The marriage lasted just a few years. We lived on Saunders Street, in Rego Park, Queens. I was just starting my business, which meant I was insane with work. Hustling. The company was called Directional Enterprises. I had an office in a part of Midtown then dominated by show business types. The lobby was filled with small-time producers and writers and actors and various other hangers-on. In the beginning, I would take on anyone who happened through my door. I was always ready to make the small thing big, or the big thing huge. (A talent manager must be an optimist.) Animal acts, magicians, hypnotists, conjurers, saloon singers, dancers-I represented them all. Woody Allen had an office in the same building. He would ride the elevator with me and my clients-the juggler, for example-and overhear me saying things like, "We're going to build an event around you! You're not just a juggler, but an artist! Do you hear me? An artist!" I often wondered if Woody based Broadway Danny Rose on me and my more marginal acts.
I heard Paul Anka before he was Paul Anka-even then, he was a star-working on his great early hit "Diana." I signed four kids from New Jersey: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi, who called themselves the "Four Seasons." We went on a ballroom tour, the five of us-me being the Fifth Season-eating and sleeping in the van. We reached Chicago exhausted and starved. The manager of the ballroom, an old Chicagoan, said, "You guys are a mess, go next door, have a steak, a cocktail, my treat." "Sherry," which became the group's big hit, had just been released, and when we got back, the house was packed. We were supposed to get a percentage of the gate. "This is great," I told the manager. "Our first sellout!"
"Sellout?" He said, "Nah, no one was coming, so I just let these people in for free."
It was a crucial early lesson: Buy your own steak; it's cheaper.
On most nights, I was out till dawn, racing through Manhattan from club to club, scouting, booking, signing acts. I used to sit with Barbara Walters in back of the Latin Quarter, a famous Broadway hot spot owned by her father, Lou Walters. "Hey, Barbara, who's been filling the seats?" I'd ask her. I was in search of established acts, but was also trying to hit on the right package or trick to sell tickets. I have never been afraid to try even the craziest idea. Later on, I would sell Elvis tickets by advertising: "On sale Monday morning, 9:00 A.M., first come, first served." What does that even mean? Of course the first one gets served first. But I made headlines out of that. And everything I did was a limited edition. But what are they limited to? 82 million? 700 million? 455 million? I mean, there's no law about it. I think this is why I got along better with older men than with my contemporaries. When I told my ideas to people my age, they would wave me away, call me nutty. But when I brought these same ideas to people who had been around, such as Colonel Tom Parker or Frank Sinatra, they got it right away. They knew just who I was and just what I wanted to be. Not a junior agent, not a young man on a ladder to the executive suite, but P. T. Barnum!
I'll give you an example.
Around 1963, I had an idea drifting through my head. I wanted to put on a softball game at Yankee Stadium, in which Elvis would captain a team against a team captained by Ricky Nelson. I had booked Ricky Nelson at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, but did not know anyone with the Yankees, or anyone with Elvis. I just figured the idea would generate the relationships. I called Dan Topping, who owned the Yankees. It took some persistence, but he finally agreed to meet me. We met in his office at the stadium. I said, "Mr. Topping, I want to rent your facility."
At first, he thought I was crazy. In those days, no one rented out stadiums. But when I made the pitch, his tone changed. "That's pretty interesting," he said. "Do you actually know Elvis Presley?"
"No," I said, "not yet."
"And besides, what makes you think that tens of thousands of people will pay to watch Elvis play softball? Do you understand how big this place is?"
"Sure," I told him. "I've been scalping your box seats for years."
"Come with me," he said, "I want to show you something."
He brought me down the ramp and out onto the field, then stood me at second base. "Look around," he said.
Have you ever stood in an empty baseball stadium? It's unbelievable, all those seats, each representing a person who has to be reached, marketed to, convinced, sold. It was intimidating, and it stayed with me. Whenever I am considering an idea, I picture the seats rising from second base at Yankee Stadium. Can I sell that many tickets? Half that many? Twice that many? In the end, the softball game did not come off, but neither did Dan Topping think I was crazy. An idea is only crazy, after all, until someone pulls it off.
Within a year or two, Directional Enterprises was putting on shows all across the country. I had a hit at the Brooklyn Paramount, a fantastic theater. One night, after curtain, two guys come in, big guys in flashy suits. One of them steps forward, the talker, you know the type. This is how it's gonna be, this is what you're gonna do. "From now on," he says, "me, you, and him is partners."
I consider, sort of confused, then say, "But I don't want partners."
"You don't understand," he tells me. "You're in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is our neighborhood. We get a piece of whatever happens in our neighborhood. So we're now partners."
I was tough, but not stupid tough, and now I was scared.
"Ask around," the man says, "find out who we are, and we'll be back tomorrow to work out the this and that."
I raced home in a panic and called my father. He had been around; he knew and had dealt with tough guys before. He grew up in the Bronx, after all, where if you were in business, there was really no avoiding the underworld. He had met Abe Reles and Meyer Lansky-all the players in the Jewish mob. He said, "Jerry, Jerry, take a breath. Calm down. It's okay. It's the way of the world."
"What do I do?" I asked.
"Tell me the story," he said. "Slowly, all the details. I want to see if I can figure out who these guys might be."
When I finished, he said, "Okay. Let me talk to somebody. You'll hear from me soon."
An hour later, he called back and said, "You are to be at [such and such a bar] on the Upper East Side tomorrow at 9:00 P.M., where you will meet a man. Talk to him. He will help you."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Just see him."
"Okay."
"And Jerry."
"Yeah?"
"Don't be late. If you piss him off, it's not an angry letter he's going to send."
The next night, I went to the club on the East Side, a strip bar on First Avenue right out of The Sopranos. Someone took me to a room in back, where I was introduced to the man my father had told me about. He was the boss of one of the New York crime families. He was a tough man-I mean, you would not mess with him-but he had a code, and he played by that code, and he had an air of nobility. He was alone at his table, with a plate of food and a bottle of wine. The room was filled with his lieutenants. He said, "Sit." He had a size twenty-two neck and a giant head, like a head on an old Roman bust. He was huge-it was like someone came in every few hours and injected him with pasta. But he had a face, this great, kind, very human face, and I liked him immediately. I was scared, but I liked him. He poured me a glass of wine and said, "So tell me, what's the problem?"
"Well, these two guys came to see me in Brooklyn where I have a show going and they told me they're going to be my partners."
"Yes, so?"
"I don't want partners."
"But it's their neighborhood," said the boss. "You're taking money out of their store-you gotta give them a percentage."