes of waiting while somebody went through something, which I later discovered was the famous book called-- What was that book that had the list of names?

CEPLAIR

Red Channels?

FADIMAN

Red Channels, which I didn't know about at the time. And the voice would come back and say yes or no, and I'd report that to Mr. Mannix, and he would say yes or no as a result of that and always said whatever they said. I didn't know what he was doing with it. I did later realize what it meant.

CEPLAIR

What was it like working with Schary at RKO?

FADIMAN

Wonderful. He was a liberal. He was an intelligent man, he was a decent man. He was basically one of the kindest men I've ever met in my life. Dore Schary. If one word can be applied, he was a kind man. And of course, he believed in using the medium for the dissemination of kind deeds, and he did. He was a good man.

CEPLAIR

Did you then have to bring in different kinds of literary properties for RKO than you did for MGM?

FADIMAN

No, no.

CEPLAIR

It didn't matter?

FADIMAN

It didn't matter.

CEPLAIR

Even though they were different studios with different styles?

FADIMAN

No, because we were looking for good narratives, good dramas, things that would make money, things that would be successful, things that would be popular. We weren't trying to be a literary-qualitative organization. Anyway, you can't lose that much money too swiftly and stay in business. You can do that in a publishing house; you can do two or three books because you believe in them. And then you get an Irving Wallace or someone to cover them, the price of the books, because he will sell well. Or Irving Stone. But you can't do that in pictures. It's very hard to do it.

CEPLAIR

So you're saying that if you're the head of a story department and you go from studio to studio, you still have the same sort of principles in mind?

FADIMAN

Basically the same concepts, yes. Basically the same concepts. You're always looking for something or somebody that will be unusual but not unusual to the point of being not looked at. That's no good.

CEPLAIR

What happened when Howard Hughes came to RKO? Did things change?

FADIMAN

Well, Howard was an extraordinary man to work for. I saw him about--

CEPLAIR

Extraordinary--good or bad?

FADIMAN

I saw him about four or five times during the whole three or four years that I was there. It was very unusual to see him that much, incidentally. [It was] always at night, always at two or three [o'clock] in the morning, always via two or three cars--meaning you'd get picked up wherever you were in one car, then you'd change to another car, then to a third car, the theory [being] you wouldn't know he lived on Romaine Street, where he had an office. Why he did this no one will ever know. One of my first meetings is one I'll never forget. I got there at about two in the morning, and there were two big agents there. One was Bert Allenberg, and one was another agent whose name I don't know. They were there at about two in the morning. And I sat down. All the chairs were placed in a very curious manner. Howard Hughes sat at the desk, and the chairs were at odd angles. If you sit in a chair, you normally move it slightly just to be more comfortable. If you tried this, you'd find you couldn't. It was nailed to the floor. Later I discovered why. He was getting deaf, and the electronics department had arranged it so that if these chairs were in a certain way he could hear perfectly. And that's the way they were all the time. He also used to eat his lunch in a brown bag at two or three in the morning. He would offer you nothing, but he would eat in front of you. Out of the brown bag would come a bottle of Coca-Cola and some sandwiches or something. Strange man. He taught me certain things. One of the times I was with him he said, "How many people do you have under contract in your story department, writers?" I said, "About thirty-five or forty." He said, "I'd like to cut 25 percent down." And I started to talk. And he said, "Bill-- Your name is Bill?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Bill, you're going to tell me that someone has cancer, someone's getting married, someone's having a new baby, aren't you." I said, "Well, there are things like that." He said, "Don't tell me, and I'll tell you why. If you tell me, I'm human. If I'm human, I can't fire them, can I?" I said, "I don't know, Mr. Hughes." He said, "Well, a corporation has no soul, Bill. That's how it's going to be successful. Now, can you cut 25 percent out?" I said, "Yes, sir." And I did.

CEPLAIR

Now, there are some stories about him that he had an anticommunist film script that he used as a kind of a litmus test for writers. If writers wouldn't work on it, then he sort of knew they were radical, and he would fire them.

FADIMAN

It's possible, but I don't know about such a thing. It's very possible. He was very conscious of being an American, very conscious of helping the United States government, very conscious of the fact that communists were wicked, evil people, very conscious that they would destroy the earth, as far as he was concerned. He was an American to the core. He would like to say that, I'm sure. A very curious man.

CEPLAIR

Did he give you a directive that you should find anticommunist material?

FADIMAN

Never, never. I've got a couple of stories about reading for Howard Hughes. One day about two, three in the morning, I got a phone call at home, and he said, "How are you?" And I said, "Fine." No one usually says that to you at two or three in the morning. He said, "Are you alone?" I'd just been divorced, you see. I said, "Yes." He said, "I'm going to send a script over." I said, "Fine." He said, "How long will it take you to read it?" I said, "About an hour." He said, "Fine." And as he hung up, the bell rang. The chauffeur was already there with the script, waiting, you see. I read the script, and he called in about an hour exactly. He said, "Are you finished?" I said, "Yes." He said, "What do you think?" I said, "I don't like it at all." Then I took a long chance. I'd read in the gossip columns that he was dating a girl named Jean Peters. I said, "Howard, if this is for Jean, you're going to destroy her." No answer. I said, "If it's not for Jean, it's just a bad screenplay." He said, "Thank you." And as he said thank you, my doorbell rang again. The chauffeur was there ready to pick it up, take it away from me. He never dictated. He listened to what I had to say. When I resigned he sent me a note saying, "Dear Bill, you have a life contract. Why are you quitting?" And I wrote back across it, "Whose life?" I never got an answer.

