“How much could I make with my own television show, Cliff?”
“I think I can push them up to ten thousand a week for an hour variety show. They’ll have to give us a firm two years, maybe three. If they want you badly enough, they’ll go for it.”
Toby leaned back on the couch, exulting. Ten thousand a show, say forty shows a year. In three years, that would come to over one million dollars for telling the world what he thought of it! He looked over at Clifton. The little agent was trying to play it cool, but Toby could see that he was eager. He wanted Toby to make the television deal. Why not? Clifton could pick up a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar commission for Toby’s talent and sweat. Did Clifton really deserve that kind of money? He had never had to work his ass off in filthy little clubs or have drunken audiences throw empty beer bottles at him or go to greedy quacks in nameless villages to have a clap treated because the only girls available were the raddled whores around the Toilet Circuit. What did Clifton Lawrence know of the cockroach-ridden rooms and the greasy food and the endless procession of all-night bus rides going from one hell-hole to another? He could never understand. One critic had called Toby an overnight success, and Toby had laughed aloud. Now, sitting in Clifton Lawrence’s office, he said, “I want my own television show.”
Six weeks later, the deal was signed with Consolidated Broadcasting.
“The network wants a studio to do the deficit financing,” Clifton Lawrence told Toby. “I like the idea because I can parlay it into a picture deal.”
“Which studio?”
“Pan-Pacific.”
Toby frowned. “Sam Winters?”
“That’s right. For my money, he’s the best studio head in the business. Besides, he owns a property I want for you, The Kid Goes West.”
Toby said, “I was in the army with Winters. Okay. But he owes me one. Shaft the bastard!”
Clifton Lawrence and Sam Winters were in the steam room in the gymnasium at Pan-Pacific Studios, breathing in the eucalyptus scent of the heated air.
“This is the life,” the little agent sighed. “Who needs money?”
Sam grinned. “Why don’t you talk like that when we’re negotiating, Cliff?”
“I don’t want to spoil you, dear boy.”
“I hear that you made a deal with Toby Temple at Consolidated Broadcasting.”
“Yeah. Biggest deal they’ve ever made.”
“Where are you going to get the deficit financing for the show?”
“Why, Sam?”
“We could be interested. I might even throw in a picture deal. I just bought a comedy called The Kid Goes West. It hasn’t been announced yet. I think Toby’d be perfect for it.”
Clifton Lawrence frowned and said, “Shit! I wish I’d known about this earlier, Sam. I’ve already made a deal at MGM.”
“Have you closed yet?”
“Well, practically. I gave them my word…”
Twenty minutes later, Clifton Lawrence had negotiated a lucrative arrangement for Toby Temple in which Pan-Pacific Studios would produce “The Toby Temple Show” and star him in The Kid Goes West.
The negotiations could have gone on longer, but the steam room had become unbearably hot.
One of the stipulations in Toby Temple’s contract was that he did not have to come to rehearsals. Toby’s stand-in would work with the guest stars in the sketches and dance routines, and Toby would appear for the final rehearsal and taping. In this way, Toby could keep his part fresh and exciting.
On the afternoon of the show’s premiere, in September, 1956, Toby walked into the theater on Vine Street where the show would be taped and sat watching the run-through. When it was over, Toby took his stand-in’s place. Suddenly the theater was filled with electricity. The show came to life and crackled and sparkled. And when it was taped that evening and went on the air, forty million people watched it. It was as though television had been made for Toby Temple. In closeup, he was even more adorable, and everyone wanted him in his living room. The show was an instant success. It jumped to number one in the Nielsen Ratings, and there it firmly remained. Toby Temple was no longer a star.
He had become a superstar.
20
Hollywood was more exciting than Jill Castle had ever dreamed. She went on sightseeing tours and saw the outside of the stars’ homes. And she knew that one day she would have a beautiful home in Bel-Air or Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, Jill lived in an old roominghouse, an ugly two-story wooden structure that had been converted into an even uglier twelve-bedroom house with tiny bedrooms. Her room was inexpensive, which meant that she could stretch out the two hundred dollars she had saved up. The house was located on Bronson, a few minutes from Hollywood and Vine streets, the heart of Hollywood, and was convenient to the motion-picture studios.
There was another feature about the house that attracted Jill. There were a dozen roomers, and all of them were either trying to get into pictures, were working in pictures as extras or bit players or had retired from the Business. The old-timers floated around the house in yellowed robes and curlers, frayed suits and scuffed shoes that would no longer take a shine. The roomers looked used up, rather than old. There was a common living room with battered and sprung furniture where they all gathered in the evening to exchange gossip. Everyone gave Jill advice, most of it contradictory.
“The way to get into pictures, honey, is you find yourself an AD who likes you.” This from a sour-faced lady who had recently been fired from a television series.
“What’s an AD?” Jill asked.