Writing a Life

By Joel Rogosin

In Writing a Life - part drama, part sitcom - veteran Hollywood writer-producer Joel Rogosin guides us through a highly entertaining memoir, a touching love story, an engaging family history, and an intimate journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 6, 2004
• ISBN: 9781477164136

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Copyright © 2006 by Joel Rogosin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

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from the copyright owner.

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19887

CONTENTS

MENSCHES, MAVENS, AND MENTORS …

a kind of introduction

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

LET’S HEAR IT FOR DRUGS

DOCTOR STRANGE LOVE

MUSIC MEN

THE JERRY LEWIS SYNDROME

OPENING NIGHT

THE MAGICAL VOICE MAN

A LINCOLN MEMORY

THE LION ROARS

SHE WAS ALWAYS MAGGIE

MOTHER

THE STRIPPER

AND THE UNIVERSE

PUTTING THE SHOW

IN SHOW BUSINESS

MINDING THE STORE

MISHPOCHEH

AND MISHEGOSS

ROSES BY OTHER NAMES

THE SEX LIFE OF HAPPY JOE

MY MEETING WITH BARNABY

BRADFORD BOOK-BUG

CHERRIES, BEETS,

TOMATOES, AND TIME

ANOTHER MAN’S POISON

MASTER OF THE HOUSE

THE WOMAN

WHO NAMED EGGS

IT’S ONLY ME,

FRITZ-THE-CARPENTER

SHOW AND TELL

IN THE DESERT

WARNING: BEWARE OF MOGULS

BOOTLEGGING MADE EASY

THE BUS RIDE TO YESTERDAY

FORTY-NINE AND COUNTING

THE EYES HAVE IT

THE LONG WAY HOME

PARTY ANIMALS

AND SECRETS OF

THE BLACK TOWER

THE X FACTOR

MOON OVER MIAMI, ET AL.

HOW TO STAY TOGETHER

WITHOUT KILLING

EACH OTHER

IF IT’S TUESDAY,

WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?

LEO JACOBY AND THE

INDIAN MAIDEN TELL ALL

SORRY, BUT MY DANCE CARD IS FULL

JUST CARS

SHACKING UP IN STYLE

EIGHT THE HARD WAY

ADVENTURE IN

COEUR D’ALENE

MY FATHER’S AFFAIR

WITH THE WALL

(No Dogs, No Cellos)

SKI BUMS

GOD’LL GET YOU FOR THAT

GUESS WHO’S COMING

TO BREAKFAST, LUNCH,

AND DINNER

RETAKES, OUTTAKES,

AND DOUBLE TAKES

MY JOURNEY INTO LEMONS

NIGHT CRAWLERS

DEBORAH’S IN THE TREES

G FOR GINA

THE COPRA KING

DO THE WRITE THING

MAVERICK MEETS

ROSEMARY’S BABY

AND CYRANO

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

NORM KAPLAN’S CHRISTMAS

THESE GENES ARE

MADE FOR WALKIN’

LIGHTS OUT

LISTEN, IT’S YOUR CHILDHOOD CALLING

AFTER WORDS

WRITING/PRODUCING

CREDITS

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

for

my mother and father

`

Deborah

`

Melissa, Robin, and Susan

I’m going to tell you things you never knew. I’ve—got—secrets!

—William Goldman in Adventures in the Screen Trade

"Möbius strip—a continuous, one-sided surface formed by twisting one end of a rectangular strip … and attaching this end to the other."

—Random House Dictionary of the English Language

WITHIN THESE PAGES I’ve acknowledged practically

everyone in my life, but I’d like to specially thank Harry

Longstreet for the cover photo and Caryne Brown

for her invaluable editorial assistance.