CEPLAIR

There's also another story that I've found at RKO involving Paul Jarrico. You know--

FADIMAN

Paul, yeah.

CEPLAIR

That Hughes insisted that his name be taken off Las Vegas Story even though he had written it, and that led to a major confrontation with the guild over credit.

FADIMAN

This I wouldn't know, but it was very possible with Paul. It sounds just like Paul Jarrico. He was a great guy and is today.

CEPLAIR

Okay. In 1952, then, you went to Columbia as a producer.

FADIMAN

Yes.

CEPLAIR

How did that evolve? I mean, what made you decide to leave the story department and become a producer?

FADIMAN

At Metro?

CEPLAIR

No, this is at Columbia I think.

FADIMAN

This is right after Metro? Because I was fired from Metro. I'll tell you about that.

CEPLAIR

Let's see. I have you down as going from RKO to Columbia in '52.

FADIMAN

That's possible then. In Hollywood?

CEPLAIR

In Hollywood, yeah.

FADIMAN

Why I went to Columbia?

CEPLAIR

Yes.

FADIMAN

Well, I left RKO because Columbia offered me a better job. But I also was fired from Metro. How I was fired from Metro-- It's a very funny story. It's not funny but really is. We were having big cuts in salary. Everybody was on a big economy wave. And I spent, oh, six, eight months negotiating various salaries: cuttings and reductions and firings of people, always giving them as fair a deal as I could. Remaining contracts we'd settle for large sums of money, and I proudly reported to my then boss, Sam Katz, on that particular project, "Sam, I've got it all done." He said, "How did you make out?" And I'd tell him the figures. And he said, "That's very good. Now we can do it with you." And he did. I never knew why.

CEPLAIR

Just like that.

FADIMAN

Just like that.

CEPLAIR

What made you decide to become a producer?

FADIMAN

Foolishness. I shouldn't have done it. I wanted to have my name on the screen, not realizing that it takes about a fifth of a second to look at. You can't even remember it five seconds after that. I produced three pictures, I think.

CEPLAIR

Yes, Jubal, Rampage, and Last Frontier.

FADIMAN

That's right.

CEPLAIR

Those are all westerns?

FADIMAN

Jubal was a western. Rampage-- I don't remember Rampage at all. Last Frontier, we took our title from a book by Howard Fast, I think, just used the title of it. They were just three movies, period. And I did them as anybody, as any writer, would do a job for money, nothing else. I had no great excitement about them. One of them, I'm trying to remember now, with a girl in it named-- I can't remember her name anymore. Unfortunately she never got anywhere. One was pretty fair. I got a prize for Jubal, I think. It was based on a novel by somebody named Paul Wellman, a very good writer in his day. I think I had Victor Mature in it. I'm not sure of myself there.

CEPLAIR

Glenn Ford, I assume, was--

FADIMAN

Glenn Ford, that's right. Glenn Ford was a very good actor in those days--still, I guess. And Tony [Anthony] Mann directed it, I think, who was a good, a very fine, director. It was a pretty good western of its kind, but it wasn't what I really wanted to do. I liked stories better, and I realized that, and I didn't like the fact that I was now in the middle of a situation-- That's why I'm trying to remember the name of the girl. For example, the girl I would-- Charlton Heston was in one of my films. Chuck and I became very good friends during the course of the picture, and years later I was in Rome and he passed by my table without even knowing who I was. And I realized what was going on: there's the romance of a film, but it's a rather transitory statement, let's put it that way.

CEPLAIR

What was it like working under Harry Cohn?

FADIMAN

He was a funny man, funny in the sense of odd. One of his stories is quite symptomatic. We had an argument, oh, about a story. He took me to a window, and he said, "Where's your car parked?" I pointed out-- I had a Dodge. "It's there." He said, "There's mine." He showed the Rolls Royce. "Whose is better?" he asked me very simply. He was quite right; he was better. He won that argument. He also did a very funny thing to me about "Swifty" [Irving] Lazar. I was at my desk, and the phone rang, and Harry said, "Do you know anybody named Swifty Lazar?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Good. What do you think of him? You can tell me how you feel. Be honest." I told him, and then he said, "Come on down." And there was Swifty Lazar, who was asked to listen in on the conversation, which I didn't know. That's the sort of thing Harry Cohn would do. Not exactly the most charming man in the world. But he was also a man of tremendous knowledge of motion pictures. He just knew. He really did know. I never liked him, but I had to admire him. He was an uncultivated man in every sense of the term, and it didn't matter. He hired people who were cultivated. He hired people like me. And why not? That's the way he figured his life.

CEPLAIR

Did you have aspirations to become more than a producer, like maybe the head of a studio?

