The Other Side of Me

Chapter 24

The following morning we sailed for London. It was a perfect, smooth crossing, and it seemed to me that that described my present life. I was married to a woman I adored. I was under contract to a major studio, doing what I loved to do, and I was on my way to Europe, on a second honeymoon.
When the ship docked, we took the boat train to London, spent a few days there, and then went on to Paris, where we checked in at the beautiful Hotel Lancaster on Rue de Berri. The hotel had a spectacular garden where they served drinks and meals.
The first thing I did once we checked in was to call the Paris office of United Artists. I spoke to Mr. Berns, the manager.
"Mr. Spiegel told us to expect your call, Mr. Sheldon. When would you like to see the film?"
"It really doesn't matter. Anytime."
"Would tomorrow morning be satisfactory? Say - ten o'clock?"
"Fine."
Jorja and I spent the day sightseeing and went to the fabled Maxim's for dinner.
The next morning, as I was getting dressed, Jorja was still in bed.
"We're running the film at ten o'clock, honey. You'd better get ready."
She shook her head. "I'm a little tired. Why don't you go? I think I'll stay in and rest today. We're going to dinner and the theater tonight."
"All right. I won't be long."
The United Artists office sent a limousine to pick me up and take me to their headquarters. I met Mr. Berns, a tall, pleasant-faced man with a full head of silver hair.
"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Why don't we go right into the theater?"
We walked into the huge theater that the company used to screen movies. There was only one other person there. He was slight, short, and unprepossessing. The only thing outstanding about his features were his eyes. They were very bright, almost probing. We were introduced, but I didn't get his name.
The movie began. It was a French western, badly done, and I was sure that Sam Spiegel would have no interest in it.
I looked across the aisle, and Mr. Berns and the stranger were deep in conversation.
The stranger was saying ". . . and I said to Zanuck, it will never work, Darryl . . . Harry Warner tried to make a deal with me, but he's such a bastard . . . and at dinner, Darryl said to me . . ."
Who the hell was this man?
I walked over to them. "Excuse me," I said to the stranger, "I didn't get your name."
He looked up at me and nodded. "Harris. Jed Harris."
I must have grinned from ear to ear. "Have I got someone who wants to meet you!"
"Really?"
"What are you doing right now?"
He shrugged. "Nothing special."
"Would you come back to the hotel with me? I want you to meet my wife."
"Sure."
Fifteen minutes later, we were in the garden of the Lancaster. I telephoned Jorja from downstairs.
"Hi."
"Hi. You're back. How was the movie?"
"Underwhelming. Come on down to the garden. We'll have lunch here."
"I'm not dressed, darling. Why don't we have something up in our room?"
"No, no. You must come down. There's someone I want you to meet."
"But - "
"No buts."
Fifteen minutes later, Jorja appeared.
I turned to Jed. "This is Jorja."
I looked at Jorja. "Jorja, this is Jed Harris." I said it slowly and watched her face light up.
We sat down. Jorja was thrilled to meet Jed Harris and they talked theater for half an hour before we ordered lunch. Jed Harris was absolutely charming. He was intelligent and funny and the soul of courtesy. I felt that we had made a new friend.
During the meal he turned to me and said, "I'm impressed with your work. How would you like to write a Broadway play for me?"
Writing a play directed by Jed Harris meant I would be working with a master. "I'd like that very much," I said. I hesitated. "At the moment, I'm afraid I don't have an idea for a play."
He smiled. "I do." He started telling me various plots that he had in mind. I listened, and after each one I said, "That doesn't excite me," or "I don't think that would interest me," or "That sounds too familiar."
After about six different premises of his, he came up with one that I liked. It was about a female efficiency expert who almost destroys the people in the firm she's sent to examine, and in the end, falls in love and changes.
"That has real possibilities," I told Jed. "Unfortunately, Jorja and I are leaving tomorrow. We're going to be traveling around Europe."
"No problem. I'll go with you and we can work on the play."
I was a little surprised. "Great."
"Where are you going first?"
"We're going to Munich, to meet some friends of ours. He's a Hungarian playwright named - "
"I hate Hungarians. Their plays have no second acts and neither have their lives."
Jorja and I exchanged a look.
"Then Jed, maybe it would be better if you didn't - "
He held up a hand. "No, no. It will be fine. I want us to get going on the play."
Jorja looked at me and nodded.
And it was settled.
When the three of us checked into a hotel in Munich, Laci and Marika were on their way to meet us and I was a little apprehensive. I hate Hungarians. Their plays have no second acts and neither have their lives.
It turned out that I had nothing to worry about. Jed Harris was the essence of charm.
