When I landed at Heathrow Airport, I went straight to a house in Chelsea, where I met Nevill Coghill and Martin Starkie, who produced and adapted the original production of this play, Canterbury Tales. I say "this play" because I did not know anything about it. I had heard of Chaucer but did not really know who he was. Maybe if instead of the Air Force I had gone to college… but, as I said, I did go, only my professors were Colonel Tom and Frank Sinatra, who offered neither a core curriculum nor lectures in medieval English poetry. My classes, which were various, included deportment ("Talking Straight With a Buzz On"), History ("The Rise and Fall of Dukes and Kings"), Business ("Don't Be a Sucker"), vocations ("Knowing What You Got, and Using It"), and philosophy ("I think therefore I dance").
I knocked on the door of the house. A beautiful-looking guy came out in tight white pants with no shirt. He was Coghill and Starkie's butler. His name was Bunky. He led me to a dining room, where lunch had been set out. The producers were waiting, proper, English, amused. Referring back to my class with Professor Sinatra ("Knowing What You Got, and Using It"), and considering myself a not terrible-looking kid, I switched gears, turned a little flirty. We talked about the play. As I said, I did not know who Chaucer was, but the show had been a hit in previews and Loesser said get it, so here I was, drinking Perrier and asking the guys to pass the dill. I could not have the show, they said. Not yet, anyway. They were still making up their mind, had to meet with everyone, and so forth. But I persisted. I went over there every day for a week, pitching, selling. We got to be friends. They invited me to go with them to the opening night, which was a real honor.
We got to the theater. Freyer, Carr, Harris, Merrick, Bloomgarden-all the Broadway big shots were there, looking to acquire rights to the show. They were craning in their seats, looking over, perplexed, trying to figure, Who is the kid with Coghill and Starkie? Is that Jerry Weintraub? Doesn't he work with Elvis? What the hell is he doing here? The lights go down, the curtain comes up on a road in the country, a cart filled with travelers, each itching to tell his or her tale. The crowd is silent, rapt, but I'm not hearing it, not seeing it. I'm thinking about Frank Loesser: "Go to London, get the rights, we'll produce it together. We'll be partners." I'm with these guys, have them to myself… but the show will end, the party will start, the drinks and congratulations and Broadway hotshots, and I will miss my chance.
I have to act now!
I leaned over and whispered to Starkie-we're in tuxedos-"I'm sorry, Martin, and don't want to alarm you, but a pain is shooting up my left arm and into my chest."
Starkie looks over, thinks a moment, takes my wrist and says, "We're getting out of here right away. We're going to the hospital."
"No," I whispered. "I can't take you out of your opening night."
"To hell with opening night," said Starkie. "You're sick!"
Starkie and Coghill led me out of the seat and rushed me up the aisle, the whispers trailing us, out the door. I was slumped in back of the car. Martin was feeling my head, taking my pulse. We go by the Hilton. "Look," I said, "if I can just get in there, sit down, have a glass of water, maybe I'll feel better."
We found a couch in the lobby. These guys were all over me, pale with fear, certain I was going to die.
"How do you feel?" asked Coghill.
"A little better," I said.
"What can we do for you?" asked Starkie.
"Well," I said, "I really want to buy the show."
"Will that make you feel better?" asked Coghill.
"Oh, Nevill," said Starkie, "just sell him the goddamn show."
I bought it for ten grand. (My check bounced, but that's another story.) With the terms agreed on, my condition improved greatly. The play was over by then. We went to the cast party. Everyone was there. Coghill stood on a chair and made the announcement. "The American rights to Canterbury Tales have been sold to Jerry Weintraub." All those Broadway producers stood dumbstruck, couldn't figure it out. Neither could Loesser. He kept saying "How, Jerry, how?"
I'm not saying you should fake a heart attack every time, only in a pinch.
As I said, in those years, I wanted to acquire, perfect, produce, and sell tickets to everything that moved me. It was not just about money. It was about love. I wanted to share whatever electrified me. In 1976, I was, for example, mesmerized by Dorothy Hamill, the perky, young, short-haired figure skater dominating the Winter Olympics. She won the gold medal, but it was her charm and style that made her a sensation. I was glued to my television. I did not want to miss a minute of it.
One afternoon, I was talking to Roone Arledge, who was producing the Olympics for ABC. I said, "Look, Roone, if you happen to talk to Dorothy Hamill, ask if she needs someone to advise her. This all happened so fast. She must be overwhelmed."
Ten minutes later-boom!-the phone rings. It's Dorothy. She asks to meet right after the closing ceremonies. The whole world wants her, and she does not know what to do. We met in the lobby of a hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. We talked for hours. She had a difficult family situation. She was eighteen, and, like most of the kids who skate-because they practice twenty-four hours, seven days a week-she had not had much interaction with the outside world. She was very childlike. The only people she knew had either staked their careers on her success, or staked their careers on someone other than her being successful. She asked me to manage her, take care of her, and so forth. I made several moves right from the hotel lobby. I called the guys that ran Bristol-Myers, for example, and made a deal for a shampoo called Short N' Sassy. Because that was Dorothy. I called ABC and made a deal for eight Dorothy Hamill TV specials. Within a few hours, this girl who had never seen a nickel in all her life was a multimillionaire. It was fantastic. She came to California after that and lived with me and Jane. My friends were her friends, and she married Dean Martin's son, Dino Jr.
The Grand Master
Okay, here's my favorite of the crazy, why-the-hell-not-try-it stories of those years. In the summer of 1972, I got hooked on the World Championship of Chess, which was being shown on PBS and ABC Wide World of Sports, with Bobby Fischer, the American, playing Boris Spassky, the Russian, in Reykjavik, Iceland. The men crouched over the chessboard in utter silence for hours on end. I do not know a thing about chess, have never played it and don't want to-I was relying on the PBS commentator, who moved pieces around a board to explain the game-but I was transfixed by Fischer. He was tall, with blue eyes and wild hair and the slow, graceful motions of a hypnotist or magician. He sat stone still, radiating a weird charisma. It came right through the set. I rushed home every night to have dinner in front of the TV. You could not get me out of the house. I was mesmerized.
Jane finally confronted me.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked. "Have you gone nuts?"
"What are you talking about?" I said.
"You. You sit in front of the TV for hours every night, watching a chess match. You don't know anything about chess, not even the rules."
"I'm not watching a chess match," I told her. "I'm watching this guy Bobby Fischer."
"Why?"
"Because he's a star."
"You're insane."