FADIMAN

No, I never wanted more than-- I was making then, I think, $1,000 a week, which was a lot of money for me in those days, and for anybody else, as a matter of fact. I think it was $1,000, maybe $1,250--$1,000, I guess. And I had already decided to be in the echelon of being an executive in charge of, and being a big man in films, was a way of destroying yourself as a human being, because you had to destroy people to stay there, and I couldn't take that. I never did. I didn't want to get any higher than I was. My two wives [Vera Racolin and Regina Kobacker Fadiman] have asked that same question that you've asked, by the way, why I didn't try to get bigger. I just didn't want to. I truly didn't. Not because I might have done it. I don't know how good I would have been. I'd have been terrible at it. But, I mean, I knew it was the wrong thing to do psychologically in terms of human beings and humanity. You had to destroy. You cannot be at the top of things without hurting somebody underneath you, and underneath you means under your feet. It doesn't mean underneath you in terms of stratification.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 9, 1994

CEPLAIR

On our first tape you had mentioned early on that you had some relation to William James, or there was something about William James, and you never--

FADIMAN

I was talking about my mother [Grace Fadiman]'s curious habit, the way she named her children. I'm particularly fortunate: she took the first two out of the phone book, but I was the third and the last. And she took my name following that of Professor William James. How that happened is as follows: I had, rather in his day, a rather famous uncle named Boris Sidis, who was then called an alienist, which was then a term used for psychiatrists in those days. He was the man whom you met at Ellis Island when you came in who asked you questions to see whether you were crazy or not. He eventually became a professor at Harvard [University] and worked closely and became a close friend of William James. Hence I was called William James after William James, the famous gentleman of the time.

CEPLAIR

Okay. Now, I also wanted to follow up a little bit on your Judaism.

FADIMAN

Yes.

CEPLAIR

Was that ever a factor in the kind of work you did or the sorts of books you selected?

FADIMAN

No, it played no role whatsoever, because I'm an atheist. That's one reason. Second, in terms of professionalism, it never had any impact whatsoever on anything I ever did, wrote, or hired, anything whatsoever.

CEPLAIR

I've read that because the industry was so heavily Jewish that sometimes the heads of the studios leaned backwards not to use Jewish material or to emphasize Jewishness. Was that ever anything--?

FADIMAN

No, although you're quite right. My immediate boss happened to be an Irishman named Eddie Mannix. But apart from that curious fact, he was about the only non-Jew in the executive area. You're quite right in that respect, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer particularly. At no time was anything indicated, either yes or no, regarding the employment of anybody either Jewish or non-Jewish, at no time. The only thing I mentioned to you a long time ago was the Countee Cullen story, which-- I think I mentioned that. That, of course, was racism pure and not very simple.

CEPLAIR

What about anti-Semitic stories? Was there ever a sense that you couldn't do that sort of a story, like prior to World War II?

FADIMAN

I don't recall any time anyone ever raised his or her hand or his or her voice and said to me to be careful of this because of that particular aspect. I do not recall any such incident, no, sir.

CEPLAIR

Okay. You yourself, were you at all politically active in any group or movement in the thirties or forties?

FADIMAN

No, but I have a curious anecdote about that. I once sent a $5 check to an organization, the name of which escapes me, having to do with the theater in Hollywood [the Actors Lab], and discovered it was headed by a man named Julie Garfield, whose name turned out to be something else.

CEPLAIR

John Garfield.

FADIMAN

John Garfield, that's right. And at that time I went to Columbia Pictures [Industries] for a job, and suddenly the vice president said to me, "Do you know you belong to a communist organization?" I said, "No, I did not." And he flashed the check for $5, literally $5, which I had sent. It seems this particular organization did have its roots in some communist activity. Beyond that, no. That's the only time that ever crossed my particular horizon.

CEPLAIR

Okay. So you weren't in any of the antifascist organizations or--?

FADIMAN

No, I never joined any of those.

CEPLAIR

Okay. One of the things I've been curious about was the ratio of purchases of properties to films actually made at the studios. Was that an enormous ratio?

FADIMAN

Well, I've got a story--not the ratio, which I don't know, but I've got a figure for you. I remember one time when I first took over the job at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, I noticed something very odd. We had a lot of properties that had never been made but had been bought and a great deal of money spent on them. It turned out to be close to $5 million at that time. And I very proudly came to Mr. [Louis B.] Mayer and said to him, "You know, I think we could sell some of these." And he said, "No." I said, "Why not? We could use the money." He said, "Well, actually we don't need the money. And second, suppose someone made a good picture out of one of those. We'd be in a very embarrassing situation, don't you think?" And I got the idea. I dropped that concept and that subject completely.

CEPLAIR

So in other words, there's no sense of efficiency. You just bought whatever was--

FADIMAN

We bought what we liked at the time. We tried to make them. If they were unsuccessful in terms of being put into script form, then we just called it a bad day and wrote them off technically and from a tax point of view.

CEPLAIR

And no one had any problem with that? It was just the way it was done?

FADIMAN

That's the way it worked.

CEPLAIR

Okay. Now, one thing that I wasn't sure on, that was a little confusing--it may have been my fault--you said that you were fired from MGM. Was that in 1947?

FADIMAN

Now, I can't give you the date. But the reason I remember it clearly was that, as I mentioned at the time, I had been engaged rather actively in settling the contracts of many writers. And I recall the gentleman's name of Sam Katz, who belonged to a big theater chain in the East and had become a vice president of Metro. He turned to me and congratulated me on my activities and said, "Now we can do it on you too, don't you think?" and did.

