The seventies were crazy everywhere, but crazier in Los Angeles. It was the era of freewheeling drugs and sex, the rag end of the sixties. I refer to sprees, to strange couplings and triplings, to nights that started with beer and wine and ended with cocaine and capsules, to debaucheries too various to chronicle. In a sense, we were all Robert Mitchum, smoking rope in bed with two girls while the sun was still noon high. We thought it was normal. You would walk into a house for a pool party, and there, on the cocktail table in the center of the living room, as if it were nuts or cooked shrimp, would be a platter of cocaine. We did it because we were stupid, because we did not know the danger.
When I talk about my drug years, I am talking about twenty-four months in the middle of the seventies. I was in the rock and roll world, which meant I was around the stuff all the time. Of course, it was more than mere proximity. I was fun when I was high, talkative and all-encompassing. I could go forever, never be done talking. To some extent, I was really self-medicating, using the drugs to skate over issues in my own life. The fact is, money and success had come so fast, while I was away doing something else, not paying attention, that, when I finally realized where I was and just what I had, I could not understand it. There was this voice in my head, saying, Who do you think you are? What do you think you did? You are a fraud! You don't deserve any of this!
I tortured myself, and let the anxiety well up, then beat back the anxiety with the drugs, on and on, until one day, I stood up and said, "Screw it. That's over. I'm done."
No rehab, no counseling, nothing like that. Just a moment of clarity, in which I saw myself from the outside, the mess I was making, the waste. I was slipping, not working as hard as I used to. I started leaving the office early on Fridays, then skipping Fridays altogether. Then I started leaving early on Thursdays, then arriving late on Mondays. I was letting myself go. Then one day, I just decided, It has to stop. I threw away the pills and bottles, took a cold shower, had a barbershop shave, and stepped into the cool of Sunset Boulevard, and began fresh.
Maybe it had to do with my family situation. I was a father again. I already had my son, Michael, but Jane wanted a baby. As we could not have a child of our own, for reasons I won't go into, we decided to adopt. By this time, Jane's career had taken a backseat to my own. It seems as if she planned it this way all along, though she calls it a natural progression. Jane brought me to LA, introduced me to the key people, made her world my world, set me up, mentored and loved me. Then, when my career took off, she let herself drift from the public eye, did fewer shows, made fewer records, and so forth, and not because she was forced to-there were plenty of offers and opportunities. Though she was, in fact, as beautiful and talented and in demand as she had ever been, she was simply tired of that life. She had become a star at such a young age, had been famous for so long, that she was over it. She wanted another life. She wanted to be a mother.
We pursued a standard adoption, wrote letters, filled out forms. We did not care if it was a boy or a girl. We just wanted a baby. It was many months before we found her in Florida. We learned all about the birth mother, her background, her history, her due date. We tracked it so carefully it felt, at times, as if Jane herself were expecting. Then, when the mother was about seven months pregnant, we got a phone call in the middle of the night-it's over, you will not be getting the baby. It's impossible to explain how hard this hit us. It felt as if there had been a miscarriage, as if we had lost the baby. It was terrible. Jane went into a deep funk. I remember going to see the lawyers and losing it, throwing a stack of papers in the air and shouting, "You bastards, you can't do this to a person! You're killing Jane."
Then, late one night, while we were sitting in the house, moping, wondering what to do next, the phone rang. It was the lawyer. Something had changed. We had the baby. Incredible. She was three days old and would arrive by plane in the morning. I called the manager of Saks Fifth Avenue. He opened the store for us in the middle of the night. (I must have promised him something.) I remember wandering the empty rooms, filling a basket with tiny clothes, Beverly Hills bathed in moonlight out the windows.
We went to LAX at 7.00 A.M. My doctor insisted on coming with us. He wanted to examine the baby before we took possession, "Just to make sure she's healthy, Jerry."
"There really is no point," I told him. "I'm taking this baby no matter what. This is my baby."
"Just hang back," he said. "I don't want you near that baby till I've had a look."
