Mr. Show Business

By Mark Carp

Jackie Goldheart, born Jacob Goldman on the Lower East Side of New York, made it big as the first TV mega star in the early 1950s. As his career waned, he yearned desperately to return to the limelight. However, his final opportunity for stardom may lie with his illegitimate son Evan Stromberg, who has authored a play Jackie wants desperately to appear in. The final casting will be done with the approval of Evan, who may not know Jackie is his real father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524590918

Mark Carp

Mark Carp is the author of “Mr. Show Business”, his seventh book and sixth novel. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and holds a BS degree from the University of Maryland and an MS degree from The Johns Hopkins University. His other novels are “Segalvitz,” “Abraham, The Last Jew,” “The Extraordinary Times of Ordinary People,” The End of Hell,” and “Naomi’s ‘American’ Family.”

Book preview

CHAPTER I

A RELUCTANT MR. SHOW BUSINESS

At one time, I was the biggest star of them all. They called me Mr. Show Business.

I had made it big in television and had become a monument of the small screen. When my show came on, the world stopped to see Jackie Goldheart (born Jacob Goldman on the Lower East Side of New York).

But those days were gone because I was under a lifetime contract to a network which didn’t know what to do with me. Sure I was drawing in big money, but I missed the limelight, the adulation, and being the God. At one time, everyone knew Jackie Goldheart.

My musings were soon interrupted by a phone call. At first I didn’t pick up the receiver, then, after five rings, I decided to.

Hello, I said.

Jackie, it’s your agent, Sol Schwartz. I’ve been calling you for days. … Since when did you stop answering the phone?

Since it was finally clear I no longer sat atop the mountain and that was a long time ago, Jackie said sarcastically.

Come on, Jackie, snap out of it.

Okay, Mr. Agent, restore me to what I was, and I’ll snap out of it.

I’ve got something that may interest you.

I’m all ears.

Gibraltar House, the country’s biggest publisher, wants you to do an autobiography.

That means for sure I’m washed up. Whenever they want you to write about your life, that means you have no life left.

Nonsense. This may lead to the comeback you crave, the adulation you seek and the status you had had.

I don’t know.

Jackie, the publisher is offering a big advance.

How much?

We’ll meet at the Palm Room for lunch tomorrow and I’ll go over the details.

I’m not sure I want to do this.

Listen, you stubborn bastard, meet me. This is what your career may need. Besides, the advance is huge.

How huge?

I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Sol came to the Palm Room and waited for Jackie to appear. Twenty minutes had gone by and there was no sign of him as Sol sat impatiently at a table he had reserved. As Sol was about to call him at his Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse, Jackie came in and sat down.

So glad you could make it, Sol said, perturbed. I’ve got important business to discuss, and I was wondering if you cared enough to show up.

I’m here, aren’t I.

Twenty minutes late and I hope at least ready to talk business.

It depends what the business is.

Okay, Mr. Show Business, here is what Gibraltar House is offering for your autobiography.

Sol then slid a piece of paper with the advance and the details of the contract.

Jackie gulped when he saw the advance.

Not bad for a guy who is washed up, Sol mused.

Yeah, but I’ve never written anything.

So get a tape recorder and start talking. Someone will transcribe your story and it will be edited and readied for publication. … You’ll be fresh again.

I don’t know.

For Christ’s sake, Jackie, the old days will never return. But the people would love to read about you and them.

I’m not sure.

You’ve always had a big mouth that you were paid to use. Now use it again and be paid royally.

Okay, but if I do this, where should I start?

Start at the beginning when you were a half-ass child star and be sure to include your mother, perhaps the greatest stage mother of them all.

Perhaps … She was the greatest stage mother of them all, said Jackie, smiling wistfully.

So it looks like you’ll do it.

Probably.

I’ll have your lawyer review the publisher’s contract.

I never thought about being a writer.

I never thought about a lot of things that would happen, but they did.

I guess you’re right.

You’re finally admitting someone is right besides yourself.

Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.

And maybe the old dog is ready for the limelight again, said Sol.

Jackie left the Palm Room and caught a cab and gave the driver the address of an electronics superstore.

Fifteen minutes later he was at the store and purchased a tape recorder. When Jackie gave a middle-age cashier his credit card, which he studied, the cashier said, Jackie Goldheart … My father used to talk about you all the time. He said you were the biggest thing on television. In fact, we were the first family on the block to own a set, and when you were on, it seemed like the whole neighborhood crowded into our living room to watch you.

That was a long time ago.

Not that long ago. Wasn’t it some thirty years?

Thirty years is three eternities in show business.

My Pop said your show was ‘funny as hell’ and, you were a real wild man.

Jackie smiled.