CEPLAIR

My guess is that would be when you went to Columbia.

FADIMAN

I think that's probably--

CEPLAIR

Or went to RKO.

FADIMAN

RKO probably.

CEPLAIR

So that would probably be at the end of 1946.

FADIMAN

'Forty-seven.

CEPLAIR

Either '46 or '47.

FADIMAN

That's right.

CEPLAIR

Now, when you were at RKO, which, as I mentioned in the last tape, was coincident with the beginning of the blacklist, were you ever approached by any blacklisted writers or fronts to use their work that you know of?

FADIMAN

You mean such as Albert Maltz, let us say?

CEPLAIR

Yes.

FADIMAN

Let's see. Because he was a friend of mine-- Dalton Trumbo was also a friend of mine. No, nobody ever approached me directly. I always knew when we were hiring a writer whose name was really Dalton Trumbo, let us say, even though he used another name, or Albert Maltz, to use that name for an example. But I was never approached by anybody directly who said, "Are you banning me?" or "Will you not accept anything I submit to you?" Never.

CEPLAIR

But if you knew it was, you simply kept quiet about it.

FADIMAN

I kept quiet, that's all. It was a good or bad piece of work, that was all.

CEPLAIR

So you were ideologically opposed to the blacklist?

FADIMAN

Oh, yes, ideologically completely opposed to the blacklist.

CEPLAIR

And powerless to do anything about it.

FADIMAN

And powerless and knew that ultimately America would come to its senses, which it did. But took it too long a time, I'm afraid.

CEPLAIR

Did you ever have any conversations with Dore Schary about it? He was active at the Waldorf conference in November in dealing with the Hollywood Ten, and then when he came back he had some--

FADIMAN

I know, Dore was a curious man. Dore was a very kind man, a lenient man, and in politics was as far left as he dared be working for a large capitalistic organization. I never had any private conversation with Dore about that area whatsoever. My job was always to say I recommend so-and-so, and he would either say yes or no depending on his attitude at the moment. But never was there ever mention of any reasons that would cause him to do so for political purposes.

CEPLAIR

Okay. One thing that I remembered as I was listening to the last tape and you were talking about Thomas Mann coming to MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer], were you aware that after Mayer left MGM he tried to make a movie of Joseph and His Brothers? And that Clifford Odets had written a screenplay for him?

FADIMAN

No, I didn't know there was ever a screenplay written on Joseph and His Brothers. I'd like to see it. No, I don't know about it at all.

CEPLAIR

Okay. Well, let's go back to Columbia. As I said, in apparently 1955 you became a producer, and your first movie was something called The Last Frontier, which was written by Phillip Yordan and Russell Hughes, directed by Anthony Mann, and starred Victor Mature. How did it happen that you did a western as your first movie?

FADIMAN

You know, I can't recall what prompted my-- I don't believe I selected a western, because a western was not my cup of tea.

CEPLAIR

Yes, that's why I was--

FADIMAN

I was thinking that it must have been the only one available, and I did have a great reverence for Anthony Mann, Tony Mann. I thought he was a damn good director. And we had a title. You see, the title of The Last Frontier came from another book entirely, a book by Howard Fast, as I recall. We just used the title, which we owned of course in those days. I guess the title fascinated me. I can't think of any other reason. I know we did that in Mexico.

CEPLAIR

Would everything just have been assigned to you--? I mean all the writers, the directors? Or would you have had choices?

FADIMAN

Oh, no, I was involved in the actual final selection of the writers and consulted on the cast--let's put it charmingly--which means I had no choice whatsoever on the cast, of course. The writers were also my selection.

CEPLAIR

That came out in December 1955. Then your next movie was Jubal, which you also mentioned, which came out in April 1956.

FADIMAN

Yes, based on a novel by a man named Paul Wellman.

CEPLAIR

Right. Russell Hughes and Delmar Daves did the screenplay; Daves directed.

FADIMAN

Daves. Del directed. That's right.

CEPLAIR

So now you've got a second western, even though, again, you wouldn't have--

FADIMAN

Well, because in Hollywood, when you do one and it makes a living or does well, you automatically are assigned in the same genre. They don't think about you as a person with any multiple personalities in Hollywood. You are one personality. "What was your last picture?" In every sense of the word they meant that, too.

CEPLAIR

And then you don't produce another movie for seven years. Now, again, you've mentioned that you just didn't like producing. Was that--?

FADIMAN

Well, I learned early that you are really as good or as bad as the reception accorded your last picture, and that was disturbing to me economically. Whereas I knew I could do rather well in my own end of it as a story man.

CEPLAIR

So after Jubal you went back to being the story editor or head of the story department?

FADIMAN

Precisely.

CEPLAIR

Now, I've read in biographies of Harry Cohn that he was actively searching for someone to groom to replace him as head of the studio. Were you one of those candidates?

FADIMAN

Under no conditions could I have been, because Harry and I never really got along very well. He knew I was good, I knew he was good--he was, in his own curious, paradoxical way. But I knew we had no relationship as human beings whatsoever. He was a crude, vulgar man, very, very odd in many ways, but with an extraordinary intuitive knowledge of the motion picture industry, extraordinary.

