I was thrilled. I would be working for the esteemed Academy.
The following day, I met him in his office.
“It’s perfect timing,” he said. “You’ll be working evenings here, watching films in our projection room.”
“Great,” I said. “What’s the job?”
“Watching films in our projection room.”
I was staring at him. He went on to explain.
“The Academy is testing different film preservatives. We’ve coated different sections of the film with different chemicals. Your job is to sit in the projection room and keep a record of the number of times each film is run.” He added, apologetically, “I’m afraid it only pays three dollars a day.”
“I’ll take it.”
The first movie I saw over and over was The Man Who Lived Twice, and I was soon able to quote every line. I spent my evenings watching the same films and my days waiting for the telephone to ring.
On the fateful date of December 12, 1938, I received a call from Universal Studios. I had just done a few synopses for them.
“Sidney Sheldon?”
“Yes.”
“Could you come in to the studio this morning?”
Another three dollars.
“Yes.”
“Go to Mr. Townsend’s office.”
Al Townsend was the story editor at Universal. When I arrived at the studio, I was ushered into his office.
“I’ve read the synopses you’ve done for us. They’re very good.”
“Thank you.”
“We need a staff reader here. Would you like the job?”
I wondered if he would be offended if I kissed him. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“It pays seventeen dollars a week. We work six days a week. Your hours will be from nine to six. You’ll start Monday.”
I called Sydney at her office to break the news to her and invite her to dinner.
An unfamiliar voice answered the phone. “Yes?”
“I would like to speak to Sydney Singer.”
“She’s not here.”
“When will she be back?”
“She’s not coming back.”
“What—? Who is this?”
“This is Dorothy Arzner.”
“Oh. Do you have her forwarding address, Miss Arzner?”
“She didn’t leave one.”
I never saw Sydney again, but I have never forgotten the debt I owe her.
Universal was a studio that made B pictures. It had been founded by Carl “Papa” Laemmle in 1912, and it was noted for its thriftiness. A few years earlier the studio had called the agent of a top western star and said they wanted to hire him to work on a low-budget movie.
The agent laughed. “You can’t afford him. He makes a thousand dollars a day.”
“That’s all right,” the studio executive assured him. “We’ll pay him.”
The movie was about a masked bandit. The first day of production the director shot endless close-ups of the star in various locations, and at the end of the day they told him that he was finished. What they did after that was to substitute a minor actor who wore a mask throughout the picture.
On Monday morning, when I walked through the gates onto a studio lot for the first time, I was filled with a sense of wonder. I walked past the facades of western towns and Victorian houses, San Francisco streets and New York streets, and felt the magic.
Al Townsend explained my duties to me. My job was to read the dozens and dozens of screenplays that had been written for silent movies and to try to weed out the ones that might be worth making into talkies. Nearly all of the screenplays were hopeless. I remember one memorable line describing a villain:
He had a bag of gold in his eyes.
During Papa Laemmle’s regime, Universal was an easygoing, shirt-sleeved kind of studio. There was no feeling of pressure. It was like a large family.
I was now receiving a weekly paycheck and I was able to pay Gracie regularly. I reported to the studio six days a week and never got over the thrill of walking onto the studio lot where dreams were created every day. I knew that this was just the beginning. I had come to Universal as a reader, but I would start working again on original stories and sell them to the studio. I wrote to Natalie and Otto to tell them how well things were going. I had a permanent job in Hollywood.