A nurse came off the plane with the bundle. I took the baby from her before the doctor could get close. As I reached for the baby-this was Julie, my oldest daughter, who is wonderful, beautiful, and now thirty-five-my back went out, which is one of the reasons I remember the day so vividly. (My life can be divided into segments: days when I am standing straight, and days when my back has gone out.) The doctor hurried over. "Come on," he said. "Let me just have a look before you go home with that baby."
"This is my baby," I told him.
"Fine," he said, "let me look at your baby."
Luckily, the baby had ten fingers and ten toes and was perfect in every other respect, as I was keeping her no matter what the doctor had to say.
Then we went home. Jane was happy, and I was happy. It was a good time.
A few years later, Jane decided she wanted another baby.
I was against this at first. Not because I did not want another baby, but because I did not want to go through that again, the lawyers and papers and chance of losing the kid at the end, reliving the tumult and heartbreak.
"I'm sorry," I told Jane. "I just can't do it."
Around this time, I hosted a fund-raiser in Las Vegas for the Catholic Charities of Nevada. This was in honor of Frank Sinatra's mother, who, not long before, had been killed in a plane crash while traveling to see Frank perform. A dozen top artists sang at this benefit, including Sinatra himself. There must have been a thousand people in the room. I was seated with an innocuous little guy named Tom Miller, the director of the charities. We started talking.
He said, "I understand you have an adopted child."
"That's true," I told him.
"How old is your child?" he asked.
"She's going to be two," I said.
"Wouldn't you like to adopt another child?" he asked.
"Yes, I would," I said, "but it's impossible to adopt children."
"It's not impossible," he said. "And to prove it's not impossible, I am going to get you a child."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that I am going to get you a child," he said.
"How are you going to do that?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "we have the Nevada Catholic Welfare Act and we have a home for unwed mothers. We have a wonderful sister there. I am going to talk to her, and she is going to get the baby that God means for you to have."
"But I'm not a Catholic," I told him.
"I didn't ask about your religion," he said. "I asked if you wanted to have another child."
"Well, yes," I said. "I do."
A week later, the sister visited me and Jane in Beverly Hills. I can still see the two of them walking through the house, from the living room to the baby's room, with the sun going down. We sat in the kitchen. "I have your child," the sister told me. "She is already in the home, she is three months old, and she looks exactly like you."
This was Jamie, who is now thirty-two. She came in a bundle, like something in a storybook. And she did look like me. This experience-the death of Frank's mother, the charity event, the innocuous little man, the nun walking through our house, the baby that looked like me-touched me deeply.
I went to Vegas to see the house where the unwed mothers lived while they were pregnant and the babies stayed until homes could be found. I became involved after the visit and gave a lot of money to help the sisters build a new, better home.
Then my third daughter came. This was not something we planned on. It just happened. One day, the sister called. She said, "Jerry, your new baby has been born."
"My baby, Sister? Come on!"
"Yes, your baby," she said. "She is the most beautiful little girl, with a full head of hair-she is supposed to go to you. Don't you want another child?"
"Of course, I want another child."
Paul Anka was singing in Vegas at the time. He was a client and is still a friend. He had his plane there. He flew her back to Los Angeles. This is Jody, who is just about to turn thirty.
I stayed involved with the charities. I gave money, but, more important, I helped babies find homes and couples find babies. (I am the man to go to when you want what money can't buy.) Friends who wanted to adopt came to me. I consulted and advised, then put them together with the sister, who wandered the mansions of Malibu and Beverly Hills, searching for the heavenly connection, just the right baby for just the right parents. I was part of at least fifty adoptions. I still get calls and letters from my many dozens of godchildren, the scions of powerful Hollywood families. After about twenty years, though, I quit my role as facilitator. I cared too much, and felt burdened by the responsibility-a marriage that ended in divorce, parents who seemed cavalier or abusive. I had taken on more than I could handle. I remain involved with the charities, however, give and do what I can. My family was built in a way unlike the way my mother and father built our family in the Bronx, but it sits on the same bedrock: love and loyalty and concern tempered with a large dose of comedy.