CEPLAIR

So he simply just wouldn't have considered you for that kind of position?

FADIMAN

No, I don't think so. I worked largely at Columbia, by the way, for Jerry Wald, rather than Harry Cohn. Jerry Wald was the vice president at that time. And I was a man who was sort of associated with Jerry Wald largely, because he was in charge of the studio to a large extent, although Harry Cohn was still the boss, of course.

CEPLAIR

He's sort of a legend in his own right.

FADIMAN

Oh, yes.

CEPLAIR

Do you have any stories about him that you remember?

FADIMAN

None, except he came to work at five o'clock every morning, and his most obscene word was the word "naughty." If he thought someone was doing something dishonest or indecent or cruel or evil, he would say, "He's a naughty man." The reason for that was he wanted never to make enemies. He always thought Hollywood was a good place to keep friendly, because the man you would say was bad or naughty was the man who undoubtedly would be your boss the next day, and you always had trouble with that. So naughty was as fair a word of obscenity as I ever heard from Jerry's lips. He was a curious man. He used to read the New York Times Book Review, Sunday book review. He never read it actually, he skimmed it. He would write form letters to every single writer just wishing them well "just in case." As he always used to say to me, "You never can tell when you'll need somebody."

CEPLAIR

There's always that story that he was the model for What Makes Sammy Run?

FADIMAN

Sammy Run, yes, I know that. I think he was, too. I'm not sure, of course. I can't prove it, because Budd Schulberg would never quite admit that, but I think he was without question the model for What Makes Sammy Run? I would say that without any specific knowledge but only with an intuitive concept.

CEPLAIR

Was he one of the moviemakers you respected, whose qualities you respected?

FADIMAN

Jerry was a curious man. Jerry was a commercial motion picture maker with a heart that had, somewhere in the back of it, way down deep and rarely touched if possible, a sense of total quality. And although he didn't use that very often-- Because to be commercial, you had to be successful. To be successful, you had to be--let me say--entertaining at all times. Jerry was always entertaining in his films. I couldn't say that Jerry was a liberal man. He may have been way down deep. I think he was. But I never knew him that well. No one knew Jerry that well. He always smiled, he always laughed. He was always a happy man, and that was sad, in my opinion. I mean, his other emotions obviously never came to the surface, so that was all.

CEPLAIR

Now, in 1960 you became vice president of Seven Arts in charge of literary and script material. Why did you make the change? Why did you go from Columbia to Seven Arts?

FADIMAN

Because Ray Stark offered me a better salary and a better job.

CEPLAIR

What was better about the job at Seven Arts?

FADIMAN

The money, nothing else. The titles were much longer, as you observe. I was still just a story editor, but that was a large phrase they invented in those days for me, that was all.

CEPLAIR

Now, Seven Arts was in television as well, was it not?

FADIMAN

Not at the beginning, no. It was headed by a man named Kenneth Hyman, who in turn was the son of the actual owner of Seven Arts, a man named Bernie Hyman. And Ken was a man, oh, I would say about ten years younger than I was and extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily intelligent, and a cultivated man, a man with a college education, which he utilized intelligently. We got along rather well, and I liked the job for that, period.

CEPLAIR

Had the industry changed noticeably at that point? I mean, could you say in the early sixties that it was a different industry than the one you had--?

FADIMAN

No, I think it was always the same sort of industry. We just were emerging from the golden period at that time, and the hangover was one we were anxious to hang onto as long as we could.

CEPLAIR

So in terms of your job and what you were doing, it wasn't really--

FADIMAN

No, there was no change in attitude. I still looked for the best stories. By best I mean those that would be commercially successful and had some quality--in my case, if I could dare assert my sense of quality, which I did on occasion but not often.

CEPLAIR

Was Seven Arts competitive with the other studios?

FADIMAN

It must have been. They bought Warner Bros. [Pictures], so they must have been quite competitive. I would say yes.

CEPLAIR

Okay. Now, in 1963, then, you produced another film, Rampage.

FADIMAN

No, not Rampage. I don't recall that one, anyway.

CEPLAIR

Let's see. This was with Robert Mitchum.

FADIMAN

Yeah, with Bob Mitchum.

CEPLAIR

A big game hunting film. Screenplay by Robert Holt and Marguerite Roberts, Phil Karlson directing.

FADIMAN

Oh, yes, I do remember that one now. I beg your pardon. I'd forgotten it literally.

CEPLAIR

Why did you go back and produce another movie at that point?

FADIMAN

I must have been asked to do so, I suspect. I can't think of any reason why I should have, because I didn't want to lose my job, which was a very good one at that time. I can't think of any reason except they must have had nobody else to produce this particular picture. They probably asked me as a service to the company, etc., so I did it. I can't think of any reason whatsoever.

CEPLAIR

Again, the subject seems a little far afield from what you'd be interested in.

FADIMAN

It is. It still is.

CEPLAIR

Okay. So then Warner Bros. and Seven Arts merged, and you were still working there. And then, in 1970, you became a literary consultant.

FADIMAN

Yes. Again, that's a nice phrase for a story editor. It's just an exquisite use of euphemism for some reason. They didn't like the word "story editor" for some reason, so I became a literary consultant. I became a "philosophic litterateur," any word they could think of that sounded better than the word story editor, which is what I was used for. That was all.

