had not previously suspected. It was nothing spectacular, just the standard below-Fourteenth-Street primer, or bag o’ tricks as some called it: I Ching, Living Theatre, Lenny Bruce, The Realist, Fugs, Grateful Dead, and so on, including the voguish notion that movies should or could be “good.”
Next, of course, she had found herself at Actors Workshop—not as a member (they wouldn’t accept her) but as “a distinguished visitor from the film capital,” auditing, four hours a week. It was there she learned she knew nothing whatever about her profession, and it gave her pause.
The studio (Metropolitan Pictures) flipped—first, because she was even interested in such a crackpot thing as a New York acting school, and second, and more important, because her being rejected had made the morning papers.
Her agent, Abe “Lynx” Letterman, was nonplussed. “Look, baby,” he gently chided, “we’re walking away with one million fucking dollars a picture—is that spit?”
“It isn’t that, Abe,” she tried to explain, “it’s just that, well, there are more important things in life than . . . money.”
“Say, that really grabs me, that does,” Abe fumed, “so whatta you do with them—cut ’em up and put ’em in the freezer?”
Angela Sterling, née Helen Brown, in the Oak Cliff section of Amarillo, Texas; age fourteen, cute-as-a-button drum majorette at James Bowie High; age sixteen, voted Most Beautiful Girl in the Senior Class; age seventeen, Miss Texas; and later that same year, in Atlantic City, she received the uniquely fun-laurels of Miss America.
And now she was twenty-four, veteran trooper of the silver screen and highest paid thesp in the history of cinema. But, here, the crux: although she had appeared in seventeen pictures, starring in the last twelve, not only had she never been nominated for any award, she had scarcely received a single decent notice. Granted, one of two kindly reviewers would occasionally refer to a “certain natural ability”—comparing her in this, and other (“natural”) regards, to the late Marilyn Monroe—but her only real accolades came in the form of several thousand fan letters a week . . . exclusively in the language of the adolescent, the moron, and the sex-nut. Thus, to Angela Sterling, at this critical point in her life and career, the prospect of working with the King B. Boris was salvation itself.
“Tell you what, Angie,” big Sid cautioned, “let’s just keep this on the q.t. for the time being, okay? That way, the studio, Lynx, Les Harrison . . . they don’t know, they don’t worry—when the time is ripe, we spring it—you know, with a lot of classy PR, the real thing. Okay?”
“Sure thing,” gushed Angie, and beamed from one to the other, “whatever you say.”
TWO
The Magic of the Lens
1
T HE SPIRES, TOWERS, turrets, and snow-capped peaks which compose the storybook skyline of Vaduz, Liechtenstein, also belie its essential fifteenth-century character. Heidi-time . . . Heidi-time in Heidiville. The nearest town of consequence is Zurich, seventy miles to the west—seventy miles, that is, as the 707 flies, except there are no airports in Liechtenstein, so that the trip from Zurich to Vaduz, meandering over mountain passes by train and bus, takes three hours. Therefore the first order of business on the part of Krassman Enterprises, Ltd., was to build an airstrip. This was accomplished by capable Production Manager Morty Kanowitz and his advance unit, who bribed and otherwise cajoled a local construction firm into working round the clock, in all weathers, to complete a 3,000-foot asphalt airstrip in forty eight hours.
“How ’bout that?” said Sid, not without a trace of pride, as their chartered twin-Cessna touched down smoothly on the virgin strip. “Old Morty’s right on the ball, huh?” Saying this with a nudge and wink at B., to suggest that it was, in truth, he, Sid Krassman who was on the ball in having accomplished this
Next, of course, she had found herself at Actors Workshop—not as a member (they wouldn’t accept her) but as “a distinguished visitor from the film capital,” auditing, four hours a week. It was there she learned she knew nothing whatever about her profession, and it gave her pause.
The studio (Metropolitan Pictures) flipped—first, because she was even interested in such a crackpot thing as a New York acting school, and second, and more important, because her being rejected had made the morning papers.
Her agent, Abe “Lynx” Letterman, was nonplussed. “Look, baby,” he gently chided, “we’re walking away with one million fucking dollars a picture—is that spit?”
“It isn’t that, Abe,” she tried to explain, “it’s just that, well, there are more important things in life than . . . money.”
“Say, that really grabs me, that does,” Abe fumed, “so whatta you do with them—cut ’em up and put ’em in the freezer?”
Angela Sterling, née Helen Brown, in the Oak Cliff section of Amarillo, Texas; age fourteen, cute-as-a-button drum majorette at James Bowie High; age sixteen, voted Most Beautiful Girl in the Senior Class; age seventeen, Miss Texas; and later that same year, in Atlantic City, she received the uniquely fun-laurels of Miss America.
And now she was twenty-four, veteran trooper of the silver screen and highest paid thesp in the history of cinema. But, here, the crux: although she had appeared in seventeen pictures, starring in the last twelve, not only had she never been nominated for any award, she had scarcely received a single decent notice. Granted, one of two kindly reviewers would occasionally refer to a “certain natural ability”—comparing her in this, and other (“natural”) regards, to the late Marilyn Monroe—but her only real accolades came in the form of several thousand fan letters a week . . . exclusively in the language of the adolescent, the moron, and the sex-nut. Thus, to Angela Sterling, at this critical point in her life and career, the prospect of working with the King B. Boris was salvation itself.
“Tell you what, Angie,” big Sid cautioned, “let’s just keep this on the q.t. for the time being, okay? That way, the studio, Lynx, Les Harrison . . . they don’t know, they don’t worry—when the time is ripe, we spring it—you know, with a lot of classy PR, the real thing. Okay?”
“Sure thing,” gushed Angie, and beamed from one to the other, “whatever you say.”
TWO
The Magic of the Lens
1
T HE SPIRES, TOWERS, turrets, and snow-capped peaks which compose the storybook skyline of Vaduz, Liechtenstein, also belie its essential fifteenth-century character. Heidi-time . . . Heidi-time in Heidiville. The nearest town of consequence is Zurich, seventy miles to the west—seventy miles, that is, as the 707 flies, except there are no airports in Liechtenstein, so that the trip from Zurich to Vaduz, meandering over mountain passes by train and bus, takes three hours. Therefore the first order of business on the part of Krassman Enterprises, Ltd., was to build an airstrip. This was accomplished by capable Production Manager Morty Kanowitz and his advance unit, who bribed and otherwise cajoled a local construction firm into working round the clock, in all weathers, to complete a 3,000-foot asphalt airstrip in forty eight hours.
“How ’bout that?” said Sid, not without a trace of pride, as their chartered twin-Cessna touched down smoothly on the virgin strip. “Old Morty’s right on the ball, huh?” Saying this with a nudge and wink at B., to suggest that it was, in truth, he, Sid Krassman who was on the ball in having accomplished this
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