Which brings me to a question I ask myself every day: What kind of a father have I been? Have I been good? Have I helped more than I have hurt? Have I given as much as I have taken? In truth, my children have, at times, had trouble. With depression, with drugs, with all those exotic things that befall kids nowadays. Though I do not like all the things they have done, I am here for them when they are in jeopardy and I do whatever I can when they need help. I sometimes wonder if the root of the problem is in our very circumstances, if the life we have given our children-the money and the cars and the vacations and the private planes-has spoiled the everyday world for them.
Can the child of a rich man have the same ambition as a kid from the Bronx?
One evening, one of my daughters, having just flown on a commercial plane for the first time in her life, called me in a panic. "My God," she said, "the way they jam you in, and make you sit there, in one seat, it's like a prison!"
In the end, though, I think your outlook has less to do with money than with the values your parents exhibit and your own nature. In this, I've been neither perfect nor blameless. I love my children and I think I have been a good father, but there were times when I chose my career over the life of the house. Was I there for every recital, or play, or concert? No, I was working. It's nearly impossible to succeed in the world and also succeed in the house, which means, at some level, even if you do not realize it, you make a choice. This is a regret. I wish I had been there more, had done better, had given my children as much as my parents gave me. I did not. I was always divided, being pulled away, on the phone, and so forth. But maybe you do best by being true to your nature. Whatever my children have lost to my work habits, they have made back in the privileges afforded them by my success. I could not give them what my parents gave me, so I gave them the world instead.
The Producer
J ust what does a movie producer do?
It's a question I hear all the time.
Well, simply put, the producer is a driving force behind the project. It's often the producer who finds the story, the article that reads like a movie, the novel that cries out to be filmed, the event you just know will light up the screen. He tracks down the author or owner or real-life players, secures the rights-at favorable terms-hires a writer to turn the story into a script, which is key. I don't care what kind of cast you have, how beautifully the thing is shot-if you don't have the right script, you're going to fail. But with the right script, you can set yourself up with a studio, get a bucket of cash, hire a great director and actors, scout locations, and so forth. As the project proceeds, your job-one of them, anyway-is to police and guide everything, to be the adult, the voice of authority, the wallet when it's pay time, the hammer when it's hammer time. For this, you take some of the credit when it works, and most of the blame when it fails.
What qualifies a person to be a movie producer?
Another question I'm often asked.
Well, it's mostly a matter of temperament. You have to enjoy being in the world, mixing it up, reveling in hits and misses. A movie set is like Brigadoon, a city that appears on the sands and exists for just a time, with all the rivalries and passions of a metropolis. The producer is mayor of that city, shaking hands and walking streets, calling people to compromise, rise above, and, crucially, to work with people they do not like. You have to praise and you have to scold. It must have been easier in the old days, of course, when the actors were on contract and thus were simply told: Go there, play that. But every player is now a free agent, meaning everyone is a star and expects to get paid like a star, or at least a little bit more than anyone else is getting paid.
This dynamic-everyone measuring himself or herself against everyone else-has just about killed the ensemble picture. The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven-you hardly ever see movies like that anymore. It's become nearly impossible to produce a film with more than three major stars. It's less about money than about politics. People talk on the set, and when they talk, they compare, and when they compare, they bitch. Some demand raises or back-end points, others simply storm off. Which is why I consider the Ocean's movies such a triumph. Merely being able to assemble such a cast-Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Gould, Garcia, Cheadle, and so on-and keep it together through three pictures was a feat. My role in this was both as hands-on tactician and as guiding spirit. I was the old man upstairs, saying, "Isn't this fantastic! Can you believe all of the fun we're having?"
But the main job of the producer is this: Solve problems. The list of my movies is, in fact, little more than a list of problems solved. The pit boss won't let us shoot in the casino? Fine! Build a casino in Burbank. Each movie tells the story of its producer, where the idea came from, and how the crises were averted.