WRITING

A LIFE

missing image file

MENSCHES, MAVENS, AND MENTORS …

a kind of introduction

I REMEMBER EARLY, first-grade mornings, standing all bundled up in snowy lines watching my breath puffs, waiting for the school bell to ring, and planting seeds in Dixie cups on windowsills when Spring came. Between the fifth and the tenth grades, I had three distinct boyhood crushes, I dropped out, I went to boarding school, I dropped back in, and Richard Brady tried to kick the crap out of me. It might have been because of Audrey Charlesworth, but who can tell after so long. I did like her, and once I gave her a phony silver bracelet I’d sent away for with a Bon-Ami coupon from a magazine ad. I was teased mercilessly about that, and I tried to deny it, but it was no use. Apparently, everyone in school had seen the advertisement. In no time at all, Audrey removed the offensive object from her graceful wrist, and once more bestowed her favors elsewhere.

Somewhere in the midst of junior high (middle school), was the dark, beauteous, unobtainable (I was skinny, with thick glasses and a wandering left eye) Anita Robinson. And winsome Zelda Wildman, who I did go out with—once—but more of that later. On one occasion I remember the teacher encouraging everyone to perform for the class. I stood there in front of the blackboard, boldly singing what might have been Sweet Rosie O’Grady, from a contemporary movie (The Dolly Sisters—1945—with Betty Grable, John Payne and June Haver?!) I would have even hazarded a soft-shoe routine, if I’d known how—that’s how misguidedly confident and enterprising I was. Perhaps because Anita or Zelda was there. Again, I can’t be sure. But I know I would have sung and danced my heart out for either one of them.

When my teacher asked me to sing a version of the 23rd Psalm at an assembly (prompted, no doubt, by my exemplary classroom performance), I wrote out the words on 3x5 cards. They were blue, I remember, but from the first I was uneasy about the whole undertaking. And, as it turned out, with good reason. I got off to a pretty fair start—The Lord Is My shepherd / No Want shall I Know / He Leadeth My Path Where / The still Waters Flo-ow … .

Then I dropped the cards, and while the teacher vamped at the piano I scrambled to pick them up. But I couldn’t get them back in order, and for all I know everyone is still staring at me and I’m still standing there, dying of embarrassment.

one of the reasons I remember the fifth grade is that we moved from Arlington, Mass. to Arlington, Virginia when I was in the middle of that year. My Dad had just left private law practice in Boston for a position as an Administrative Law Judge with the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. He always referred to it as The Board as if it were a person: The Board wants me to hear this and such a case … (One of his most important early assignments involved the west coast longshoreman’s union and its—some might say notorious—leader, Harry Bridges.) If I’d been in high school, or even junior high, I don’t think my parents would have interrupted a school year, but in the fifth grade who cares. They must have been right, because I don’t remember anything about the fifth grade in Massachusetts—except the name Locke School—only the latter part of it I spent in Virginia at Patrick Henry Grammar School. Clearly, we had crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.

Another thing I remember is how my father showed up one day in the early afternoon, standing in the doorway of my classroom in his topcoat. The teacher went to him and they talked for a moment, and then she motioned me to join him. My father took my hand and led me outside, and we walked along with him holding my hand and I saw him crying softly. I had no idea what was going on and I was upset to see my father crying like that. Finally, I asked what was wrong and he said, Abby died. He pronounced it Ah-bee and I didn’t know whom he was talking about.

I thought he might mean his cousin Henry, who was sometimes called Saxie because he used to play the saxophone, and who I’d heard referred to as Ah-bee once or twice because Henry was his middle name and Abraham his first. I was wrong. It was my father’s older brother Abe who had died, unexpectedly of a heart attack at forty-two. It was a very sad time, and I know my father never got over it.

Abe’s children, Terry and Hank (they were Esther Maxine and Henry David when we were young), are two close cousins and we love them dearly. My father always felt obliged to be a surrogate for his brother Abe, and I’m sure he wanted to do more for them than he could. Somewhere we have pictures of my uncle, looking fit and athletic. In one, he’s gripping a lamppost halfway up, with one foot touching and the other arm and leg outstretched, an impressive feat of strength and agility, I thought. As a kid, I was very proud of him in that picture.

Hank and Terry each married terrific people. Hank’s wife, Leslie, is warm, earthy and energetic. Terry’s husband, Duke, a trade-show producer, is steady, dependable, and affectionate. We’ve stayed at each of their homes on occasion and had fun together, and once, when they stopped at our house in Woodland Hills on the way to Hawaii, Terry and Duke took our dirty laundry on their vacation with them by mistake.

