The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up by David Rensin

mean, this is great .”
    Twenty minutes later he got another call. It was Lastfogel’s secretary saying, “I’m sorry. We thought we were calling Tony Franciosa .”

     
DELIVERY, PLEASE!
     
    SHAPIRO: Almost immediately I went on a delivery run. Pearl Bailey was my last drop-off. At her office I handed her an envelope, and she said, “Thank you, honey. I’m just about to see a cut of my movie. Come on and watch it with me, let me know what you think.” I couldn’t say no and didn’t want to. Later I left thinking, This is my first day, and already, what a thrill. This job is gonna be really good! Then I realized that I’d be back so late, I’d probably get fired. Fortunately, when I explained to Lloyd Alene, there was nothing he could say.
    WINKLER: When I delivered an envelope to Zsa Zsa Gabor at the Waldorf-Astoria, she came to the door in a negligee. Immediately I had all these fantasies of her inviting me into her bedroom, where I would have this wild sexual encounter with the beautiful Miss Gabor. Instead she said, “Zank you,” and closed the door in my face.
    BRILLSTEIN: On my first trip outside the office I delivered a $25,000 check to Red Buttons at 50 Sutton Place South. I knew what was in the envelope because, like any ambitious guy with a head on his shoulders, I opened all the interesting-looking letters and packages before handing them over. Everyone did it, because information is king. In the office I’d go into the men’s room, run the water as hot as possible, and wait for the steam to do the rest. I’d read and then carefully reseal. I’d find client lists, contracts, personal correspondence, checks. I never worried about being caught, because usually another guy from the mailroom was at the next sink doing the same thing.
    Buttons’s check was part of the hundred thousand a year he got from CBS to be exclusive. Go back to 1955: $25,000 was like, what—three or four hundred grand now? If I could have made $25,000 a year somewhere, I would have signed on for life.
    When Buttons answered the door, he took the envelope and looked inside. He didn’t notice, or didn’t care, that it had been tampered with. Then he handed me a quarter tip. That works out to 1/100,000 of the check I’d delivered. I didn’t take the money. I said, “I’m not allowed to.” But I did take away a valuable lesson about the parsimony of comedians. And to be honest, had it been a dollar, I probably would have grabbed it.
    UFLAND: I took something to Mrs. Lastfogel at her apartment in the Essex House hotel. She was a pistol and had a mouth like a truck driver. When she tried to tip me a dollar, I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t take that.”
    “I know how much money you make,” she said. “Take the fucking tip.”
    ROSENFELD: For most deliveries we walked. Sometimes we took the bus or the subways. But cabs? You could take a cab only if the load you had weighed more than you did.
    WEST: Sometimes it seemed like it did. We often lugged large metal film cans containing kinescopes. They weighed maybe ten, fifteen pounds each, and we had to deliver them, no matter what the weather, to networks, clients, and producers. If it was more than forty blocks, they’d give us two dollars for cab fare. In those days I think a tuna sandwich was sixty-five cents and coffee was a dime. If I could take three buses with two-cent transfers, I could pick up two days’ worth of lunch and pocket the spread. No one ever asked for a receipt. I ate that way for two years.
    BRILLSTEIN: I used to clip money from my father for cab fare so I could come back quicker to the office. Schlepping around New York in the summer was no holiday for a heavyset guy, and I knew that making deliveries would get me absolutely nowhere at William Morris. In order to learn the business, I had to be in the building . A trip usually involved a bus and lots of waiting. I’d be out of the loop for two hours. I might as well have worked in the garment center