Take, for example, Oh, God!, which I produced after Nashville. It was a breakthrough for me. With it, I finally reached the great American middle that Colonel Tom Parker talked about so often. The idea came from David Geffen, who acquired the rights to the novel and wanted to cast John Denver as the lead, a befuddled, latter-day Abraham, who, while managing a supermarket in California, hears the voice of God. It was a perfect part for John and a great way for him to branch out into something new, the average lifespan of a pop star being not much longer than the average career of an NFL running back. Geffen asked me to produce. Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner were already assigned to write and direct. You could do no better. Gelbart was the author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Carl Reiner was the creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The men worked together on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Alan Arkin had been signed to play God, which made sense. Not only is Arkin a great actor, he was friends with Reiner and Gelbart. He was young, though, a little slight for the part of Yahweh. I mean, when you think of God, what do you picture? For me, it's a gray-haired, humorous old Jew, with slumped shoulders and big hands and a cigar in his mouth.
After discussions of a theological nature-What kind of voice do you think the big guy would have? Do you think the divine would take his own name in vain?-Reiner and Gelbart and I realized we were all picturing the same face.
All three of us decided the only person for this part was George Burns.
Burns was in his late seventies, a legend with a career that went clear back to the golden age of radio and, before that, to the Yiddish theater. He was a vision of the almighty in modest, human form. He was available, but the situation was tricky. It meant firing Arkin, who was friends with everyone. But when we explained it to him, he understood. The part of God was not one you could use the Method to play-you could not draw on your own experience to get into the mind of the Infinite. You simply had to be an old man who had been around forever, had done everything, had known everyone.
It all came back around years later, when I was casting Ocean's Eleven. I signed Arkin to play the part of Saul, who was just the kind of wise, humorous old man Burns would have played a generation before. Two days before shooting, I got a call. Arkin was going in for surgery and would miss the shoot. I was in a panic. I went over to Carl Reiner's house in the middle of the night, banged on the door, handed him the script, and said, "Please, Carl, you have to play the part of Saul in Ocean's Eleven."
He said, "Jerry, Jerry, why so late?"
"Well," I told him, "Arkin was supposed to do it, but he's in the hospital."
"Oh, I see," said Carl, "Alan is still not ready to play God."
The table read of Oh, God! is still vivid in my mind. This is the first real rehearsal: The producer and director and writer sit around as the actors go through the entire script, playing their parts for the first time. It's early in the process, but usually, from how the actors work together and react, you can get a sense of how the movie will play. George Burns entered in that slow, shuffling way of his-every step made me laugh. He was seventy-nine, impossibly old. Who knew he would live another twenty years? His face was like parchment. His eyes were warm and dark. He wore an obvious toupee-it was the one off note. He was a great performer. Everyone stood when he came in. For the actors, reading with him was like taking batting practice with Babe Ruth. But he was an old man, so you could not help but wonder how he would handle his lines. When we started reading, though, it was obvious he knew not only his part, but every part in the script. If John Denver fumbled, George Burns would correct him. He was incredible. Before the read, he talked with Gelbart and Reiner and Avery Corman, who wrote the novel. He went through the script with a pen, explaining which lines would hit and which would bomb, which would get big laughs and which would get embarrassed snickers. "You will kill with this one," he said, "but with this one, you'll wonder if you picked the wrong profession."
Making the movie was a dream. The only issue, really, was George's hair, or, to be specific, fake hair. Simply put, he would not take off his toupee. We begged, please, for this role, ditch it. He refused. It was a question for priests and rabbis. Would the Lord of Hosts wear a piece? To me, the answer was obvious. Even if God is bald, or has a bald spot, and even if this makes him self-conscious when he walks upon the earth, don't you think that, rather than getting a rug, he would just make new hair? I mean, if he could part the waters…? But Burns refused, which meant a movie in which God would wear a rug. No good. As I said, the job of the producer is to solve problems. I therefore decreed: The Lord will wear a hat! If you watch the movie, you will see that God is pictured, variously, in a baseball hat, a cowboy hat, a captain's hat. He is a man of many moods and many seasons.
The movie was finished. I was convinced we had a smash. But when I showed it to the business people at Warner Bros., they sat through it politely, without comment.