Are you still with me … ? The other thing I recall about the fifth grade was my teacher, Miss Weeks. She was, beyond all reason, my first mentor. I’m not sure why. Once, long after Deb and I were married, when our kids were small, I was cleaning out the garage yet one more time and I came across a report card from the fifth grade. Miss Weeks’ handwriting on the back was faded but still legible. She had written, firmly, Joel is disruptive in class.

And I was. Disruptive, loud and clever, or so I thought, attempting to compensate no doubt for my skinniness, my wandering left eye and thick glasses. I guess my appearance gave Richard Brady the idea that he could kick the crap out of me with impunity, but he was dead wrong. I remember asking someone to hold my glasses (maybe it was Audrey Charlesworth) while Richard and I wrestled in the hallway outside the classroom. I know I was kicking the crap out of him when somebody (maybe it was Miss Weeks) broke us apart and reprimanded us soundly.

Regardless, Miss Weeks recommended me as a school patrol, and for the rest of the year I wore a white canvas belt and shoulder strap with a silvery badge and stopped traffic while schoolmates crossed the street. It was a big deal then, much more important than being an adult crossing guard today, which is laudable but which has no cachet.

It’s funny which teachers we remember and which ones are long forgotten. My first grade teacher was Miss Johnson, and in the second grade I had a teacher whose unfortunate name was Miss Hoare. I recall her not because of her name, because in the second grade who knows from hookers, but because she was very annoyed with me when I refused to write the capital letter G in the particular configuration of the Palmer Method. I was convinced it should just look like a small g only bigger, demonstrating logic beyond my years, but she never bought it.

Somewhat later I had a writing assignment which produced: The tea pot bubbled on the stove like a fat man doing a tap-dance. My teacher said one of my parents must have composed it. She and Miss Hoare, I’m sure, were responsible for my later writing with an absence of simile, and a minimum of Gs.

on the corner a few doors down from us, when I attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High, in a house that looked like ours but was a single-family instead of a duplex, lived Captain and Mrs. Harris, Madeline. I always called him Captain. He was in the Navy—most of our neighbors were either in the military or with the government—and he had a badminton court on his front lawn, which was much bigger than our postage-stamp patch and actually green. I was still skinny and near-sighted, and I was not athletic except for catch and two-hands-below-the-belt touch football, but somehow I could play badminton. The Harrises were childless and friendly, and when he was home Captain Harris used to come over and ask my mother if I could come out to play.

Once he took me along when he visited a friend’s small farm, and he showed me how to pump water from a well, which was a revelation.

One of the kids on the block was shy, awkward Steve Halperin. Twenty years later I caught up with him at Universal, where we recognized each other across a table in the studio commissary! Now he was tall, good-looking and poised. I think he was a production assistant at the time; he became a producer and later an insurance executive. What a coincidence, after twenty years and three thousand miles.

When I was away at boarding school in Tucson later, roly-poly look-alikes Mr. and Mrs. Breslau and my teachers, gentleman cowboy C.P. Wynn, lanky Mel Moore, and tiny Miss Himmy—and Mr. Brandes, who ran the place—all seemed to take a special interest in me and encouraged me. So did Bob Harris (the name is one of many coincidences in my life—or were they?), who owned the nearby stable and rode with us twice a week. I guess in Tucson I was only marginally disruptive. When I left for home after fourteen months, Bob gave me a business card. On the back of it he’d scrawled Joel Rogosin—I spelled my name for him—can ride anything that’s been broke. I cherished that card for years.

My father visited me once in Tucson, and I persuaded him to go riding with me so I could show off my newly acquired horsemanship. He was miserable, on an old, semiretired steed named Sir Harry, assigned to all beginning riders. I recall our ride was short-lived, as my father struggled to remain upright in the saddle and maintain his dignity.