CEPLAIR

It's still doing the same job?

FADIMAN

Same job precisely.

CEPLAIR

And then, in 1972, you wrote a book called Hollywood Now.

FADIMAN

Yes, I did.

CEPLAIR

Why don't you tell us why you decided to write that book and what you hoped it would do or what its purpose was.

FADIMAN

Well, I can't tell you that because I don't know why I decided to do it, except I had the time, apparently. And I had a friend at Liveright [Publishing Company] at the time who had formerly been or still--I'm not sure whether he was or not--was the editor-publisher of the New Republic. Gilbert [A.] Harrison was his name. And he got involved in Liveright in some-- I think he bought Liveright, which is why my book got published, I think. I was interested in that book for certain reasons, particularly the last chapter that had to do with the future in which I predicted the industry would be controlled by agents, which it was ultimately. It took a little time, but it did ultimately turn out to be that. You haven't read the book, I'm sure, but if you have-- I divided it into odd sections. It explains what a producer is and was in those days, what a director is and was, etc., what members of the hierarchy did under the titles that they bore. And I think in its day it probably had some value. It was an odd title. It was a bad title, Hollywood Now, because that means you would limit it in time to people who read it then. But Gil Harrison, this management man I told you about who was the head of the Liveright corporation, liked the title, so I said, "What the hell. He must know."

CEPLAIR

I used it for background on writers and what writers did when I was doing my book on Hollywood.

FADIMAN

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

CEPLAIR

Was it well received?

FADIMAN

Yes, it got rather good reviews. It was published in England by Thames and Hudson. They'd never done a book like that in their lives before, which is very odd. And I think it was published in France; I'm not sure of myself there. I know a later book of mine was published in France. I'm not sure about that. But the book was well received. It still is occasionally quoted by old-timers. It's out of print, of course, by now. But I do occasionally get a letter now and then from unknown personalities who have used it for some purpose, asking me a question or commending something in it. That's about all.

CEPLAIR

So at that point you really did see Hollywood, the industry, undergoing some serious changes?

FADIMAN

Well, then it was. The golden period was really alloy by then; it was by no means filled with valuable material. And we didn't know what the hell we were doing in those days, because something called television was knocking on our door very hard, and we didn't know what to do about it. When I say "we," I speak about almost the whole industry in a sense, the upper executive echelon. They did not know how to handle this struggling newcomer. We believed--when I say "we" I speak for a lot of people including myself--that no one would sit in a room and look at something on a screen when they could go to a place with other human beings. We were totally wrong, because what we forgot about was one was free and one was not free. We forgot about that aspect of it. We were right about gregariousness being one of the essences of a good theatrical production with an audience. But we were not right about the fact that economics overcame that very swiftly.

CEPLAIR

Were you responsible for getting material for Warner Bros. television?

FADIMAN

No, I hated television. I disliked it, couldn't understand it. It was too rapid for me. By which I mean if you chose rapidly, you made your film rapidly, it disappeared equally rapidly. It was a thirteen-week wonder, I thought, in those days. I couldn't function that way. I needed a year or so, or six months as the case may be, to really develop a larger story called a screenplay for a larger aspect of the screen called the motion picture screen. And I never felt I could do well in television. I'm rather glad I didn't-- I kind of got into it in a strange way. Many years later I had one of the first shows in Hollywood, called Hollywood Presents, I think, which was a television show in which I interviewed various people. But that was about all. I knew nothing about television, or very little anyway. I still don't know a great deal about it.

CEPLAIR

So the year after you wrote the book you became literary consultant to Reader's Digest Films.

FADIMAN

Yes, again that word.

CEPLAIR

Yeah.

FADIMAN

That meant-- At Reader's Digest I knew a woman named Helen Strauss, who had been a very important agent with the William Morris [Agency] office for many years. For reasons I never understood she resigned and became the producer for Reader's Digest. Reader's Digest decided they'd go into the motion picture business. They had a lot of money. She didn't know too much about screenplays, but she knew about me. So she hired me as a literary consultant to read stories and or screenplays, to simply recommend, as I always did before. It was sort of a small job in a sense but one that I liked doing. It was fun for a brief period.

CEPLAIR

How long were you there?

FADIMAN

As long as the Reader's Digest decision to produce films lasted, which was about a year, a year and a half. A very short time.

CEPLAIR

Was that, then, your last actual job in the industry as a story editor, a story person?

FADIMAN

I had a kind of a consulting job with Warners briefly, oddly enough, with a man named Irwin. I can't think of his last name. He was head attorney there. He's since dead, unfortunately. He used me for my knowledge of languages, because I spoke German and French, and I could read German and French with some ease. And there was an attempt at that time to invest themselves in foreign productions, and I was involved in that. But very briefly, very briefly.

CEPLAIR

So then, by '75, are you more or less in retirement?

FADIMAN

I think you could say that, yes.

CEPLAIR

And I notice in 1979 you taught at the American Film Institute [AFI].

FADIMAN

Well, I taught for six, seven years there, ultimately.

CEPLAIR

What did you teach?

