The Other Side of Me

"Wait," I said. "I've had this before. If you can help me get into bed, all I have to do is lie still and after a day or two, it will go away by itself."

She finally managed to help me get into bed. "Let me call Laci."

An hour later, Laci was in our hotel room.

"I'm sorry about this," I said. "I had big plans for us."

He looked at me and said, "I can help you."

"How?"

"I know a man here, Paul Horn."

"Is he a doctor?"

"No, he's a physiotherapist. But he's worked on some of the most famous people in the world. They come here to see him. He can fix you up."

I spent the next two days in bed and on the third day, Laci was walking me into an office at 5 Platenstrasse, the offices of Paul Horn.

Paul Horn was in his forties, a tall, tousled man with a mop of wild hair.

"Mr. Bush-Fekete told me about you," he said. "How often does this happen to you?"

I shrugged. "It's very irregular. Sometimes it happens twice a week. Sometimes it doesn't happen for years."

He nodded. "I can cure you."

An alarm went off in my mind. The doctors at Cedars of Lebanon and UCLA had told me there was no cure for what I had. Put off the operation as long as you can. Finally, when you can't stand the pain, we'll have to operate. And this man who was going to cure me was not even a doctor.

"You'll have to stay here for three weeks. I will treat you every day. Seven days a week."

It did not sound promising. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe we should forget this. I'll see my doctors at home and - "

Laci turned to me. "Sidney, this man has worked on rulers of countries. Give him a chance."

I looked at Jorja. "We'll see."

The treatment began the following morning. I would go in and lie on a table with a heat lamp warming my back for two hours. Then I would rest and repeat the procedure. This went on all day.

On the second day, something was added. Paul Horn helped me into a kind of hammock he had devised, which let all the muscles of my back relax. I lay there for five hours. Every day was the same procedure.

The waiting room was always crowded with people from all over the world, some of them speaking languages that I could not even identify.

Three weeks later, on the last day of treatment, Paul Horn asked, "How do you feel?"

"I feel fine." But I knew I would have felt fine without the treatments.

"You're cured," he said, happily.

I was skeptical. But he was right. In all the years that have passed since that time, I have not had one attack. It turned out that Paul Horn, who was not a doctor, had cured me.

It was time to return to Hollywood.

Returning to MGM was like going home again.

"You have a homecoming present," Dore said. "We're previewing Dream Wife at the Egyptian Theatre."

Dore saw my grin and said, "This is going to be a big one."

It was customary for the trade papers, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, to review movies before the other reviews came out. We were all looking forward to the reviews with great anticipation. They could make or break a movie.

The Egyptian Theatre was filled with people anticipating the pleasure they were about to have. The picture began and we watched the screen, happily listening to the laughs in all the right places.

Jorja squeezed my hand. "It's wonderful."

When the picture ended, there was applause. We had a hit. We went to Musso & Frank's to celebrate. The only reviews would be in the trade papers, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. We were making bets about which one would be better. Early in the morning, I went out and got the trades.

Jorja was still in bed when I returned. She saw the trade papers and smiled. "Read the reviews out loud. Slowly. I want to enjoy them."

I handed Jorja the papers. "You read them."

She looked at my face and quickly started reading the reviews.

"First, Variety . . ."

Part of the review read: ". . . highly contrived piece of screen nonsense. Able performers helped to carry the script's silliness through the frenetics, but director Sidney Sheldon let the action slop over into very broad slapstick too often. This loose handling reflects occasionally in the performances, most notably in Grant's.

"Dream Wife was made under the personal supervision of Dore Schary, and Cary Grant is on hand to get laughs where it isn't always possible to find them in the script. This uneven mixture of sophisticated humor and downright slapstick amounts to little more than a fairly amusing comedy. Sidney Sheldon has gone out of his way for comic situations and not succeeded too well."

The review in the Hollywood Reporter was worse. I was devastated.

Howard Strickling, the head of publicity at MGM, called me and said, "Sidney, I have some bad news for you. I have orders to kill the picture."

I was shocked. "What are you talking about?"

"Dore pulled the picture out of the Music Hall. We're not going to give it any publicity. We're just going to let it die."

"Howard, why - why would you do that?"

"Because Dore's name is on it as producer. As head of the studio, he tells the other producers what they can or cannot make. He can't afford to have his name on a flop. He's going to let Dream Wife fade away as fast as possible."

I was furious. There would be no previews, no bookings or interviews or merchandising. The ship had sailed and the cast and crew had drowned in a sea of ego. It was Dore who had suggested that he put his name on the movie and because of that, he was going to destroy it.

I called Jorja and told her what had happened.