When I was producing The Virginian, we filmed locations at the old Iverson and Albertson ranches, on either side of the 101 freeway near Agoura Hills, California; that’s been Westlake Village for some time now, since they dredged out a big chunk of it for upscale houses, shopping centers and the picturesque lake. I’d get there early in the morning with the crew, and stamping at the cold we’d wait in line for the scrumptious bacon and egg sandwiches the caterer fried up in his truck. Then one of the wranglers would nod to a spare horse, and I’d ride out alone through the fragrant, shimmering fog, enjoying the solitude and thinking of Bob Harris and the special privately-owned-not-stable horses he’d let me ride when he knew that I could, and about that time when he gave me his business card.

one weekend I went riding with my actor buddies Herb Edelman and Louise Sorel. Like a tenderfoot—Bob Harris’s patience would have been sorely challenged—I galloped downhill to the barn, and the horse threw me. I was dragged quite far before I let go of the reins, and later at home I struggled into bed, virtually paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, when the stiffness allowed me to move a little, I drove to the hospital in considerable discomfort. The doctors in the emergency room were pretty impressed with my embarrassing purple condition—a massive hematoma from the proverbial guggle to the zatch—and they called everyone in to look. Attendants, other doctors, staff people, nurses—even, to my further annoyance, a couple of patients—gathered around me, the men pointing and smirking, the young nurses giggling. I thought the nurses were the most obnoxious.

At Falls Church High School, my fastidious English teacher Mrs. Miles, bearish Mr. Michou (history), stocky Mr. Barrett (chemistry) and bird-like Miss Hurt (drama) were extraordinarily kind to me. Earlier, at Washington-Lee High (Shirley MacLaine and her brother Warren Beatty were there, but I didn’t know them), I sang in the school choir, which had an excellent reputation, traveled occasionally, and won many regional competitions. Florence Booker (Miss Bee) was the wonderfully warm and attentive choir director. Everyone adored her. On her recommendation, I was elected treasurer and later vice-president of the choir, and one summer she sponsored me for a scholarship to music camp. She also encouraged me to try out for The Madrigals, the choir’s prestigious small group. She gave me acceptance and approval,and wrote in my yearbook, Love to a sophomore who has won the respect of everyone … She made me feel important. When we went back to Virginia for my 25th high school reunion, Deborah located Miss Booker, long since retired, for me. On the phone she said she remembered me, and I had a chance, at last, to thank her. (Recordings were made of our Christmas concerts. I think they cost $10. I wanted one badly, but never asked my folks for the money. I’m still trying to track down one of those old records.)

Another high school teacher, Bill Snodgrass, took me under his wing and challenged me, intellectually and spiritually. He also wrote a warm message in my yearbook, almost a full page, and gave me cuff links when I graduated.

The imposing Señor Maggipinto, who taught freshman Spanish at Stanford and threw erasers at us when we made a mistake at the blackboard (he made us work on the blackboard, like grammar school kids, I think to mellow us), leaving white splotches all over most of the class, was a memorable influence. And steely-eyed Margery Bailey, the premier teacher of Shakespeare, finally gave me a coveted A in her class. I remember her crisp manner, her efficient bun-in-the-back hairstyle, and sensible black shoes.

In the theatre and drama department, sedate Doctor Norman Philbrick was a mentor and sent us a wedding present; soft-spoken Professor Wendell Cole, who designed and directed The Climate of Eden, invited me to be his assistant director, even though I was always late to his 8 a.m. Introduction to Film class (on at least one occasion, he locked me out—at adjacent urinals in the men’s room later, I explained, truthfully, that a progression of elephants, trunk to tail, unloading from a circus train, had impeded my progress to class, and I believe that caused the meticulous Professor Cole, startled by my latest revelation, to nearly wet himself); youthful Bob Loper saved my ass when his boss, the pompous head of the department with whom I’d had a run-in, wanted to throw me out of school; rumpled, lively F. Cowles Strickland validated me, gave me the choice of directing an original Little Theatre production or having my own (first) play produced, and invited me to live with his family for part of the school year, a singular honor, which Ireluctantly declined. I thought living there would interfere with my progress as I courted Deborah. It was a talented classmate, Doug Cooke, who ultimately moved in with the Stricklands.