Well, yes, they said when it was done, it's a nice little picture.
Nice little picture? No, I said, it's a great film. But it will be huge only if we treat it like it's huge. I said I wanted five million dollars to market it on television. They told me I was insane. Back then, no one advertised movies on TV. "Look, TV is where John Denver is a star," I told them. "It's where his fans are. You show them the movie, and let them know about it, you will have a monster hit on your hands." They told me to go away. The movie had cost less than two million dollars to make. There was no way they were going to chase that two million with five million for commercials.
I spoke to Terry Semel, who was the head of distribution at Warners-he wound up running the company-and Andy Fogelson, who was the head of marketing. I made them watch the movie again, then argued my case. They fell in love with it. They went in to their bosses and said, "Give Jerry the money." They put their jobs on the line. Terry said, "If this fails, I'll quit the company." It was a huge moment for me and Terry-we've been friends ever since. We went on television with the biggest ad campaign Hollywood had ever seen, found John's fans, and hit them squarely, the result being a summer of packed theaters. We made history.
While making the movie, I became friendly with George Burns. Jane and I decided to throw a party for his eightieth birthday at our house in Beverly Hills. For that one night, the world was as I had always imagined it. Invitations went out by hand: black-and-white cards with a red rose. The party was catered by Chasen's. Dinner on the tennis court, dozens of tables under white cloths, torches and tiki lamps, a jazz band. Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Johnny Carson, everyone was there. As Louis B. Mayer used to say, "More stars than in the heavens." At one point, Groucho Marx got up for an impromptu roast of George Burns. Groucho was old and failing, but he was brilliant. Goddamn, he was funny. It was Groucho's last public performance. The party went all night. When I came downstairs in the morning, I found the young stars of Hollywood passed out on the floor, some of whom had won Grammies or Golden Globes the night before. They were in their suits, hugging their statues, snoring away.
Or take, for example, Cruising-another set of problems solved-which I made after Oh, God!. It's the story of a New York cop who goes undercover in the gay leather bars of New York to solve a series of murders. It was based on a true story, having first been reported in a series of articles in the New York Times. I bought the rights to the book that came out of the articles, put the screenplay in a drawer, and waited for the right moment.
Meanwhile, I hooked up with director Billy Friedkin, who had just come off the career-making success of The Exorcist. We became friends, decided to make a movie together. Then, one night, as we were talking, I remembered Cruising. I got the book out of my drawer, handed it to Billy. "Look at this," I said. "It might be for you." He knew the story, having followed it in the paper.
"I love this," he said. "We're making this movie."
We met with Frank Wells, who was then vice chairman of Warners. We pitched the movie. He signed off on it without understanding what he was signing off on. He probably thought it was about cars. Billy and I were so hot at that moment-Oh, God!, The Exorcist-that he just said "Yeah, yeah, do it." Then, just before we were to begin shooting, Wells suddenly figured out the movie was not about cars. There would be controversy, noise. He told us Warners could not make the movie. I was in a fury. We had already begun to rehearse, but Wells did not care. It was a bad moment, but in the end we managed to set up the movie at Lorimar Pictures.
A few years had passed since the book was published, and in those few years, the world had changed. The gay community had begun its liberation. People were coming out of the closet. In hopes of getting it right, Billy and I hit all the leather bars of the West Village, then shot the movie in these locations. A reporter from the Village Voice got the script early, then infiltrated the set, where he heard wild rumors, the result being a hysterical article that denounced the film, denounced Billy, and denounced me. It said we were exploiting the gay community, that lives would be put in danger. That it was all bullshit was beside the point. Being in the newspaper made it true. As I said, the job of the producer is solving problems, and this was a big one: Just like that, our sleepy set had turned into a riot scene. Thousands of people came out to protest. They stomped their feet, flashed lights, and blew whistles when we were trying to shoot. We burned up thousands of dollars in film. Then the letters came: You're dead. We're going to kill you, Weintraub. Garbage like that. I did not mind the threats. In this case, my job was to be the loudmouth, the target, take the hit and let the fury of the mob break over my head, giving the actors room to perform. I mean, we had Al Pacino, and it's hard to do the Method while you're being filmed for the five-o'clock news.