FADIMAN

Oddly enough, the art--if there is an art--of screenwriting. That was an interesting job, because it involved several other things, too. I went to Europe twice. I did that in Holland--and I did the same thing--with two colleagues. I'll talk about them briefly for a moment or two. I went to Holland, and I went to Belgium, Brussels, where we had a six- or eight-week course there. And about a year and a half ago, as a matter of fact, the work that I did in Brussels and that of my colleagues, who were named Lois Peyser and John Bloch-- There were three of us, a trio who taught, sort of a terrible triad I guess we might have been called at the time. They published a book taking down every solitary word that was spoken during the course in French, because in Brussels their language is French. Of course, they translated what we did into French, and the book is called Le Scénario Américain by John Bloch, Lois Peyser, and William Fadiman. It still exists.

CEPLAIR

And it's just sold in France?

FADIMAN

It just came out about a year ago. It took them that long to do it.

CEPLAIR

And this was on screenwriting, a screenwriting seminar?

FADIMAN

How to write a screenplay.

CEPLAIR

How did you teach the class? I mean, what did you emphasize in your teaching?

FADIMAN

Well, we did the obvious things. Any teacher of screenwriting will talk to you about the word "drama" and the word "crisis" and the change of character necessary, usually on page 122 of a 130-page script, and the economy of it. And we used excerpts from hundreds--and I mean hundreds--of films to show the sort of thing we wanted. And we had audiences of-- I shouldn't say audiences. We had classes of about two hundred at one time in the lecture room, and they seemed to like it.

CEPLAIR

Did you enjoy teaching?

FADIMAN

Yes, I enjoyed that very much.

CEPLAIR

Have you ever written a screenplay of your own?

FADIMAN

Never. I never would in my whole life. I've written novels since, a couple of novels, but never written a screenplay.

CEPLAIR

Why don't you tell us about the novels. Let's see. One was called Shivering in the Sun, and the other was The Clay Oscar. What led you to novel writing?

FADIMAN

Well, because when you want to do something with your life and you can afford to do so--you can afford to lose money, in other words--you write novels, which I did. And both were Hollywood background novels. Shivering in the Sun takes place in the sixties, and I like the title very much. It gave me an image of people in their expensive homes with a lovely swimming pool waiting for a phone call to get a job. That's why I called it Shivering in the Sun. And it had to do with real people but rather thinly disguised. It had to do with an agency which could have been MCA [Universal] but turned out to be called something else, of course. I've forgotten what it was called. And the other novel, the one called The Clay Oscar--equally odd title but satiric at the time, obviously--had to do with a son of a bitch, a writer who was a bastard and a no-good son of a gun all the way down the line. He was a cheater and a thief of literary ideas. I guess I'd known a few people like that in my lifetime, so I sort of lumped them together and made this character. And that was published by an organization which suddenly went bankrupt, of course, called Major Books. Shivering in the Sun was published by something called the Wilshire House, something like that. It still exists.

CEPLAIR

Are you doing any writing lately?

FADIMAN

No, for a very simple reason: physical. My right eye is gone, and I can't see well anymore, so I can't see the typewriter. So I do not write anything, unfortunately--except checks, unfortunately. That I'm sorry about. I wish I didn't have to do that, but I do.

CEPLAIR

You said you taught at AFI for about six years.

FADIMAN

Six or seven years, I think, yes.

CEPLAIR

Since you left AFI, have you done any other work in or about the industry?

FADIMAN

No, nothing whatsoever except occasional lectures that people ask me to do. But they're just courtesy lectures, that's all.

CEPLAIR

Do you go to movies at all these days?

FADIMAN

Mostly foreign films, yes. I do see a lot of pictures, as a matter of fact, but no great-- I have no great interest in the industry anymore. My reason is a very curious one. You see, you pick up a copy of Variety or the Hollywood Reporter today and pick it up six months from now, you find you're reading the same things. The names have all changed, but the news is about the same. The assignments or the lack of assignments, the difficulties or the problems, they're rather the same. And since I don't know the names of the people anymore, I find myself rather baffled. I even stopped my subscription to Variety for that reason.

CEPLAIR

In looking back over the years that you worked, what has changed the most for the better or the worse in Hollywood?

FADIMAN

Well, I'm not at all sure, strangely enough, although it could be discussed at great length, that the abolition of the [Will H.] Hays office [Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association] or the censorship code was a good idea. I'll tell you why about that. I'm not discussing violence; I'm discussing the sexual aspect of the code. We used to dissolve on a scene when the boy and the girl were about to kiss each other. And there were a thousand people in the audience, let us say, and each one, in his own curiously poetic or unpoetic way, would imagine the ultimate embrace in bed, which took place during the dissolve we presented at that time. Therefore, there are a thousand versions of that particular coupling. Now there's only one. They show it, precisely how it's done in bed. Now if the Elizabeth Taylor of her day is sleeping with the Clark Gable of his day, they show how they do it. The thousand people's imaginations are no longer troubled or even used or ruffled even. They can't imagine because it's all done for them quite explicitly. I think that was an odd, kind of a strange creative mistake, for no other reason. Otherwise, the industry is about the same I think, except for the concentration on violence--which I deplore--unfortunately.

CEPLAIR

What about the breakdown of the studio system? Now so much is done, deals--

FADIMAN

By independents.

