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Authors: Joe Eszterhas
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screenwriter, brought his wife, Estelle, and their six-year-old little girl to Hollywood. They rented a house in the Palisades. Estelle didn’t know that he’d been having an affair with a young secretary for years.
He wanted his secretary to meet Estelle so she could see that Estelle was no threat to his affection for her. The secretary met Estelle at a party and thought her “pale, sad, wasted—not an interesting person.”
“Billy,” Estelle said to the secretary, “is going to teach me to write.” Estelle told her that she was going to become a writer like Zelda Fitzgerald.
At the end of the evening, Estelle said to the secretary, “I hope that you and I will see a lot of each other and become good friends.”
From Harlow to Marilyn to Sharon Stone
.
A literary tradition for which I did my
bit
. The pen is mightier than the director’s sword. It’s important to observe that Wolfe and Miller and I … what the hell, throw in Paddy and Kim Novak, too, although Novak really doesn’t belong in that company … it’s important to observe that Wolfe and Miller and Paddy and I … all used
manual
typewriters.
Screenwriters today don’t use manual typewriters anymore, they use laptops which they display to other screenwriters while comparing notes about writer’s block at the Rose Café in Venice or at the Farmers Market in L.A.
They don’t use
manual
typewriters and they expose their
laptops
to each other—one reason, I think, why this joke is paradigm for today’s screenwriters: “Did you hear about the Polish starlet who slept with the screenwriter to get the part?”
A final note about Marilyn which I consider relevant: Cleveland, my hometown, isn’t just a place of steel mills and boilermakers. It was home for many years to one of the greatest bar joints in America, the Theatrical Grill, run by a gangster/philosopher named Mushy Wexler.
One night Marilyn Monroe walked in. She was in town on a press tour. She wound up sitting with Mushy, who introduced her to that limp string of spaghetti, sitting by himself in the corner, Arthur Miller, in town for a lecture at the library.
The Theatrical was also loved by Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, who got fantastically drunk there the night the Cleveland Indians stopped his 56-game hitting streak at Municipal Stadium.
The point, obviously, is this: all roads lead not only to Hollywood, not only to sex, but to Cleveland.
Marilyn did
not
leave with Arthur Miller that night at the Theatrical, according to my Hungarian friend Shondor Birns, who was the resident Casanova of the Theatrical Grill in those days and who was an even bigger poobah racketeer than Mushy Wexler.
Shon was Cleveland’s numbers king before the arrival of Don King, who went on to become the infamous boxing manager and promoter. Shon spent a lot of time in jail but whenever he was out, he was back in his green Cadillac, wearing his Italian sharkskin suits, his fedora, and his sunglasses, back hustling the buxom wannabe gun molls at the Theatrical.
According to my friend Shondor Birns,
he
was there the night Marilyn Monroe had drinks with Mushy and another gambler named Fuzzy Lakis when that pointy-headed writer Arthur or Arnold something came over to the table at Mushy’s invitation.
But according to Shon, Arthur or Arnold or whatever was introduced and then left and it was
he
, Shon, who took Marilyn Monroe back to her suite at the Hollenden Hotel and spent the night with her.
According to Shon, Marilyn Monroe had skin so pearly white that at a certain moment in the evening he could see all of her veins right through her skin.
Shondor Birns swore to me that all this was true, swore to it till the day he died, his green Cadillac blown to smithereens all over West 25th Street, only a few blocks from where on Lorain Avenue I had grown up.
XVII
Bill Faulkner, screenwriter, woke up one morning at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood screaming: “Oh, Lordy! Oh, Jesus! They’re coming at me!
He wanted his secretary to meet Estelle so she could see that Estelle was no threat to his affection for her. The secretary met Estelle at a party and thought her “pale, sad, wasted—not an interesting person.”
“Billy,” Estelle said to the secretary, “is going to teach me to write.” Estelle told her that she was going to become a writer like Zelda Fitzgerald.
At the end of the evening, Estelle said to the secretary, “I hope that you and I will see a lot of each other and become good friends.”
From Harlow to Marilyn to Sharon Stone
.
A literary tradition for which I did my
bit
. The pen is mightier than the director’s sword. It’s important to observe that Wolfe and Miller and I … what the hell, throw in Paddy and Kim Novak, too, although Novak really doesn’t belong in that company … it’s important to observe that Wolfe and Miller and Paddy and I … all used
manual
typewriters.
Screenwriters today don’t use manual typewriters anymore, they use laptops which they display to other screenwriters while comparing notes about writer’s block at the Rose Café in Venice or at the Farmers Market in L.A.
They don’t use
manual
typewriters and they expose their
laptops
to each other—one reason, I think, why this joke is paradigm for today’s screenwriters: “Did you hear about the Polish starlet who slept with the screenwriter to get the part?”
A final note about Marilyn which I consider relevant: Cleveland, my hometown, isn’t just a place of steel mills and boilermakers. It was home for many years to one of the greatest bar joints in America, the Theatrical Grill, run by a gangster/philosopher named Mushy Wexler.
One night Marilyn Monroe walked in. She was in town on a press tour. She wound up sitting with Mushy, who introduced her to that limp string of spaghetti, sitting by himself in the corner, Arthur Miller, in town for a lecture at the library.
The Theatrical was also loved by Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, who got fantastically drunk there the night the Cleveland Indians stopped his 56-game hitting streak at Municipal Stadium.
The point, obviously, is this: all roads lead not only to Hollywood, not only to sex, but to Cleveland.
Marilyn did
not
leave with Arthur Miller that night at the Theatrical, according to my Hungarian friend Shondor Birns, who was the resident Casanova of the Theatrical Grill in those days and who was an even bigger poobah racketeer than Mushy Wexler.
Shon was Cleveland’s numbers king before the arrival of Don King, who went on to become the infamous boxing manager and promoter. Shon spent a lot of time in jail but whenever he was out, he was back in his green Cadillac, wearing his Italian sharkskin suits, his fedora, and his sunglasses, back hustling the buxom wannabe gun molls at the Theatrical.
According to my friend Shondor Birns,
he
was there the night Marilyn Monroe had drinks with Mushy and another gambler named Fuzzy Lakis when that pointy-headed writer Arthur or Arnold something came over to the table at Mushy’s invitation.
But according to Shon, Arthur or Arnold or whatever was introduced and then left and it was
he
, Shon, who took Marilyn Monroe back to her suite at the Hollenden Hotel and spent the night with her.
According to Shon, Marilyn Monroe had skin so pearly white that at a certain moment in the evening he could see all of her veins right through her skin.
Shondor Birns swore to me that all this was true, swore to it till the day he died, his green Cadillac blown to smithereens all over West 25th Street, only a few blocks from where on Lorain Avenue I had grown up.
XVII
Bill Faulkner, screenwriter, woke up one morning at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood screaming: “Oh, Lordy! Oh, Jesus! They’re coming at me!
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