In the end, the press was good for the movie. The articles sold the product. One day, Steve Ross, who was the CEO of Warner Bros.' parent company, Warner Communications, and also a friend, said to me, "Wow, Jerry, you are getting so much attention with the picture. Why aren't we doing it?"
I told him the whole story.
He said something like, Well, whatever you want to make next, we want to be involved.
Cruising came out in 1980. It did well at the box office, pushed along by all that coverage. Of course, the movie, in many ways, came too early. If it was released today, when people have opened their minds to lifestyles that differ from their own, it would do gangbusters. As I always say, "Better too late than too early." Too late means you look slow but still make a bundle. Too early means you look like you've lost your mind, and you get people shouting, "Kill that idiot." But it also means there is a chance for rediscovery. In the end, that strange little picture we made in the seventies became a cult classic.
Soon after that, Friedkin said, "That was so much fun, let's do it again."
"Do what again?" I asked.
"Make another picture."
"Do you have anything in mind?"
"Yeah," he said. "Let's make a sequel to The Exorcist."
As an idea, this was automatic. He could have made it with any producer, but if you need a person to deal with studio executives and budgets and marketers and minutiae, well, I'm not a bad choice. Directors know I'm on their side of the table. I will fight for them, make their case, protect them. William Peter Blatty was a partner, as he owned the rights. And he would, of course, write the sequel. He had done such a brilliant job with the original as well as the novel it was based on.
Frank Wells got word of the project. He called and said, "Look, Jerry, I want it."
"After what you did to me on Cruising?" I said. "No way."
"You've got to let me have it," he said. "If we don't get it, it will kill my career with Steve Ross."
Frank Wells and I were actually friends-I did not want to hurt the guy.
He said, "Go to your office in the morning. There will be an envelope waiting. Look inside, then call me."
"What is it?"
"Just get the envelope, then call me."
I went in and there was the envelope. Inside was a check for five hundred thousand dollars.
I called Wells.
"What's it for?" I asked.
"Just to be the first to hear the pitch," he said.
"And what happens if you hate the pitch?" I asked.
"Tell me the budget," he said.
"Fifteen million," I said, pulling the number out of thin air.
"Good," he said. "Come in and tell us the story. If we approve, the five hundred thousand is against the budget. If we don't approve, you keep the money."
How can you beat that?
I scheduled a meeting for New York three weeks hence, where we would sit with the heads of Warner Bros. and pitch. I call it the five-hundred-thousand-dollar lunch, because that's all they got for their money-lunch with me and Billy and Blatty.
It's interesting that no one questioned my decision to have that lunch in New York. We all lived in LA-writer, director, producer, all the executives-so why were we flying across the country for a meeting? Well, the fact is, I could not get these guys to agree on a scenario for the movie, so I figured, okay, we'll be stuck together for five hours on the plane. That is when Friedkin and Blatty will work it out. In fact, they did not work it out, and could never agree. By the time we landed, I knew we were in serious trouble.
When we got to Warner Bros., the receptionist told me that Mr. Ross wanted to see me right away. I went in, we spoke. He said, "Jerry, we're buying this movie."
I said, "Buying what? There's no story."
He said, "Well, go and make one up. We're doing this movie."
We went into the meeting, sat at the big table with the food piled in front of us. Ted Ashley and Frank Wells, the chairman and vice chairman of the company, were both in the room. For the first thirty minutes, it was just me, telling Sinatra stories, telling Elvis stories, telling Dean Martin stories, the whole routine.
Frank Wells finally turned to Billy and said, "Okay, Billy, why don't you tell us about your movie?"
Billy bumbled around a bit, then said, "We open in the hills of West Virginia, and the camera comes over the hills and we see a field of dead cows. The camera continues over a hill, and we see Washington, D.C., Georgetown, go up the steps and into a church, then we see a head, severed and bloody, roll out of the confessional."
He turned to Blatty, then said, "Take it, Bill."
