I looked at her and desperately wanted to say, I’ll pay the four-fifty. But the little money I had left was not going to last very long. I swallowed my pride and said, “I’m pressing.”
She gave me a warm smile. “That’s fine. I’ll show you to your room.”
The room was small but neat and attractively furnished, and I was very pleased with it.
I turned to Grace. “This is great,” I said.
“Good. I’ll give you a key to the front door. One of our rules is that you’re not allowed to bring any women in here.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Let me introduce you to some of the other boarders.”
She took me into the living room where several of the boarders were gathered. I met four writers, a prop man, three actors, a director, and a singer. As time went on, I learned that they were all wannabes, unemployed, pursuing wonderful dreams that would never come true.
Gracie had a well-mannered twelve-year-old son, Billy. His dream was to become a fireman. It was probably the only dream in the boardinghouse that would come true.
I phoned Natalie and Otto to tell them that I had arrived safely.
“Remember,” Otto said, “if you don’t find a job in three weeks, we want you back here.”
No problem.
That night, Gracie’s boarders sat around the large living room, telling their war stories.
“This is a tough business, Sheldon. Every studio has a gate and inside the gate the producers are screaming for talent. They’re yelling that they desperately need actors and directors and writers. But if you’re standing outside the gate, they won’t even let you in. The gates are closed to outsiders.”
Maybe, I thought. But every day someone manages to get through.
I learned that there was no Hollywood, as I had imagined it. Columbia Pictures, Paramount, and RKO were located in Hollywood, but Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Selznick International Studios were in Culver City. Universal Studios was in Universal City, Disney Studios was in Silverlake, Twentieth-Century-Fox was in Century City, and Republic Studios was in Studio City.
Grace had thoughtfully subscribed to Variety, the show business trade paper, and it was left in the living room like a Bible for all of us to look at, to see what jobs were available and which pictures were being produced. I picked it up and looked at the date. I had twenty-one days to find a job, and the clock was running. I knew that somehow I had to find a way to get through those studio gates.
The following morning, while we were having breakfast, the telephone rang. Answering the telephone was almost an Olympic event. Everyone raced to be the first to pick it up because—since none of us could afford any kind of social life—the phone call had to be about a job.
The actor who picked up the phone listened a moment, turned to Grace and said, “It’s for you.”
There were sighs of disappointment. Each boarder had hoped that it was a job for him. That phone was the lifeline to their futures.
I bought a tourist’s guide to Los Angeles, and since Columbia Pictures was the closest to Gracie’s boardinghouse, I decided to start there. The studio was on Gower Street, just off Sunset. There was no gate in front of Columbia.
I walked in the front door. An elderly guard was seated behind a desk, working on a report. He looked up as I came in.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I said confidently. “My name is Sidney Sheldon. I want to be a writer. Who do I see?”
He studied me a moment. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but—”
“Then you don’t see anybody.”
“There must be someone I—”
“Not without an appointment,” he said firmly. He went back to his report.
Apparently the studio did not need a gate.
I spent the next two weeks making the rounds of all the studios. Unlike New York, Los Angeles was widely spread out. It was not a city for walking. Streetcars ran down the center of Santa Monica Boulevard and buses were on all the main streets. I soon became familiar with their routes and schedules.