When Laci walked in, Jed put his arm around him and said, "You're a wonderful playwright. I think you're better than Molnar."
Laci almost blushed.
"You Hungarians have a very special talent," Jed said. "It's an honor to meet you both."
Jorja and I looked at each other.
Laci was beaming. "I'm going to take you to a famous restaurant here in Munich. They serve wines from almost every country in the world."
"Wonderful."
Jed went to his room to change and Laci, Marika, and I caught up on what we had been doing in the interim since we had last seen one another.
Half an hour later, we were entering an elegant-looking restaurant on the Isar River. We sat down to order. The waiter handed us menus. They were filled with wines from countries all over the world.
"What kind of wine would you like?" the waiter asked.
Before anyone could speak, Jed said, "I'll have a beer."
The waiter shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. We don't serve beer here. We serve only wine."
Jed glared at him and got to his feet. "Let's get out of here."
I could not believe what I was hearing. "But Jed - "
"Come on. Let's go. I don't want to eat in a place that doesn't serve beer."
Embarrassed, we all got up and left.
"Goddamn Germans," Jed snarled.
Jorja and I were horrified. We all got into a taxi and went back to the hotel, where we had dinner.
Laci apologized to Jed. "I'm sorry about this," he said. "I know another place where they have great beer. We'll go there tomorrow night."
The following day, Jed and I worked on the new play. We spent part of the time writing in the garden and part of the time writing in our suite. I started developing situations arising from the basic premise and Jed would make a suggestion here and there.
That evening, the Bush-Feketes picked us up.
"You'll like this place," Laci assured Jed.
In the restaurant, they took us to our table and the waiter handed us menus. "What would you like to start with?" he asked.
Jed spoke up. "I'll have some wine."
The waiter said, "I'm sorry, sir. We only serve beer here. We have beers from almost every country in the - "
Jed jumped to his feet. "Let's get the hell out of here."
I was shocked again. "Jed, I thought you - "
"Come on. I won't stay in a crummy restaurant where I can't have what I want."
He went out the door and we all followed him. Mr. Charm was turning into a monster.
The next day Jed came to my suite to work on the play and it was as though nothing had happened.
In the morning, as Jorja and I were on our way down to breakfast, the hotel manager stopped me.
"Mr. Sheldon, could I speak to you for a moment?"
"Of course."
"Your guest is very rude to the maids and housekeepers. He's made them very upset. I wonder if you - "
"I'll talk to him," I said.
When I did, he said, "They're too sensitive. My God, they're only maids and housekeepers."
The actress in Jorja was enchanted by Harris's talent. She kept asking him about the theater. At dinner one evening she said to him, "You know, there was a moment in The Crucible when Madeleine Sherwood walked off the stage, and it was a magnificent exit. What was her motivation? What did you tell her to think?"
He looked at Jorja and snapped, "About her paycheck."
That was the last time he called Jorja by name.
The following day the three of us left for Baden-Baden, the luxurious spa in the middle of Baden-Wurttemberg, in southwest Germany.
Jed hated it.
From there we went to the beautiful Black Forest, a fantastic mountain range in southwest Germany that extends ninety miles between the Rhine and Neckar Rivers. It is covered by dark pine forests and cut by deep valleys and small lakes.
Jed hated it.
I had had enough. Our play was coming along much too slowly. Instead of working out a story line, Jed would concentrate on one scene we had written, and go over it endlessly, unnecessarily changing a word here and there.
I said to Jorja, "We're going back to Munich without him."
She sighed. "You're right."
I looked over the notes that I had made on the play. They seemed very banal.
When Jed came to my suite to go to work, I said, "Jed, Jorja and I have to get back to Munich. We're going to leave you."
He nodded. "Right. I wasn't going to do the play with you, anyway."
A few hours later Jorja and I were on a train, heading for Munich.
When we arrived at our hotel, I reached for the phone to telephone Laci and my disc slipped out. I fell to the floor in terrible pain, unable to move.
Jorja was frantic. "I'll call a doctor."
"Wait," I said. "I've had this before. If you can help me get into bed, all I have to do is lie still and after a day or two, it will go away by itself."
She finally managed to help me get into bed. "Let me call Laci."
An hour later, Laci was in our hotel room.
"I'm sorry about this," I said. "I had big plans for us."
He looked at me and said, "I can help you."
"How?"
"I know a man here, Paul Horn."
"Is he a doctor?"
"No, he's a physiotherapist. But he's worked on some of the most famous people in the world. They come here to see him. He can fix you up."
I spent the next two days in bed and on the third day, Laci was walking me into an office at 5 Platenstrasse, the offices of Paul Horn.
