The advantage of working days was that while I still had time to see the music publishers, my evenings were free, and at least three times a week I went to the theater to see plays, sitting in the cheapest balcony seats. I saw Room Service, Abie’s Irish Rose, Tobacco Road, You Can’t Take It With You…The variety was endless.
Sidney Rosenthal, my new friend, had found a job, and one day he suggested, ‘Why don’t we pool our money and get out of this place?’
‘Great idea.’
One week later we left the YMCA and moved into the Grand Union Hotel on Thirty-second Street. We had two bedrooms and a living room, and after the little room at the YMCA it seemed like the height of luxury.
In a letter Natalie reminded me that we had a distant cousin living in New York who had a checkroom concession at the Glen Cove Casino, on Long Island. She suggested that I give him a call. His name was Clifford Wolfe. I called him and he could not have been more cordial.
‘I heard you were in New York somewhere. What are you doing?’
I told him.
‘How would you like to work in the checkroom for me, three nights a week?’
‘I’d love it,’ I said. ‘And I have a buddy who—’
‘I can use him, too.’
And so three nights a week Sidney Rosenthal and I went out to Long Island to the Glen Cove Casino and earned three dollars apiece checking hats and coats. We also scrounged as much food as we could from the buffet table.
A car carrying other employees of the casino picked us up and took us to Long Island, an hour and a half away. At the end of the evening, when we were through working, we were taken back to our hotel. The extra money I made I sent to Natalie. She invariably sent it back.
One evening, as I walked into the checkroom, Clifford Wolfe stared at me, frowning. ‘That suit you’re wearing…’ It was torn and shabby.
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t you have anything nicer?’
I shook my head, embarrassed. My wardrobe would have fit into a briefcase. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘We’ll take care of that,’ he said.
The next night, when I arrived at Glen Cove, Clifford Wolfe handed me a blue serge suit and said, ‘I want you to go to my tailor and have this fitted for you.’
From that time on, whenever I went to Glen Cove I wore Clifford Wolfe’s suit.
The inexplicable changes in my moods continued. I was either unreasonably elated or suicidal. In an excerpt from a letter to Natalie and Otto, dated December 26, 1936, I wrote:
At the moment I haven’t much heart for this fight. Whether I am going to stick it out, I don’t know. If I were more sure of my ability, it would be so much easier.
One month later, I wrote:
Well, as far as songs are concerned, it looks as if we might click. Chappell heard one of our new numbers, told us to rewrite the bridge and bring it back. They are quite particular and their liking our numbers is encouraging.
I had had two episodes of my disc tearing loose, and both times I had been in bed for three days. It was in the middle of a period of euphoria that my future opened wide. It was on one of my rounds in the Brill Building that I encountered a short, dapper man with a friendly smile. I had no idea then who he was. He happened to be in the Remick office when the manager was listening to one of my songs.
The manager shook his head. ‘That’s not what we’re looking—’
‘This could be a big hit,’ I implored him. ‘When love is gone, love is gone, the stars forget to glow, and we can hear much sadder songs than we were meant to know…’
The manager shrugged.
The stranger with the friendly smile was studying me. ‘Let me see that,’ he said.
I handed him the sheet of music and he scanned it.
‘That’s a damned good lyric,’ he commented. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sidney Sheldon.’
He held out a hand. ‘I’m Max Rich.’
I knew his name. He had two popular songs playing on the air at that moment. One was ‘Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!’ and the other was a novelty song, ‘The Girl in the Little Green Hat.’
‘Have you had anything published, Sidney?’
The same trick question. I was crestfallen. ‘No.’ I was looking at the door.
He smiled. ‘Let’s change that. How would you like to work with me?’
I was stunned. This was exactly the opportunity I had dreamed of.
‘I—I’d love it,’ I said. I could hardly get the words out.
‘I have an office here, on the second floor. Why don’t you meet me there tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, and we’ll go to work.’
‘Great!’
‘Bring all the lyrics you have.’
I swallowed. ‘I’ll be there, Mr. Rich.’ I was in a state of euphoria.
When I told Sidney Rosenthal what had happened, he said, ‘Congratulations, big time! Max Rich can get anything published.’
‘I can show him some of your songs, too,’ I offered, ‘and—’
‘Get yourself started first.’
‘Right.’
That night Sidney Rosenthal and I had a celebratory dinner, but I was too excited to eat. Everything I had longed for was about to come true. Songs by Max Rich and Sidney Sheldon. The names sounded good together.
I had a feeling that Max Rich was a wonderful man to work with and I knew that some of my lyrics were going to please him.
I started to call Natalie and Otto, but I thought, I’ll wait until I’ve started.
As I got into bed that night, I thought, Why would Max Rich want to write with me when he could write with anybody? I’m a nobody. He’s just being kind. He’s overestimated what little talent I have and he’s going to be disillusioned. I’m not good enough to work with him. Out of nowhere, the black cloud had descended. All the publishers in the Brill Building have turned me down, and they’re professionals. They know talent. I have none. I would just make a fool of myself with Max Rich.
At ten o’clock in the morning, while Max Rich was waiting to collaborate with me in his office at the Brill Building, I was on a Greyhound bus, headed back to Chicago.
I returned to Chicago in March of 1937, a failure. Otto, Natalie and Richard were sympathetic about my lack of success as a songwriter.
‘They don’t know great songs when they hear them,’ Natalie said.
The economic situation at home had not improved. I reluctantly went back to work at the Bismarck checkroom. I managed to get a job during the day parking cars at a restaurant on the north side, in Rogers Park. My irrational mood swings continued. I had no control over them. I became ecstatic for no reason and depressed when things were going well.
One evening Charley Fine, my Stewart Warner mentor, and his wife Vera came to the apartment for dinner. For economical reasons we served a cheap, take-out dinner I had picked up at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, but the Fines pretended not to notice.
During the evening, Vera said, ‘I’m