The Other Side of Me

"I'm so sorry," she said. "That's awful for you."

"Jorja, I can't work for a man like that."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to quit. Is that all right with you?"

"Anything you want to do is all right with me, darling."

Fifteen minutes later, I walked into Dore Schary's office.

"I want to get out of my contract."

The man who, a few months earlier, said he didn't want me to leave to run another studio, now said, "Fine. I'll talk to the legal department."

The following day I got a formal release from MGM.

I was not concerned about getting a job. After all, I had an Oscar and a list of wonderful credits. I was sure that any studio in town would be happy to get me.

As it turned out, I was wrong. The elevator had stopped at the bottom.

Chapter 25

I rented an office on Beverly Drive. When Groucho heard about it, he said, "What are you going to do, become a dentist?"

I called my agent, told him I was available, and sat back and waited for the calls to pour in.

The phone never rang.

In the theater, a playwright is judged by his best play, no matter how many failures there are after that. In Hollywood, a writer is judged by his last movie, no matter how many hits he might have written before. I was being judged for Dream Wife. I had gotten a release from my MGM contract at the worst possible time, when the film business was going downhill. The end of block booking was hurting the studios.

Block booking was the practice that the studios had for putting their movies into theaters. If they had a picture coming out with a popular star, the theaters that were eager to acquire that picture were forced to also take four minor movies from the studio, so there was always a block of five. When the exhibitors filed a lawsuit, the government stepped in and stopped the practice.

There were other problems, as well. During the war, people were starved for entertainment and they would flock into theaters. Now that the war was over, they were more particular. Television had become a new form of entertainment and its popularity was costing the theaters money. One more problem was added to the mix: Foreign income had always been a big part of a picture's gross. Now, England and Italy and France were making their own movies, and that cut into the foreign revenue of the Hollywood studios.

I went into a deep depression. Jorja was doing an occasional television show, but not nearly enough to cover our expenses. I had not been concerned about money for a long time, but now I had a wife to support and the situation was different. The longer I was out of work, the more pressure I was under. The weeks were dragging by and there were no job offers.

Natalie would have said, "Hollywood doesn't know talent when they see it."

William Goldman said it differently: "Nobody in Hollywood knows anything . . ."

Clark Gable was turned down by MGM, Fox, and Warner Brothers.

Darryl Zanuck said, "His ears are too big. He looks like an ape."

Cary Grant was rejected by several studios. "His neck is too thick."

Of Fred Astaire, a casting director said, "He can't act, can't sing, he can dance a little."

Deanna Durbin was fired from MGM and went to Universal the same day Judy Garland was fired from Universal and went to MGM. Each of them made fortunes for their new studio.

When a network executive saw Star Trek, his only comment was, "Get rid of the idiot with the pointed ears."

A studio chief tried to sell High Noon because he thought it was a disaster. No one wanted it. It became the most successful picture United Artists ever made.

Y. Frank Freeman, at Paramount, thought Shane with Alan Ladd would be a flop. He tried to sell it to other studios. They all turned it down. The picture became a classic.

When the phone finally did ring, it was Judy Garland.

"Sidney, I'm going to do a remake of A Star Is Born and I want you to write the screenplay."

My heart was jumping, but I tried to sound cool.

"That's wonderful, Judy, I'd love to do it." I hesitated a moment and added, "I just directed a picture with Cary Grant, you know. I'd like to direct you in A Star Is Born."

"That would be interesting," Judy said.

I was elated. This was going to make up for the debacle of Dream Wife. I called my agent.

"Judy Garland wants me to write and direct A Star Is Born. Let's make the deal."

"That's good news."

I started planning what I was going to do with the screenplay. A Star Is Born was a classic movie that had been made years earlier with Fredric March and Janet Gaynor.

Two days later, when I had not heard from my agent, I called him.

"Did you close the deal?"

There was a silence, and then he said, "There is no deal. Judy's husband, Sid Luft, just signed Moss Hart to write the screenplay and George Cukor to direct the picture."

A writer has an advantage over an actor or director. In order for actors and directors to work, someone has to hire them. But a writer can work anytime anywhere, writing on speculation. There is one important caveat: he or she has to have the confidence to believe that someone is going to buy a story. I had lost that confidence. Hollywood was full of working writers, but I was not one of them. No one wanted me.

Jorja tried to console me. "You've done some great things, you'll do them again. You're a wonderful writer."

But belief in oneself can't be instilled by others. I was paralyzed, unable to write. Hollywood was full of stories of careers that had gone sour. Emotionally, I was at a dead end. I had no idea how much longer I could hold out.

On July 30, 1953, four months after the Hollywood Reporter's and Variety's negative reviews, Dream Wife opened wide around the country. There had been no publicity about the movie and no star appearances and no attempt to find bookings for the picture.