It is the fourth commandment that she should write. She believes in the ten commandments, doesn’t she? Your loving father, Nathan
P.S. My love also to the girls. I hope they don’t become corrupted by the glitter of Hollywood. Otherwise I and Lena are fine, with the usual aches and pains of old age.
Before I left to do the screenplay in Pacific Studios, I wanted the comfort of knowing I would return to writing my second novel. I sent an outline and the first two chapters of The Tenderloin to J. Bascomb III and asked for a contract. I found out that J. III didn’t trust his own judgment. He edited by round table and his reply consisted of the reports of five editors ...
“A one-shot novelist.”
“We’d be better off letting our option lapse.”
“A sad commentary from someone starting so promising a career.”
“Zadok is obviously turning into a junk writer.”
“He’ll never be heard from again.”
J. III wrote that despite these reports, he would publish The Tenderloin anyhow, when it was finished, because anything of mine would do fairly well after my first novel.
This was a pretty crude way for an editor-in-chief to behave, but he wanted to put me down for “going Hollywood” and he also wanted to be certain I only got a minimum contract.
I phoned for a week. He was either out to lunch or in conference or otherwise engaged, so I wrote him that I wanted out of Reaves Brothers, in my best Marine language.
Val was outraged. “They’ll know about your letter all up and down Madison Avenue. Haven’t we had enough trouble finding a publisher?”
“You’re asking me to stay with those sons of bitches after what they think of my new work!”
God damn, there were some things that Val just didn’t understand about me. Compromise, back down, keep quiet. God damn, Val! Don’t you ever get mad at anyone but me?
I put out a call for a literary agent, not really knowing one from another. I can’t say why I settled on F. Todd Wallace. He had a veddy/ veddy uptown manner and represented some good authors. He reminded me of those jerks at the Algonquin Round Table, but he obviously was one of them and knew his way around the literary scene. And that name, F. Todd Wallace— INTEGRITY, like the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Can’t go wrong with old Todd.”
As time unfolded I might as well have been represented by the Mother Superior at a Carmelite nunnery. Anyhow, I’d never have to deal with J. III or that bloody house again.
I left ahead of Val and the girls, to get set up at the studio and find a place for us to live. It was on a sour note. Things I always believed that Val would understand automatically—she didn’t understand at all.
Hollywood, 1954–1956
T HE ACTUAL FILM DEAL on Of Men in Battle had been made by my Hollywood literary agent, Sal Sensibar.
From our first meeting, I realized Sal was a back stabber who might well have been in the white slave traffic if he hadn’t been a literary agent. Sal had terminal cases of diarrhea of the mouth and megalomania. Nevertheless, I liked him. We came from the same side of the tracks, way back when. As long as I remained a marketable writer, Sal Sensibar would always find work for me. He liked things, lots of things, things with big engines, things that sparkled, furry things to drape on his tawdry wife and tawdry girlfriends, huge things to swim in.
When Sal dined me at Chasen’s and Scandia, back to back, I knew I was the bright new boy in town. The restaurant prices automatically signaled the value of the writer. Advice was doled out in huge globs. Some of it was even worth listening to.
Sal gave it to me straight. The studios usually pacified the author with four to six weeks’ work as a little icing on the cake in order to get his general ideas, nothing more. Few producers were ever serious about letting a novelist complete his own screenplay.
“Remember, Gideon, what you have written is preserved forever between the covers of a
P.S. My love also to the girls. I hope they don’t become corrupted by the glitter of Hollywood. Otherwise I and Lena are fine, with the usual aches and pains of old age.
Before I left to do the screenplay in Pacific Studios, I wanted the comfort of knowing I would return to writing my second novel. I sent an outline and the first two chapters of The Tenderloin to J. Bascomb III and asked for a contract. I found out that J. III didn’t trust his own judgment. He edited by round table and his reply consisted of the reports of five editors ...
“A one-shot novelist.”
“We’d be better off letting our option lapse.”
“A sad commentary from someone starting so promising a career.”
“Zadok is obviously turning into a junk writer.”
“He’ll never be heard from again.”
J. III wrote that despite these reports, he would publish The Tenderloin anyhow, when it was finished, because anything of mine would do fairly well after my first novel.
This was a pretty crude way for an editor-in-chief to behave, but he wanted to put me down for “going Hollywood” and he also wanted to be certain I only got a minimum contract.
I phoned for a week. He was either out to lunch or in conference or otherwise engaged, so I wrote him that I wanted out of Reaves Brothers, in my best Marine language.
Val was outraged. “They’ll know about your letter all up and down Madison Avenue. Haven’t we had enough trouble finding a publisher?”
“You’re asking me to stay with those sons of bitches after what they think of my new work!”
God damn, there were some things that Val just didn’t understand about me. Compromise, back down, keep quiet. God damn, Val! Don’t you ever get mad at anyone but me?
I put out a call for a literary agent, not really knowing one from another. I can’t say why I settled on F. Todd Wallace. He had a veddy/ veddy uptown manner and represented some good authors. He reminded me of those jerks at the Algonquin Round Table, but he obviously was one of them and knew his way around the literary scene. And that name, F. Todd Wallace— INTEGRITY, like the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Can’t go wrong with old Todd.”
As time unfolded I might as well have been represented by the Mother Superior at a Carmelite nunnery. Anyhow, I’d never have to deal with J. III or that bloody house again.
I left ahead of Val and the girls, to get set up at the studio and find a place for us to live. It was on a sour note. Things I always believed that Val would understand automatically—she didn’t understand at all.
Hollywood, 1954–1956
T HE ACTUAL FILM DEAL on Of Men in Battle had been made by my Hollywood literary agent, Sal Sensibar.
From our first meeting, I realized Sal was a back stabber who might well have been in the white slave traffic if he hadn’t been a literary agent. Sal had terminal cases of diarrhea of the mouth and megalomania. Nevertheless, I liked him. We came from the same side of the tracks, way back when. As long as I remained a marketable writer, Sal Sensibar would always find work for me. He liked things, lots of things, things with big engines, things that sparkled, furry things to drape on his tawdry wife and tawdry girlfriends, huge things to swim in.
When Sal dined me at Chasen’s and Scandia, back to back, I knew I was the bright new boy in town. The restaurant prices automatically signaled the value of the writer. Advice was doled out in huge globs. Some of it was even worth listening to.
Sal gave it to me straight. The studios usually pacified the author with four to six weeks’ work as a little icing on the cake in order to get his general ideas, nothing more. Few producers were ever serious about letting a novelist complete his own screenplay.
“Remember, Gideon, what you have written is preserved forever between the covers of a
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