Strick gave his students advice about acting and directing professionally, which I’ve never forgotten. If you can see yourself doing something else, he’d say, do it. If you can let yourself be discouraged, you didn’t want it badly enough. The rumor was that he was refused tenure at Stanford because at the time he was still unpublished. So much for inspired teaching!

Years later, my brother Roy told me that he’d met Strick’s widow when she attended a production at Roy’s theatre in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He said she’d recognized the name Rogosin. I doubt if she remembered me after so long a time, but it made me think again about the Mobius strip that life becomes.

At Stanford, an artist in residence, the English actor Patrick Wymark, taught us Elizabethan dances—I acted with him in Mary of Scotland, playing Lord Burleigh—and Marian Seldes, whose father, Gilbert, wrote at least one of our textbooks, played Iphigenia in Taurus and showed us what acting was all about.

During my junior year I worked part time with bleached-like-Lucy, fun-loving Ethel Tripidi in John and Audrey Garsimovich’s local drugstore. Ethel and her adoring husband Lou had no children, they had plenty of room, and they needed someone to look after their dogs when they took time off. So I moved in with them for a short while after my folks moved to Beverly Hills, abandoning me in my sophomore college year, and we had a ball.

Lou was a butcher, and the first time he asked me what I’d like for dinner, I said steak smothered in lamb chops, and that’s what we had. once when Ethel was trying out a new recipe using a pressure cooker, it exploded all over the kitchen, and we laughed till we cried as we cleaned up the mess. We invited the Tripidis to our wedding, but, regrettably, they never replied. Perhaps they were annoyed with me for moving out, just after they bought a new house with a room they said was for me.

Richard Learman was one of my good friends in college. So was David Penhallow, whose family has a street named for them in Portsmouth near Roy’s theatre, although they’re from Hawaii—onetime seafarers, I guess. What a surprise it was when I spotted it. We were also close to Judith Judy Doty, who played leading roles in college productions and was a bridesmaid at our wedding. Later she worked in Hollywood as an actress and drama coach. Al Gibson was my best man and became Melissa’s godfather. Richard and David were my ushers. (That sounds so formal; we had a small wedding in a converted Quonset hut before Rabbi Rosen got his beautiful temple built in Burlingame.) Al went through Stanford on a scholarship from the Walnut Creek Mothers Club. He was apparently the only applicant! He lived with a maiden aunt and her companion in the hills above the campus, and drove around in an old limo with a big yellow dog slumbering inside. Richard’s parents, Frank and Esther, befriended us after we got married, during my last year in college. And when Melissa was born in San Francisco later, we drove down to Palo Alto and stayed at the Learmans’ on New Year’s Eve. It was our first daughter’s first slumber party. She was a month old.

Frank Learman was an engineer who’d been able to retire at fifty-two. He was a role model and a benefactor. He gave me some valuable pointers on what do with my life, challenging me with questions. And he loaned us the down payment on our first house in L.A.—$1,750. (It simply didn’t occur to me to ask my folks; I knew Frank had it.) We saved up so we could pay him back within six months, and sent him a case of Scotch when he refused to accept interest. For a while after Richard moved to L.A. we saw a good deal of him. But unfortunately, as time passed, we lost touch. Alice Middlekauff (Gabrielle James) was another pal, and became a successful script supervisor on Cheers and Frasier.

In my professional life, socialite Martha Bigelow Elliot (her husband ran American President Lines) hired me fresh out of college to act in her theatre company (Alice, too), the San Francisco Players Guild, and made me the assistant managing director (if Deborah and I had stayed in the Bay Area she was going to turn the company over to me); in L.A., kind and gentle Gene Arnstein, a friend and colleague of my father’s, got me started as an assistant theatre manager when I was desperate for a job; enigmatic development executive Jack Emanuel pulled me out of the story department at Warner Bros. and made me his assistant at NBC, but first he mistook me for another story analyst, Don Tait, whom he hired and fired at the same time; ubiquitous and generous Howie Horwitz and his wife Harriet befriended us, became Susan’s godparents, and Howie made me a producer at Warner Bros.; Senior VP Jennings Lang protected my tenure at Universal when my job was threatened, and supported my career in other subtle ways, and dynamic talent executive Monique James was an ally. I think Katharine Ross (Butch Cassidy …) was one of her claims to fame, and Carrie Snodgress (Diary of a Mad Housewife). When she left Universal, Monique managed Sharon Gless (Cagney & Lacey) for a time.

