I kept my sanity by doing outside reading for various studios, when their own readers were busy. One of the studios I had written synopses for was Twentieth-Century-Fox. The story editor was James Fisher, a bright young New Yorker.
Late one afternoon, he telephoned me. “Are you free tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Another three dollars.
“I’ll see you at ten o’clock.”
“Right.” Maybe it would be a big book. Ten dollars. My funds were running low again.
When I got to his office, Fisher was waiting for me. “How would you like a staff job here?” he asked.
I could hardly get the words out. “I—I’d love it.”
“You’re hired. Twenty-three dollars a week.”
I was back in show business.
CHAPTER 10
Working at Twentieth-Century-Fox studios was radically different from working at Universal Studios. Where Universal was laid-back and casual, Fox was a no-nonsense, efficiently run studio. The prime reason for that was Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of production. Unlike most other studio heads, Zanuck was a hands-on executive. He was a brilliant showman, involved in every phase of every movie the studio made, and he knew exactly what he wanted. He also had a sense of who he was. Once, at a studio production meeting, he turned to his assistant and said, “Don’t say yes until I’m finished talking.”
Darryl Zanuck had a great respect for writers. He once said, “Success in movies boils down to three things: story, story, story. Just don’t ever let the writers know how important they are.”
There were twelve staff readers at Fox, ranging in age from thirty-five to sixty. A majority of them were relatives of studio executives, put on the payroll as a kind of sinecure.
Julian Johnson, one of the Fox studio’s top executives, called me into his office one morning. Johnson was an imposing figure, tall and heavyset. He had once been married to Texas Guinan, the famous nightclub queen.
“Sidney, from now on, you’ll work only on synopses for Mr. Zanuck. When he’s interested in a new book or play, I want you to handle it.”
“Great.”
“Every synopsis will be a rush job—”
“No problem.”
In fact, I was delighted. From that moment on, I got to read the best of all the new novels and plays that were submitted to the studio.
Since Zanuck was in a hurry to beat every other studio to new material, I often worked past midnight. I was enjoying my job, but I was impatient to become a writer. The studio had started a junior writer division and I told Julian Johnson I would like to be in it. He was sympathetic, but not encouraging. “You’re doing work for Zanuck,” he said. “That’s more important.”
My little office was in an old, creaky wooden building at the back of the lot. At night the lot was deserted, and sometimes I was uneasy working there alone, surrounded by darkness. One night I was doing a rush job on a book that Zanuck was excited about. It was a ghost story that was quite scary.
I was just typing the line, “He opened the closet door and as the grinning corpse inside started to fall on top of him . . .” when the closet door of my office flew open, books began flying through the air, and the room began to shake. I broke all speed records getting out of there.
It was my most memorable earthquake.
In early September, a stranger walked into my office and introduced himself.
“My name is Alan Jackson. I’m a reader at Columbia.”
“Glad to meet you.” We shook hands. “What can I do for you?”
“We want to form a readers guild and we need your help.”
“How?”
“You can get the readers here to agree that we should have a guild, and join us. When we get the readers at all the other studios, we can form a committee and negotiate a deal with the studios. Right now we have no power. We’re underpaid and overworked. Will you help us?”
I did not consider myself underpaid or overworked, but I knew that the majority of readers were. “I’ll do everything I can.”
“Great.”
“There may be a problem,” I warned him.