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‘Did you talk to Mr. Brent?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We’re making a deal.’
I smiled. My first song was going to be published.
The next evening, Brent came to see me at the Bismarck checkroom.
‘Is everything set?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But—’
‘Heidt is asking for a five-thousand-dollar advance, and we never give that much on a new song.’
I was stunned. When I finished work, I drove back to the Drake Hotel to see Horace Heidt again.
‘Mr. Heidt, I don’t care about the advance,’ I told him. ‘I just want to get my first song published.’
‘We’re going to get it published,’ he assured me. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m going to publish it myself. I’m leaving for New York next week. The song will get a lot of airtime.’
Besides his nightly broadcast, Horace Heidt hosted a popular weekly show called Horace Heidt and his Alemite Brigadiers.
‘My Silent Self’ would be broadcast from New York, and be heard often all over the country.
During the next few weeks I managed to listen to Horace’s broadcasts, and he was right. ‘My Silent Self’ did get a lot of airtime, both on his nightly broadcasts and on the Alemite program. He used my song, but he never had it published.
I was not discouraged. If I could write one song that a major publisher wanted, I could write a dozen. And that is exactly what I did. I spent all my spare time at the piano, composing songs. I felt that twelve songs would be a good number to mail to New York. I could not afford to go to New York in person because I needed to keep my jobs, to help the family.
Natalie would listen to my songs and be beside herself with excitement.
‘Darling, they’re better than Irving Berlin’s. Much better. When are you going to take them to New York?’
I shook my head. ‘Natalie, I can’t go to New York. I have three jobs here. If I—’
‘You have to go,’ she said firmly. ‘They’re not even going to listen to songs that come in the mail. You have to go, personally.’
‘We can’t afford it,’ I said. ‘If—’
‘Darling, this is your big chance. You can’t afford not to take it.’
I had no idea that she was living vicariously through me.
We had a family discussion that night. Otto finally reluctantly agreed that I should go to New York. I would get a job there until my songs started selling.
We decided I would leave the following Saturday.
Natalie’s parting gift was a ticket to New York on a Greyhound bus.
As Richard and I lay in our beds that night, he said to me, ‘Are you really going to be as big a songwriter as Irving Berlin?’
And I told him the truth. ‘Yes.’
With all the money that would be pouring in, Natalie would never have to work again.
SEVEN (#ulink_a7e185d8-407c-50cb-a4fb-2d0ca683c9c0)
I had never been inside a bus depot before my trip to New York in 1936. The Greyhound bus station had an air of excitement, with people going to and coming from cities all over the country. My bus seemed huge, with a washroom and comfortable seats. It was a four and a half day trip to New York. The long ride would have been tedious, but I was too busy dreaming about my fantastic future to mind.
When we pulled into the bus station in New York, I had thirty dollars in my pocket—money that I was sure Natalie and Otto could not spare.
I had telephoned ahead to the YMCA to reserve a room. It turned out to be small and drab, but it was only four dollars a week. Even so, I knew that the thirty dollars was not going to last very long.
I asked to see the manager of the YMCA.
‘I need a job,’ I told him, ‘and I need it right away. Do you know anyone who—?’
‘We have an employment service for our guests,’ he informed me.
‘Great. Is there anything available now?’
He reached for a sheet of paper behind the desk and scanned it. ‘There’s an opening for an usher at the RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street. Are you interested?’
Interested? At that moment my sole ambition in life was to be an usher at the RKO Jefferson on Fourteenth Street. ‘That’s just what I was looking for!’ I told him.
The manager wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘Take this to the theater in the morning.’
I had been in New York for less than one day and I already had a job. I phoned Natalie and Otto to tell them the news.
‘That’s a good omen,’ Natalie said. ‘You’re going to be a big success.’
I spent the first afternoon and evening exploring New York. It was a magical place, a bustling city that made Chicago seem provincial and drab. Everything was larger—the buildings, the marquees, the streets, the signs, the traffic, the crowds. My career.
The RKO Jefferson Theater on Fourteenth Street, once a vaudeville house, was an old, two-story structure with a cashier’s booth in front. It was part of a chain of RKO theaters. Double features were common—patrons could see two movies back to back, for the price of one.
I walked thirty-nine blocks from the YMCA to the theater and handed the note I had been given to the theater manager.
He looked me over and said, ‘Have you ever ushered before?’
‘No, sir.’
He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you walk?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you know how to turn on a flashlight?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then you can usher. Your salary is $14.40 a week. You’ll work six days. Your hours are from four-twenty to midnight.’
‘That’s fine.’ It meant that I was free to have the whole morning and part of the afternoon to spend at the Brill Building, where the headquarters of the music business was.