Paul Horn was in his forties, a tall, tousled man with a mop of wild hair.
"Mr. Bush-Fekete told me about you," he said. "How often does this happen to you?"
I shrugged. "It's very irregular. Sometimes it happens twice a week. Sometimes it doesn't happen for years."
He nodded. "I can cure you."
An alarm went off in my mind. The doctors at Cedars of Lebanon and UCLA had told me there was no cure for what I had. Put off the operation as long as you can. Finally, when you can't stand the pain, we'll have to operate. And this man who was going to cure me was not even a doctor.
"You'll have to stay here for three weeks. I will treat you every day. Seven days a week."
It did not sound promising. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe we should forget this. I'll see my doctors at home and - "
Laci turned to me. "Sidney, this man has worked on rulers of countries. Give him a chance."
I looked at Jorja. "We'll see."
The treatment began the following morning. I would go in and lie on a table with a heat lamp warming my back for two hours. Then I would rest and repeat the procedure. This went on all day.
On the second day, something was added. Paul Horn helped me into a kind of hammock he had devised, which let all the muscles of my back relax. I lay there for five hours. Every day was the same procedure.
The waiting room was always crowded with people from all over the world, some of them speaking languages that I could not even identify.
Three weeks later, on the last day of treatment, Paul Horn asked, "How do you feel?"
"I feel fine." But I knew I would have felt fine without the treatments.
"You're cured," he said, happily.
I was skeptical. But he was right. In all the years that have passed since that time, I have not had one attack. It turned out that Paul Horn, who was not a doctor, had cured me.
It was time to return to Hollywood.
Returning to MGM was like going home again.
"You have a homecoming present," Dore said. "We're previewing Dream Wife at the Egyptian Theatre."
Dore saw my grin and said, "This is going to be a big one."
It was customary for the trade papers, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, to review movies before the other reviews came out. We were all looking forward to the reviews with great anticipation. They could make or break a movie.
The Egyptian Theatre was filled with people anticipating the pleasure they were about to have. The picture began and we watched the screen, happily listening to the laughs in all the right places.
Jorja squeezed my hand. "It's wonderful."
When the picture ended, there was applause. We had a hit. We went to Musso & Frank's to celebrate. The only reviews would be in the trade papers, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. We were making bets about which one would be better. Early in the morning, I went out and got the trades.
Jorja was still in bed when I returned. She saw the trade papers and smiled. "Read the reviews out loud. Slowly. I want to enjoy them."
I handed Jorja the papers. "You read them."
She looked at my face and quickly started reading the reviews.
"First, Variety . . ."
Part of the review read: ". . . highly contrived piece of screen nonsense. Able performers helped to carry the script's silliness through the frenetics, but director Sidney Sheldon let the action slop over into very broad slapstick too often. This loose handling reflects occasionally in the performances, most notably in Grant's.
"Dream Wife was made under the personal supervision of Dore Schary, and Cary Grant is on hand to get laughs where it isn't always possible to find them in the script. This uneven mixture of sophisticated humor and downright slapstick amounts to little more than a fairly amusing comedy. Sidney Sheldon has gone out of his way for comic situations and not succeeded too well."
The review in the Hollywood Reporter was worse. I was devastated.
Howard Strickling, the head of publicity at MGM, called me and said, "Sidney, I have some bad news for you. I have orders to kill the picture."
I was shocked. "What are you talking about?"
"Dore pulled the picture out of the Music Hall. We're not going to give it any publicity. We're just going to let it die."
"Howard, why - why would you do that?"
"Because Dore's name is on it as producer. As head of the studio, he tells the other producers what they can or cannot make. He can't afford to have his name on a flop. He's going to let Dream Wife fade away as fast as possible."
I was furious. There would be no previews, no bookings or interviews or merchandising. The ship had sailed and the cast and crew had drowned in a sea of ego. It was Dore who had suggested that he put his name on the movie and because of that, he was going to destroy it.
I called Jorja and told her what had happened.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "That's awful for you."
"Jorja, I can't work for a man like that."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to quit. Is that all right with you?"
"Anything you want to do is all right with me, darling."
Fifteen minutes later, I walked into Dore Schary's office.
"I want to get out of my contract."
The man who, a few months earlier, said he didn't want me to leave to run another studio, now said, "Fine. I'll talk to the legal department."
The following day I got a formal release from MGM.
I was not concerned about getting a job. After all, I had an Oscar and a list of wonderful credits. I was sure that any studio in town would be happy to get me.
As it turned out, I was wrong. The elevator had stopped at the bottom.