Deborah’s always said that the reason I’m self-centered is that my mother loved me too much. Maybe she’s right. Maybe my mother loved me enough to give me confidence when I needed it, and a sense of humor to bolster my confidence when it faltered. Maybe I did feel important sometimes, and special sometimes, because my mother loved me.

or maybe there were just certain people who recognized in me something salvageable, or who saw through my bluff and bluster to something inside that needed support and guidance.

I guess Deborah must have sensed something, because, thank God, she married me.

missing image file

we’re engaged

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

I REMEMBER HORSE-DRAWN wagons—the junkman, the iceman, the man with vegetables—and the calling voices on Hansborough Street in the Mattapan section of Boston where my grandmother lived on the middle floor of a triplex with my aunt and uncle. The knife-and-scissors grinder pushed his wheel like a barrow down the street, and later there was a man with a truck that had a small carousel on the back. A peddler sold decorative pot holders door-to-door—I make-a-dem myself—ice cream cones were a nickel, with jimmy (chocolate sprinkles) a penny more, and movies were fourteen cents—short subjects, cartoons, serials, news of the world and a double feature—plus a dime for candy and five cents each way for the streetcar.

I was heavily into reminiscing one day as I worked in the yard, struggling with Bermuda grass, and recalling the invasive rice plants that grew in front of the Hollywood bungalow my wife Deborah and I shared with our firstborn daughter, Melissa. Sometimes the peanut fairy brought out treats from her closet at bedtime, there were fig trees in the backyard, and their fragrance drifted through the open bedroom door when we conceived our second daughter, Robin.

My daydream was interrupted when our good friends, Peter Mark and Helen Richman, dropped by on their way home from a weekend in Santa Barbara. Peter Mark, a noted actor, artist and playwright, began talking about the new publishing experience he’d recently encountered—something with computers called Xlibris—a way for him to produce his long-delayed novel on the Internet. I tried to appear interested.

I’m an agnostic regarding computers. I’ve done a little word processing and played solitaire, but basically I’m burdened by what my beloved brother Roy calls the who cares test, as in does whatever it is pass it. Concepts like downloading, chat room, hacking, networking, floppy disk, cyberspace and hard drive I find deeply disturbing. And so as Peter Mark tried to explain the miracle and intricacies of electronic publishing, I found myself tuning out, reflecting on the yard work, the simple pleasure of attacking the rice plants and Bermuda grass, the satisfaction of the direct, tactile, sensual experience, and the sense memories it prompted.

My wife Deborah is legally blind, and computers have been a godsend for her—magnifying things, scanning things, and reading aloud. I’m very grateful for that. And I acknowledge that they provide valuable information highways for students, teachers, researchers and business people. But they do not engage me, and it’s not a generational thing because my chums Joe and Renee and Harry, and practically everyone else I know, are dedicated and evangelical.

Me? I steer clear of e-Bay. I relish the experience of shopping in mom and pop stores, and having lunch at B&G’s Café in downtown oxnard and chatting with Bill and Gloria, who’ve run the place for 29 years and have it up for sale but are holding out for just the right buyer to carry on their family tradition, and who still greet almost everyone by name just as in Cheers, and where they automatically bring you the usual. At the bank, Sonya says, Hi, Mister Rogosin, and so do people like Holly at the supermarket where Gil, another one of the checkers, is retiring after 35 years and has hand lettered a sign near his checkout stand: I’m Gil and I’ve been here since 1964, before some of you were born, and I’m retiring tomorrow. Good-bye.

My wife and I argue about computers, She says things like If you only tried … or If you’d just let me … And I hear the Bermuda grass urgently calling. Does it make me a bad person? Am I just intellectually lazy? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I find computers—computerism—insidious, impersonal, unreliable, sterile, and perhaps immoral. Deborah signed me up with a Yahoo (give me a break!) password, but I can’t (won’t) remember it. And I don’t have to