‘Go into the staff changing room and see if you can find a uniform that fits you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I tried on an usher’s uniform and the manager looked at me and said, ‘That’s fine. Be sure to keep an eye on the balcony.’
‘The balcony?’
‘You’ll see. You’ll start tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir.’ And tomorrow I will begin my career as a songwriter.
The famous Brill Building was the holy of holies in the music business. Located at 1619 Broadway, at Forty-ninth Street, it was the center of Tin Pan Alley, where every important music publisher in the world was headquartered.
As I entered the building and wandered through the corridors, I heard the strains of ‘A Fine Romance,’ ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin,’ ‘Pennies from Heaven’…The names on the doors made my heart pound: Jerome Remick, Robbins Music Corporation, M. Witmark & Sons, Shapiro Bernstein & Company, and TB Harms—all the giants of the music industry. This was the fountainhead of musical talent. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern…They had all started here.
I walked into the TB Harms office and nodded to the man behind the desk. ‘Good morning. I’m Sidney Schech—Sheldon.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I wrote ‘‘My Silent Self.’’ You people were interested in publishing it.’
A look of recognition came over his face. ‘Oh, yes, we were.’
Were? ‘Aren’t you still?’
‘Well, it’s been on the air too much. Horace Heidt has been playing it a lot. Do you have anything new?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I can come back with some songs tomorrow morning, Mister…?’
‘Tasker.’
At four-twenty that afternoon I was in my usher’s uniform, escorting people down the aisle to their seats. The manager had been right. This was a job that anyone could do. The only thing that kept it from being boring was the movies that were playing. When things were slow, I could sit at the back of the theater and watch them.
The first double bill I saw there was A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The coming attractions were A Star is Born, with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and Dodsworth with Walter Huston.
At midnight, when my shift was over, I went back to my hotel. The room no longer looked small and dreary. I knew it was going to turn into a palace. In the morning I would take my songs to TB Harms, and the only question was which ones they would publish first—‘The Ghost of My Love,’ ‘I Will If I Want To,’ ‘A Handful of Stars,’ ‘When Love Has Gone’…
At eight-thirty the following morning I was standing in front of the TB Harms Publishing Company, waiting for the doors to open. At nine o’clock Mr. Tasker arrived.
He saw the large envelope in my hand. ‘I see you brought some songs.’
I grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’
We walked into his office. I handed the envelope to him and started to sit down.
He stopped me. ‘You don’t have to wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll look these over when I get a chance. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?’
I gave him my best professional songwriter’s nod. ‘Right.’ I would have to wait another twenty-four hours for my future to begin.
At four-twenty I was back in my uniform at the RKO Jefferson. The manager had been right about the balcony. There was a lot of giggling going on up there. A young man and woman were seated in the last row. As I started toward them he moved away from her and she hastily pulled down her short dress. I walked away and did not go upstairs again. To hell with the manager. Let them have their fun.
The following morning I was at the Harms office at eight o’clock, in case Mr. Tasker came in early. He arrived at nine and opened the door.
‘Good morning, Sheldon.’
I tried to judge from his tone whether he had liked my songs. Was it just a casual ‘good morning’ or did I detect a note of excitement in his voice?
We stepped inside the office.
‘Did you have a chance to listen to my songs, Mr. Tasker?’
He nodded. ‘They’re very nice.’
My face lit up. I waited to hear what else he was going to say. He was silent.
‘Which one did you like best?’ I prodded.
‘Unfortunately they’re not what we’re looking for just now.’
That was the most depressing sentence I had ever heard in my life.
‘But surely some of them—’ I began.
He reached behind his desk, took out my envelope and handed it to me. ‘I’ll always be glad to listen when you’ve got something new.’
And that was the end of the interview. But it’s not an end, I thought. It’s just the beginning.
I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon going around to the offices of the other publishers in the building.
‘Have you ever had a song published?’
‘No, sir, but I—’
‘We don’t take on new songwriters. Come back when you’ve had something published.’
How was I going to get a song published if publishers wouldn’t publish any of my songs until I had a song published? In the weeks that followed, when I was not at the theater I spent my time in my room, writing.
At the theater, I loved watching the wonderful movies we showed there. I saw The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, My Man Godfrey, and Shall We Dance? with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They transported me to another world, a world of glamour and excitement, elegance and wealth.
My money was running out. I received a check from Natalie for twenty dollars and I sent it back. I knew that without the additional income I had been earning, and Otto not working, life would be even more difficult for them. I wondered whether I was being selfish in thinking of myself when they needed help.
When my new batch of songs was ready, I took them to the same publishers. They looked at them, and gave me the same infuriating answer: ‘Come back when you’ve had something published.’
In one lobby, a wave of depression hit me. Everything seemed hopeless. I did not intend to spend my life as an usher, and no one was interested in my songs.
