After a long pause, Alice Ghostley brought the house down with, “You’re killing that man.” It was a laugh that went on forever.
The show came to New York and opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre. It was an instant hit. It got very good reviews and my sketch was singled out by the famous New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson. I couldn’t believe it! I was actually a writer on Broadway.
Ronny and I went on to become frequent collaborators and lifelong friends. Even though I was in the funny business, nobody made me laugh like Ronny Graham. For instance, there was always a line of autograph seekers at the stage door of the Royale Theatre where New Faces was holding forth. Ronny was always the last one to leave the theater. I don’t know why, but by the time he opened the stage door the crowd had left. It didn’t mean a thing to Ronny. He made believe he was besieged by screaming autograph hunters. He would push his way through the imaginary throng screaming, “Please! This is too much! Let me breathe! I’m an ordinary human being just like you! Please let me through.”
Even though I was the only person there, he never stopped performing. I would collapse with laughter.
Ronny and I wrote crazy songs together. We gave movies that didn’t have title songs their own music and lyrics. Like, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon…Has Stolen My Heart.” And “War and Peace…I’ll Take Peace.”
Later, we wrote a wonderful song that I’m still trying to find a place for called “Retreat.” It’s an ode to cowardice.
Here’s a sample:
Retreat, retreat!
Drop your sword and run.
Our foe is near, our choice is clear,
Get outta here, Hooray for fear,
We’re done.
Run away, Run away,
If you run away you’ll live to run away another day!
I never got it into a show but it’s a winner whenever I sing it in front of an audience.
* * *
—
During the summer breaks in production on Your Show of Shows, we would all do our own thing. My reputation as a comedy writer was spreading. I got a call from Freddy Kohlmar, a film producer at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. He had produced some well-known pictures such as Kiss of Death (1947) starring Victor Mature and Richard Widmark, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. He called with an incredible opportunity: He wanted me to do the screenplay for a well-known Rodgers and Hart Broadway hit called Pal Joey. He offered to fly me out to L.A. and pay me a thousand dollars a week for eight weeks. I was so dumbstruck, for a moment I couldn’t answer. On the other end of the phone I heard, “Well, well…are you coming?”
I finally found my voice and said, “Turn around, I’m there!”
It was the first time I’d been to California. Having been born and raised in Brooklyn in the jungle of tenements, I’d never seen anything like it. I was stunned by the beauty of the place. Palm trees! Endless blue skies! The Pacific Ocean! It was paradise. And to boot, there were orange trees—thousands of orange trees with big juicy oranges that sometimes hung into the street from people’s backyards. Since they were in the street, I figured they were public property. So every day I’d pick some and happily munch on an orange or two on my way to work.
I had a big office all to myself on the third floor of the Columbia Pictures building on Gower Street in Hollywood. I went to work diligently writing the screenplay of Pal Joey, but only two weeks into the script, Jerry Wald, the head of production at Columbia Pictures, called and said, “We can’t get Sinatra to play Joey. He’s too busy. So Columbia wants to keep it on the shelf for a while. But I have another project for you. It’s called Apple Annie.”
So I started work on Apple Annie, the story of a poor little old lady who sold apples on the street corner, but in letters to her son back East she pretended to be a wealthy dowager throwing lavish parties every night. But the son was coming out to visit her and soon the game would be up, unless she could find a way to fool him. So with the aid of a gang of less-than-honest bookies, gamblers, etc. they would manage to help her pull it off.
(By the way, many years later Apple Annie turned into a movie called Pocketful of Miracles [1961] with a wonderful performance by Bette Davis.)
I was lucky my next-door office neighbor was a guy by the name of Alfred Hayes, who had written a novel with a beautiful love story about a GI and an Italian girl called The Girl on the Via Flaminia. He was also from New York, so we hit it off. Alfred was actually born in the Jewish neighborhood of London called Whitechapel and came to New York when he was only three. We had lunch every day and traded stories about growing up in New York City.
One day, when we came back from lunch Alfred noticed that his name was not on his door. I said, “Maybe it’s on the floor?” The nameplates could be slid in and out from the slots on the doors. So we looked around for it, but we couldn’t find it. Alfred called downstairs to report that his name was not on his door, and he couldn’t find it. The explanation was simple and terrible. They told him thank you for services rendered, but he was no longer needed at Columbia Pictures.
He said, “I guess that’s the way they fire you. They just slide your name off the door!”
That night, I was so angry I couldn’t sleep. I decided I had to do something about how Alfred was treated. I got up real early and snuck into the building with the janitorial staff at six a.m. I went to the third floor. I took every name from its slot on the door. I went down to the first floor. I took every nameplate from the first floor and put them in the empty slots of the third floor. And then I went to the second floor and swapped those out too. In a fit of outraged insanity, I changed the name on every door at Columbia Pictures! Then I went back up to my office, put my feet on my desk, and fell asleep.
After an hour or two I was awakened by an incredible din in the halls outside my office. It seemed that people were upset. All of Columbia Pictures was flooded with angry agents and lawyers.
I was happy. I had gotten even.
Unfortunately, around four o’clock that same day there was a tap on my door. Jerry Wald stuck his head in and said, “Mel…you were seen.”
I said, “What?”
He said, “Yes, somebody saw you change all the names and Harry Cohn wants to see you in his office.”
Ten minutes later I was on the red carpet in the office of the head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn. (Strangely enough, his office carpet was actually red.)
He was not happy.
Freddy Kohlmar and Jerry Wald pleaded my case. They said things like:
“He’s a crazy kid! He does crazy things!”
“But he’s good! He’s funny! He’s writing for us.”
“He’s gonna make us money! Don’t fire him, Harry.”
Cohn, his face boiling with rage, shouted, “I don’t want him fired! I don’t want him fired. I want him KILLED!”