"Well, yes," said Blatty, "but I am not sure about the cows."
Then it was over. As we were getting ready to leave, Frank Wells helped me on with my coat. "We're excited," he told me. "We can't wait to make this movie."
"What movie?" I asked him. "There is no movie. That was bullshit."
"No, no, we love it," he said. "We want to do it."
"There is nothing to do," I said. "I'm going to give back your money."
"No, hang on to it," he said. "Think about it."
Well, I did think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew there was no movie. I sent back the money with a note: "Next time." Taking money for a movie you know you will never make is a bad habit. It's cocaine, it revs you up, and you have some fun, but in the end, you're in a worse place than you were when you started.
Around this time, my parents visited Beverly Hills. This was rare, as my mother did not like to fly. Usually I visited them in New York. The trip was therefore a big deal, a chance to show off what I had accomplished. I picked them up at LAX in my chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce. My mother slid in slowly, beaming, but my father looked skeptical. He stared out the window as we drove, now and then asking things like, "How long have you had this car, Jerry?" "What's the miles per gallon?" We finally reached the house, the mansion in Beverly Hills, with the swimming pool and tennis court and gardens and flowers. We sat in the living room. Out came the champagne. Out came the caviar. My mother was enjoying every minute. My father was reserved, pensive. He was a warm and beautiful man. I handed him a Cuban cigar, a Cohiba, his favorite. He puffed at it, looking at the smoke.
"Go get ready," I said. "I have a dinner planned. I am taking you to the best place in town, where the stars hang out."
This went on for a few days-me giving my parents the business, ushering them to the front of lines, through crowds, to the best tables and shows, and so on-until my father finally said, "Okay, listen, Jerry, I want to talk to you. Let's go outside."
Before we got halfway down the front steps, he tapped my chest with his finger and said, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth, no bullshit from you. Are you in the Mafia? How did you get all this? You were never that smart.' "
I stammered. "Uh, no, Dad, I'm creative. I did it."
"Well, where's your inventory?" he asked. "How can you have this much money and not have an inventory? It doesn't make sense to me."
I laughed and pointed at my head. "It's up here," I said. "All the inventory is right up here."
Then he laughed, too, saying, "Well, I guess there was always a lot of space for it, anyway."
That trip was mostly about impressing my mother, showing her a good time, thanking her. It was my mother who instilled the confidence and belief that made my success possible. My mother had two great passions in her life (other than her family, I mean): Cary Grant and horse races. So one afternoon, a week into the trip, I tell her to get ready, we're going somewhere-I won't say where. Thirty minutes later, the Rolls drops us off at the Hollywood Park Race Track. As we're getting out, who does she spot but Cary Grant, elegant as always, standing in front of the ticket window. "Oh, my," says my mother, grabbing my sleeve. "Look who it is." Before she can get his name out, Cary hurries over and slips his hand through my mother's arm and says, "Hello, Rose, will you be my date this afternoon?"
By then, Cary and I had become friends. I must have told my parents this on the phone, but they probably did not believe me. My mother was walking on air. They sat together in the clubhouse, reading through the racing form. Cary made her bets. They watched the ponies through binoculars.
I threw a dinner party that night at the house. I was sitting at the bar, having a drink with my mother, when Sinatra came in. There was always a stir, a happy little party, whenever Frank entered a room. He threw off his coat and came up, smiling, with his arms outstretched. "Hi ya, Rose," he said, "I heard you had a great date for lunch today."
"Yes, I did," she told him-and this part chokes me up, because my parents, well, that was a real love affair, "but I like my Sammy better."
My mother, as I said, was one of those ladies you would see weeping in a dark theater on the Grand Concourse. She loved the movies. In 1986, I actually had a chance to take her out of the seats and put her up on screen. My parents had come to visit me in Florida, where I was making a movie called Happy New Year with Peter Falk, Tom Courtenay, and Charles Durning.
After the director, John Avildsen, met my mother, he said, "Hey, Jerry, why don't you put her in the movie?"