CEPLAIR

Independents and things. Do you think that harmed the quality of the movies?

FADIMAN

No, it couldn't harm it. It was just the opposite. It gave a chance to a lot of younger people who had great ideas before but obviously could not function under the large studio system. They wouldn't get the money; it's very simple. They now could get the money from many sources and could then come to the same brick buildings, which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer still had, or RKO or Warner Bros. still had, depending on what company was there, and still get the same distribution. No, I think, strangely enough, the abolition of the system run by seven or eight men was a valuable asset in that it has given an opportunity for the new generation to function along its own lines, not always following the sometimes contemptible, sometimes great pattern of the particular studio involved.

CEPLAIR

Do you think that writers functioned better, wrote better scripts, under the studio system than they do now under the independent system?

FADIMAN

I don't know what "better" means. Well, the world has changed. Yes, there's more literacy nowadays. That doesn't make a good drama. Let me put it another way. I think under the system whereby there were many studios with many writers under long-term contracts who therefore were not concerned about eating the next afternoon-- They always knew they'd get food for a week or two or ten or twelve or fourteen, whatever the case may be. That contributed to the making of films with some thought process, because it's hard to fire someone with a forty-week contract. It would cost you a lot of money. Whereas nowadays they make what are called development ideas, which means that you develop eight pages, ten pages, thirty pages, fifty pages, but not finished ever, not fully complete, because they can drop you at the end of the development in ten weeks, five weeks. There are no such things as long-term contracts. I think the writer was more satisfied in his own soul than the writer of today. But the writer of today, on the other hand, has new subjects that he would never have dared touch before, which the lack of censorship permits him to do--the lack of stupid censorship, that is--and I like that. I think that's good. I think the contemporary film, speaking very largely--not by any means any particular film--is a film of freedom of thought which didn't exist in my day. You simply had to hew to the line. The line was Mr. Metro, Mr. Warner, Mr. Paramount, depending on what company you worked for that week or that month.

CEPLAIR

As you look back over your entire adult life virtually spent in the industry, was it a life well spent, do you think?

FADIMAN

Interesting question. I think on the whole my life was well spent. Did I contribute to civilization? Not a bit. Did I contribute to my own cultural upbringing? Yes, I think I did, strangely enough. I learned a lot of things I might never have learned any other way in any area of activity. And I might have written two or three other novels. That would have been equally unimportant, because I'm not a superb novelist. I'm just a good writer, not a-- I don't think I would have chosen any other thing to do, as I look back, except publishing. I really wanted to go into publishing. But as I look at what happened to publishing in the last thirty, forty years, I'm not sure that would have been a good idea after all.

CEPLAIR

Well, is there something I should have asked you that I didn't along the way?

FADIMAN

Well, let me think what you didn't ask me that I could tell you about that's worth discussing, that is worth mentioning. I recently did, three or four years ago for RKO in Great Britain, a film which you may have seen. And to my dismay, they were not interested in what I did at RKO, which was the history of RKO, but what I had in relationship with Howard Hughes. I was sorry about that, because that just is a gossip item. He was a man who really was not in the film business any more than he was in any business. He just took what he found and bought and made and dallied with it for a long time, and it cost a bloody fortune. He could have done the same thing as he did with the beer company which he also bought. I'm sorry about that, because the film industry has a reason to exist, whereas these others are just industries and make a lot of money from them. And Howard Hughes was by no means the most fascinating man at RKO. He was a very fascinating American for many reasons. But I was sorry that the British company was much more interested in what I could tell them about the gossip about Howard Hughes than about anything else about why RKO was good or bad or what was good about it, if there was anything. I was sorry about that.

CEPLAIR

Were you ever tempted to write a kind of history of the studios or a "My Life in the Studios" sort of thing?

FADIMAN

Jamais. No, never. Never. That would be pointless. I really don't like anything which is anecdotal, because when you reach your anecdotage, you are really in dotage. You are telling things just to hear yourself say them, and they're not even valuable. They were very valuable and illuminating at the time they may have happened, even though they were tiny incidents, but they're of no interest historically, believe me. I mean, the fact that Howard Hughes ate his lunch from a paper bag is not particularly exciting. It's true that he did, but that's not very relevant to anything. It doesn't make Howard Hughes either better or worse; it just makes him a man who eats his lunch out of a paper bag, period, that's all.

CEPLAIR

Well, I think, for example, your Thomas Mann anecdote is very telling. I mean, that--

FADIMAN

Well, that was telling because it was Thomas Mann.

CEPLAIR

Yes.

FADIMAN

But I'm sure that if Joe Smith-- For example, that happened to me with Norman Krasna. In essence, he got up-- He told the story in those days rather than writing it, because he was so important. And he had our whole executive committee at Metro at eight o'clock at night listening to a story. It was not a very good story. And he had just married a very rich woman [Erle Galbraith], who was the widow of Al Jolson. When we indicated that this was not a story we could use for him, he got up and said, "You know, I'm so lucky, I have fuck-you money. Fuck you, gentlemen," and left. It's the same kind of story of Thomas Mann, but it's a different generation. And he did the same thing precisely.

CEPLAIR

Well, all right. Thank you very much.

FADIMAN

You poor fellow.