And he sat back and looked at me-and this looking took longer than it should have-smiled and laughed. He stood up, walked around the desk, sat in the chair next to me, shook my hand, and said, "It is nice to meet you. I am Arthur Wirtz."
And I shook his hand and said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Jerry Weintraub."
We made a deal that very night, negotiating the terms for hours. At one point, he said, "Hey, Jerry, you look hungry," went into the little kitchen he had off his office and cooked me a steak. This big guy, this big shot, sleeves rolled up, standing over a T-bone. He loved me because I told him to go screw himself. No one had ever done that. We finished the last points at 9:00 P.M.
"Okay," he said, "now I have to get the board of directors to ratify the deal."
I was pissed. "You mean, I stayed here all night negotiating and you can't even do a deal with me? You have to wait for someone else?"
"We don't have to wait," he said. "We'll do it now."
He led me down the hall to an empty boardroom. There was a round table with ornate chairs and leather blotters and beautiful lamps with green shades, each throwing a pool of light. Arthur sat at the head of the table, struck the gavel, then said, "Meeting in session." He read the main points of our contract aloud, asked if any members of the board were opposed, any objections, waited a moment, as if expecting an answer-"Good news," he said to me, "no objections"-announced the contract ratified, then brought down the gavel, adjourning the meeting.
"I did that for a reason," he explained. "I wanted to show you something. You're going to make a lot of money. Do it yourself. Don't ever go public. Be in charge of your own destiny."
It was the beginning of a friendship that lasted decades. We made millions of dollars together. He was my mentor in the world of arenas and concerts and filling seats. He made me a king. He got me exclusive deals in hockey buildings all over the country. The Stadium in Chicago, the Olympia in Detroit, the Garden in New York, the Forum in LA-he controlled them all. We worked as partners, put on shows, filled the seats, paid the band and other expenses, paid our taxes, split the rest. He was supposed to be anti-Semitic. It was a rumor. You heard it whispered, but there was no truth to it. I loved him, and he loved me. We hung out together, vacationed together. Remember the model of the boat on his desk? Well, he gave me use of that boat-the real thing, not the model-whenever I wanted to get away.
Wirtz had a way about him. It was often hard to tell if he was joking. One night, when we had Zeppelin at the Stadium, security confiscated joints and other contraband from the kids as they came in the door. By showtime, the back room was filled with bags of dope and pills. One of the cops asked Wirtz what should be done with the stuff. Arthur thought for a moment, then said, "Well, why can't we sell it back to them as they leave?"
By the late seventies, I had so much going in LA, it left no time for Chicago. I stopped going, stopped hanging out, bullshitting, and instead sent Bill McKenzie, the chief financial officer of my company, to talk to Mr. Wirtz and settle up after a show. The money from the city had come to seem automatic. Then something changed. The profit dipped, the numbers went down. One year I made eighteen million with Arthur, the next year I made fifteen million, then thirteen million.
My accountant called.
"Jerry," he said, "something is wrong in Chicago. The receipts have been going up, but the backend stays the same. I think you're being shorted."
"Shorted?"
"Yeah. Shorted. You're being ripped off."
I called Mr. Wirtz.
"What's happening with the money?" I asked.
"If you want to talk to me," he said, "come to Chicago and talk to me."
I went to his office.
"Okay," he said, "what's the problem?"
I had written all the numbers on a sheet of paper, costs, ticket sales, and where I was coming up thin. He looked these over. "So you think you are being shorted?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"How much you think you've lost?" he asked.
"Well," I said, "I think I'm behind about a million and a half dollars."
"Hold on," he told me, opened his desk drawer, took out a paper, looked at it, then said, "Not bad. You're only off a little. I actually owe you two million."
"What's going on?" I demanded.
"Don't get hot," he said. "I have every penny of it for you right here. You would have had it months ago if you had not been such a bastard and come here and been with me and talked to me and done business with me. You should have been here taking care of your business," he told me. "You weren't taking care of your business. This is a good lesson for you."
Years later, when Mr. Wirtz was dying, I went to Chicago and sat by his hospital bed. He could hardly talk. He was just a mountain of a man under the sheets, with the tubes, and the nurses coming in and out, but he was still sharp and missed nothing. You could see it in his eyes.
Once I was established in the entertainment business, I began to see the possibility of shows everywhere. All life was theater and I wanted to put it on a stage and sell tickets. I wanted to produce everything. This is when Billy Friedkin started calling me "Presents." As in, "Hey, Presents!" "How you doing, Presents?" I wanted to put the world under a marquee that read: "Jerry Weintraub Presents." I began to expand away from concerts, pursuing fantasies of the Great White Way. Like every kid from the boroughs, I dreamed of Broadway. I put on a few small shows but realized that to be good, I would need a teacher and guide. If you want to learn, find a person who knows and study him or her.
Which is how one day in 1968, I found myself in the office of Frank Loesser, that Broadway legend, author of, among others, Where's Charley?, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and, my favorite, Guys and Dolls. Frank Loesser worked in movies, too-he had been under contract with Universal-but he will always be associated with the theater.
He worked in a big office on 57th Street. There was an upright piano and a view of the city. New York is like an infinite library, with everyone you ever wanted to meet tucked in a little room. Knock on this door, Sinatra answers. Knock on that door, Presley answers. Knock on this door, Frank Loesser answers.
"What the hell can I do for you, kid? Did they send you for the dry cleaning?"
"No, my name is Jerry Weintraub."
"Okay, Jerry Weintraub. What do you want?"
I told him he was my favorite writer in the world, that Guys and Dolls was my favorite show, that I was a producer, and was going to produce on Broadway, and told him that he should produce a show with me.
"Why would I do that, kid?"
"Because I'm going to be a great Broadway producer."
Loesser laughed. "All right," he said, "but why not tell me what you are now."
"I told you," I said. "I'm Jerry Weintraub."
He thought a moment, noodled on the piano, notes drifting across the room, then said, "Tell you what. There is a show in London called Canterbury Tales." It's in previews. Hot as a pistol. Goddamn, I want to stage that in New York. But so does every other producer on Broadway. You go to London and get me the rights to that show, and we'll produce it together. We'll be partners.
"We got a deal?" he asked.
"Hell, yes, we got a deal."
"And you are again…?"
"Jerry Weintraub."
"Okay, Jerry. Go get it."
Loesser said everything but "fetch."
I had a big career on Broadway later, and owned a stake in several theaters with Jimmy Nederlander, who ran one of the great organizations in the history of the business. His name is up there with the Shuberts. But this is how I started, in that office off Broadway, with Loesser calling for this trick: Go to London and snatch the prize from the jaws of a dozen hungry producers.