Say, what are you doing now?

Trying to become famous again.

I guess anything is possible.

What do you mean by that? Jackie sneered.

I mean the country has just elected Ronald Reagan President and he was nothing more than a so-so movie actor.

In show business, I was ten times bigger than he ever was.

Yeah, but now he’s the President.

Well, I can be big again, too.

According to my father, you were the biggest of them all.

Jackie purchased the tape recorder and decided to return home, thinking whether he wanted to record the intimate details of his impossible life.

CHAPTER II

CHILD STAR

What the hell, Jackie muttered to himself, if the publisher wants to pay me to talk about the impossible details of my life, I’ll talk.

Soon, however, I was uncomfortable talking into a tape recorder, so I began to write on a yellow legal pad.

When I was five years old, I began to ask my mother why I had no father.

My mother, Ruth, said, He is in Heaven.

Where is Heaven? I asked.

Up in the sky, where God lives.

Nonetheless, a man would appear, from time to time, when I would be outside, playing on the sidewalk, and then he would suddenly disappear. Was this my father, I thought to myself?

There were times I would try to approach him, and he would disappear. These episodes left me with an eerie feeling.

One day my mother read there would be a talent show for kids and the winner would receive five dollars. So my mother, who was always looking for angles to improve the family’s finances, entered me. She taught me a song called Sadie Salome, written by Irving Berlin, about a Jewish girl who leaves home to go on stage and is implored by her sweetheart Mose, Don’t do that dance, I tell you Sadie/That’s not a bus’ness for a lady!

I had only the vaguest idea what the words meant. Nonetheless, at seven years old, there I was in a Buster Brown outfit singing on stage in front of an audience. In those days, I had a pleasant soprano voice and after I finished my song, my mother leaped to her feet and applauded wildly. Soon the other patrons joined in. I don’t know if the swelling applause helped sway the judges, but I won first prize and suddenly I was in the world of show business.

I entered some other contests, singing Sadie Salome. Some I won, others I placed highly in. Meanwhile, my theatrical exploits garnered some media attention, and my appearances began to be reported by the Jewish Daily Forward, among others.

As I approached my eighth birthday, my mother read where a movie was being filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and there would be a child’s part. When my mother and I arrived, there was a line of ten children, with their parents, waiting to audition for the role.

Feeling uneasy about the competition, my mother asked one of the actors, Who is the director? The actor pointed him out.

Keep your place in line, Jake, my mother told me. I’m going to meet the man in charge. With a scrapbook in hand, she cornered the director and began showing him my press clippings. The director was duly impressed and my mother came back to the line and got me. We sat with the director and he said the actor chosen would play a little boy in an action movie. He explained one of the scenes and the part to be played. Then he turned to my mother and asked, Can your son handle that?

Handle it, my mother said, are there stars in the sky at night.

Okay, little boy, show me what you can do.

His name is Jacob, my mother said.

Okay, Jake, show me something.

Misunderstanding what the director meant, I began singing Sadie Salome.

The director had a startled look on his face.

So my mother, thinking quickly, said, My son is a natural born comedian – he can do anything.

The director became skeptical.

My mother said, Give us a few minutes and we’ll be back.

I’m a busy man, said the director, looking at his watch, please be back here in five minutes so I can audition your son.

The scene I was to appear in was where I was supposed to be thrown from a moving train. My mother showed me how to resist and she and I got into a mock wrestling match.

Now do you understand the part you’re to play?

I nodded.

We returned to the director and showed him what we had rehearsed.

The director said, That’s okay, Jake. Be on the set two days from now.

Does he have the part? my mother asked.

I think so, the director replied.

How about the others who came to the audition, are you going to send them home?

I’ll have my assistant do that.

Are you sure?

The director, with an exasperated look on his face, said, Mrs. Goldman, you’re trying my patience.

My mother got the message, took me by the hand and told the director, We’ll see you in two days.

The director nodded uneasily and my mother told him, Good-bye.

Now I was in the movies.

CHAPTER III

HOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND

Since motion-picture production was moving to California, my mother and I next went to early Hollywood, where she and I made the rounds to the studios, and I would soon appear with the stars of the day, including Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, in films that ranged from action thrillers to maudlin dramas.

After a stint in California, my mother and I returned East where I had a stage debut in a musical comedy which opened in Buffalo, New York, and eventually moved to Broadway. So by the time I was twelve, I had appeared in the movies and on Broadway. Not bad, I might add, for a fatherless child from the Lower East Side.

What I didn’t realize at the time, had it not been for my mother, I would have been another dirty-faced kid playing on the streets and sidewalks of the Lower East Side, instead of something of a show-business personality.

Even though it was my mother pulling the