The picture was about a jewelry store robbery, and I built the store on set. Avildsen thought I should have her in the scene in which Falk cases the joint. She would be a customer, walking by with Courtenay, the store manager.
"Not a good idea," I told Avildsen.
"Why?"
"It's my mother," I said. "Believe me. It's not a good idea."
"Come on, Jerry, she'll enjoy herself."
Falk and Avildsen kidded me into it.
So I went over and said, "Mom, do you want to be in the scene, you could be an extra."
"No," she said. "I'm no actress."
"Okay," I said, "understood." And I walked away.
A minute later, she called me back.
"What is it, Ma?
"Jerry," she said, "if you need me, I'll do it."
(She was a real Jewish mother.)
I said, "No, no, it's okay."
She said, "Just look at you. I can tell you need me. Fine. I'll do it. But I don't have a dress, look at what I'm wearing. And my hair…"
I said, "Ma, I got a wardrobe truck, I got hairdressers, I got makeup people. You'll be fine."
"Oh, you're going to do all that?"
Yes.
She said, "All right, I'll do it for you."
So she goes in, is treated like a queen, like she's Julia Roberts or Marilyn Monroe. The hairdresser, the makeup people, they're all working on her. Now comes time for her scene. She comes out in the background and is supposed to walk out the door. So Avildsen says to me, "Why don't you direct it? It's your mother."
I said, "No, don't be crazy."
He said, "What do you have to do? Say 'action'? Say 'cut'? Everything is set up, don't worry. It'll be fun for her."
I said, "Okay, okay."
Then: "Action!"
My mother and Tom Courtenay start walking. She's supposed to go from here to there. But as she passes, she turns to Courtenay and says, "I don't like that piece of jewelry."
I yelled, "Cut! Cut! Cut!"
I said, "Ma, what are you doing? There's no lines. You just walk."
"Well that's stupid," she said. "If your father was showing some jewelry to somebody and she didn't like it, she'd tell him."
"Well, in this case, you don't tell him anything," I said. "You just walk."
"It's stupid," she told me. "I wouldn't do it that way."
"But it's not about you, Ma. It's about Peter Falk."
Meanwhile, Peter Falk and John Avildsen, and all the Teamsters, are standing around, watching me, laughing their asses off.
So I went back, and said, "Okay, let's do it again. Action."
She started walking, then, just as she passed the camera, she turned, looked right into the lens, and smiled like a bandit.
"Cut! Cut! Cut!"
"What's the matter now?" she asked.
I said, "Ma, you're embarrassing me."
I'm talking quietly because I don't want everybody to hear. They are all looking, and they know I'm screwed. No way I'm getting out of this without pain.
I said, "Ma, listen to me, please. I feel like I'm back in sixth grade. You're killing me. I'm supposed to be in charge and you're making me a child. My mother, standing on the set, telling me I'm stupid, telling me what to do. You can't do that."
She said, "Well, it doesn't make sense."
I said, "Ma, do me a favor, please? Just walk from there to there. Don't look at the camera, don't say anything, just walk."
"Fine," she said, "I was doing this for you but it's not right.
We finally finished. I was exhausted. It took all day. We got back to the hotel. Jane said, "You know, you should invite your mom to the dailies."
"No, not a good idea."
"Oh, come on," said Jane. "Let her see herself. It will be a thrill."
So I called. "Ma, do you want to watch the dailies in the morning?"
"What's dailies?"
"It's everything we shot today," I told her. "We take a look at it. Your film will be on the screen. You want to see it?"
"You want me to come to dailies?" she said. "No. I don't want to see myself, I don't care about that, it's silly."
I said, "Okay, good night."
Hung up.
A minute later, the phone rang. "All right, if you need me to come, I'll come," she said. "And I can see that you need me."
She brought my father. Peter Falk found out and he came, too. Same with John Avildsen, Tom Courtenay, and Charlie Durning-they were all there. My mother was sitting next to me. When she came on screen, she yelled out, "I look great!"
In the end, she loved it, mostly because she got residual checks from the film-$3, $27, $41-for years and years.