During the lunch, Saul asked around about work and secured the phone number of a man named Max Factor, who ran a cosmetics business over on Highland Avenue. Originally named Frank, he was the son of the original Max Factor, a Polish-Jewish wigmaker and former cosmetician to the imperial family of Russia, who escaped to America in 1904. Carried aloft by the burgeoning Hollywood film industry, Factor’s specialty was the creation of innovative products for film that were lighter and far more subtle than the heavy greasepaint that was a staple of the stage.
Trained in the business alongside his siblings, all employed at various levels of the company, Max Jr. apprenticed alongside his father in the laboratory. By the time he was poised to take over the cosmetics empire, they had together developed the original formula for Pan-Cake makeup — one of the company’s crowning achievements. Many film stars were reluctant to depart from black-and-white film and appear in the new Technicolor movies because the existing facial cosmetics were so unflattering and greasy. Spurred on by Factor’s innovations in makeup (a term he coined), Pan-Cake became the industry standard and looked so good, even off-camera, that starlets often pocketed it at the end of shooting. Once it hit drugstore shelves, public demand soared. With the subsequent release and wild success of Max Factor Jr.’s new Tru-Color indelible lipstick, by 1945 the company’s fortunes were such that it employed hundreds of workers. It was into this mix that a young Saul Holiff strode, and was hired to work in the factory as a “puddler.” Not unlike those employed in steel mills, his job was to ensure makeup ingredients were properly funnelled down a trough so that the mixing machine didn’t back up.2
Saul soon insinuated himself into the Factor family to the point that they invited him to celebrate Rosh Hashanah at the Bouchard Boulevard Temple with them. As Rabbi Edgar Magnum conducted the ceremony, Saul squirmed. Raised as an atheist, there had been no ceremony to mark his bar mitzvah, and he certainly didn’t feel as though he belonged in any schul. “I was an imposter, but as long as I kept my mouth shut I was Jewish and nobody recognized me for an imposter, so no one threw me out,” he recalled. This connection with the Factor family only further widened a door that had begun to reveal a glittering landscape of opportunity. Hollywood was leagues away from London, Ontario. In addition to Max Factor, Saul was awestruck by the examples around him of powerful Jewish entrepreneurs, directors, distributors, writers, actors — risk-takers, visionaries — real-life moguls who weren’t ashamed of who they were or where they came from. And they often came from poverty, like him. There were legendary names like Marcus Loew, who founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Paramount Pictures founder Adolph Zukor, who emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1889. Or the Warner family, Jews who fled Poland in the late 1800s and went on to establish Warner Bros. Studios. Moreover, even though he was uncertain and naive and unworldly, he felt included. They were kind and welcoming, offered him access into their world, and it was nothing short of intoxicating. Further passage into this milieu was next secured via the book of passes Morris had issued him.
“Each pass was a book of one hundred or something or other forty-eight-hour passes, and they went on for like eight months and he stamped each one of them legally, so as each date expired I’d tear it out. If any MP or American equivalent, police officer came up to me, in this ridiculous uniform, they weren’t quite sure what the hell it was, they didn’t know if I was a circus performer or a parachute jumper. But in any event it all looked very fancy with my air gunner badge and my key chain and this crazy hat at a strange angle,” Saul said. “But as long as I had a valid pass no one would bug me, and so for months every time I was queried, out came my passbook, valid pass. That valid pass gave me free food at the Hollywood Canteen, free street car or bus rides, free tickets to plays, dinner.”
Co-founded by Bette Davis and John Garfield, the Hollywood Canteen was an ambitious home front nightclub that provided free food, entertainment, and socializing to service members from both the United States and overseas. The club was housed in a converted barn and staffed primarily by volunteers from the motion picture and show business community, so it wasn’t unusual on any given night to find Rita Hayworth in the kitchen serving sandwiches, Hedy Lamarr and Betty Grable on the dance floor with soldiers, and Marlene Dietrich or Bob Hope entertaining onstage. The Canteen also had a blackboard where messages would be posted, and this led to all kinds of interesting developments for Saul.3
One of them was a girl by the name of Molly Polland, the personal secretary to iconic American film director Cecil B. DeMille. This connection gave Saul access to Paramount Studio and eventually an introduction to DeMille himself.
“It meant going to the commissary and watching people who I’d heard of all my life just casually goofing around having lunch. It led to watching endless movies in the process of being made. One of them was Monsieur Beaucaire with Joan Caulfield and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby,” he said. “Watching countless different situations as they developed, I would return to the studio. I remember Bob Hope playing a part of the barber and he decides to act silly and he takes the puff, that was used to dust all over in eighteenth, seventeenth century France, and he decides to put it all over Crosby’s face. Which broke everybody up but of course brought the scene to an end.” When it was a wrap, Saul managed to go off with Hope for a Coke and stood with him for a photo.4
Saul Holiff and Bob Hope at Paramount Pictures, Hollywood, 1945.
At nightfall, if there wasn’t much happening in the Canteen, Saul would return to his bug-infested dormitory behind Jimmy Gleason’s house on Cahuenga Boulevard and crawl into bed, his head spinning. It felt lonely and strange. He stared at the ceiling. This was like nothing he had ever encountered. I have to stay, he thought, but where is my place in all this? It was tough, and competitive. Maybe I can be an actor myself, or a radio disc jockey. He rolled over and scratched. Perhaps he could go home and prepare to return again, when he was ready to stay for good. One thing was certain: he had to focus on making connections here and ensure they were solid.5
Though Saul was thoroughly taken with the tinsel of Hollywood, there was trouble brewing under its facade. In the spring of 1945, tensions within the labour movement built to a head and more than ten thousand unionized studio workers walked off their jobs. Sparked by union infighting among set directors, the action hit many of Hollywood’s major studios and theatres. Led by former boxer and studio painter Herb Sorrell of the Conference of Studio Unions, battles were pitched against the rival International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union.
As spring turned to summer the struggle escalated, and by fall the picketers were still out in force. Clashes escalated between the unions, and the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, which included Ronald Reagan, voted to cross the picket lines. Some actors, such as Humphrey Bogart, then did so. But many others, like Bette Davis, did not. The conflict got so heated at one point that, fearing reprisals, Reagan would lie awake at night in bed with his gun, ear cocked for noises outside. By October, days of unrest and mass picketing outside the Warner Bros. studio erupted into a full-scale riot when more than three hundred strikers attempted to block the main gate. Several cars that tried to pass the picket line were turned over by picketers and tear gas bombs unleashed by Warner’s armed security guards. Conflict erupted among the firefighters, who were asked to turn their hoses on the strikers, and the crowd swelled to thousands. Police, security, picketers from other unions, and non-union scabs all descended into a brawl of fist fighting with chains, lead pipes, and monkey wrenches.6
It was at this time that Saul decided to visit the Warner Bros. studios armed with the rather naive idea that he would try to work his way into a face-to-face meeting with founder Jack Warner. He surveyed the striking throng, an obstacle he hadn’t anticipated. Tenacious as ever, he negotiated through the angry crowd as they as they moved in and out of the front gate and called for strikers to spike the gas tanks of vehicles with sugar. With no regular way to get into the studios, as they were closed up tight, Saul somehow wormed his way through to the office door. Glancing over his shoulder, grateful to be away from the noise, he approached the front desk.
Somewhere, he thought he had heard company president Jack Warner