my need for an immediate answer. He looked mischievous. “I’m not sure, Jakey. We’ll see what Mama says when we get home,” he said with a sly smile and a wink.
It wasn’t like my father to wink. He wasn’t a winking sort of a man.
“Papa!”
Reborn with hope and possibility, my mind danced. I started to ask him a question.
“Sha!” Papa held up his right hand to stop my onslaught. “Not another word until we get home.”
I bit my tongue and galloped to the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I reached our room, I was so wound up that I ran into the closed door and dropped my book. Questions that my excitement had kept at bay began to come to me, first in a trickle, than in a flood.
If I move to Hollywood, where will I eat? Where will I sleep? Inside the room, I spun around and around trying to remember where I stashed my suitcase. I noticed that my spinning quieted my questions, though just for an instant. The questions resurfaced, louder and more intrusive. Will they stare at me? Who will look after me? What if I get sick? What if I make a mistake? Will they yell at me? Will they laugh?
I spun faster and faster, whirling like some kind of a dervish, intoxicated on the divine. I crashed into the bedside table and sent the lamp flying. Moving so fast, fueled on excitement and the need to flee my reservations, I couldn’t stop or calm myself. I collapsed on the bed, breathless and uncertain about the promise of a future I never dreamed possible.
Even if I could have spun as fast as a Sufi and answered the torrent of all those questions with the wisdom of a gaon (a Talmudic Scholar considered a genius), I could not have foretold the hard knocks and danger that lay ahead, the least of which was Papa’s anger at me because of the lamp I had just destroyed.
CHAPTER 6
The Grand Parade
It was the scent of orange blossoms and coal dust that I remember most the instant Mama, Papa, and I got off the train in City of the Angels. If it hadn’t been for the distraction of those intoxicating smells, I was so claustrophobic I would have trampled the swarm of travelers that encircled me as we crept down the platform. Once finally inside the terminal, I recall one wall of the baggage claim area of Union Depot as being covered with a colorful mosaic, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Its shiny turquoise, gold, and scarlet tiles chronicled settlers of all sizes and shapes exploring and building the new world that was to become California.
I wondered what that new world had in store for me and I for it. I was determined to make the most of this golden opportunity to make my way in the world and make my parents proud of me. I wasn’t afraid of hard work, but what terrified me was not fitting in yet again. Looking back on it now, my plan was very simple: I would do what I was told to make it in movies. I was lucky it would work out so well, but I almost got myself killed. My experience in Hollywood would get me to see that being a man required much more than being a good boy.
I had been anxious ever since Mama had shocked me with her positive attitude, approval, and out-and-out insistence that I move to Hollywood and begin working in movies. In later years Mama would tell me how she didn’t sleep a wink or even eat after the phone conversation when Papa first broached the idea. As soon as she hung up the telephone that morning, she had run to the schul to seek Rabbi Roth’s sage counsel. Through her fear, tears, and once even uncharacteristically raising her voice to the rabbi in disagreement, she finally accepted—painful as it was for a worried mother—that the move to Los Angeles was about what was best for me, and not what was comfortable for her and Papa.
I stared out the window during the cab ride from the train station to the small boarding house where we would stay. At that time, Hollywood, which had once been a full day’s wagon ride from the center of town, was still a youthful and pristine community; a sweet suburb more than the city it would become.
I was fascinated but also worried. To me, everything felt new, different, and threatening. In retrospect, I know it was there that I played a part in the golden age of silent films, or as they would later call it in the history books, the “Grand Parade.” But back then I was a nervous wreck. I hated the fact that there was nothing I could do to prepare for whatever awaited me in my new career. I just had to wait.
To take my mind off of things, Mama, Papa, and I spent the next few days sightseeing. To be honest, touring the town didn’t help a bit. I was overwhelmed. If I could have, I would have camped out on the doorstep of Century Studios. Though I tried, I could not stop worrying about what was going to happen on my first day of work. It’s funny that it takes getting old or sick to appreciate each new moment for all it has to offer.
“Don’t concern yourself, son,” Papa had reassured me. “Those men who make the flickers are professionals. They know you’re a novice. They’ll ease you into things. Nothing will happen in your new movie career until you’ve got a firm grip on the reins and you’re ready for it.”
As Papa always says, “mensch tracht unt Gott lacht (men talk and God laughs).”
XXXX
“Wake up, Jake. It’s time to go,” Papa said at six thirty in the morning exactly five days after we arrived.
Pulling the covers over my head intensified the chill and gooseflesh on my uncovered feet and legs that hung over the end of the boarding house bed. My custom-made divan would not arrive for another month. It took about that long for me to get accustomed to those cool California mornings.
“You don’t want to be late for your first day at the studio, do you?” Papa’s voice echoed his excitement for this new opportunity.
Not feeling that there was anything at all auspicious about that early hour, I turned away from him and rolled over. My anxiety had marched back in force, and that morning I was not in the least inclined to wrestle with any of my demons.
“I feel sick to my stomach,” I moaned. “Just let me sleep.”
Papa didn’t buy into my excuse. “Not on your life, mister! If you don’t get your tuchas out of bed in the next minute, I’m going to pour a pitcher of cold water on your head.”
He was determined. In part, Papa’s determination was driven by an intense work ethic. Flu, fever, diabetes, even broken bones didn’t keep him away from the store. He never missed a day of work until his coronary in 1948. But that morning, Papa wasn’t only driven by his work ethic; he knew how important that opportunity was for me. He wasn’t about to let me wreck it because of a bellyache—feigned or real.
I must have realized that, because at that moment my certainty that he meant business got the better of my anxiety. I sat up. “All right, all right; just give me a minute.”
“The clock is ticking. You’ve got thirty seconds left,” Papa threatened.
Did I mention he was always a stickler for punctuality? I stretched and shook my head from side to side, as if stretching and shaking were antidotes for the massive uneasiness that swooped down on me as I slept. I willed myself to get out of bed and hurriedly dressed.
In the apartment’s little kitchenette, my mother had prepared a big breakfast of fried eggs, kippered herring, toast, and coffee.
“Not this
