He makes $3,000,000 a year, and he can’t stand it. Money is something he disdains. He is probably the one entertainer in our business who has never struck out in a movie, and he’s been twenty-six times to bat. Does he have any ideas why? You bet your life he knows exactly:
“I appeal to the kids and ordinary people who spend all their lives under the thumbs of authority and dignity. And I appeal to children, who know I get paid for doing what they get slapped for. I flout dignity and authority, and there’s nobody alive who doesn’t want to do the same thing.
“No matter how high you go, there’s some schnook up over you. Any General Motors vice president, for example, thinks he can do a better job than the guy above him, except he’s down here and his boss is up there. I’m getting even for every little guy in the world. I’m the kid who throws snowballs at dignity in a top hat.”
Jerry, who’ll do anything for anybody he likes, once agreed to fill in for Sammy Davis, Jr., in Las Vegas, because Sammy wanted a few days off over Christmas in Aurora, Illinois. When I got the tip, I realized the fat was in the fire. It happened that Kim Novak was also spending the holidays at her sister’s house in Aurora.
Now Harry Cohn of Columbia, who made Kim everything she is today, had been getting trouble from her. Her favorite weapon was to date men that Cohn detested, either for personal reasons or because they clashed violently with the carefully fostered image of her as a sweet, friendly girl from Chicago. Sammy was a heavy date. I’m sure he occupied quite a few pages in the oversized diary which she keeps in code and carries around with her all the time.
Kim was a girl tied hand and foot by her Columbia contract: “I haven’t got enough money to invest,” she told me one day. “I’ve been under contract on a straight salary for six years. When I’m loaned out, I don’t get anything extra—the salary goes to the studio. On Man with a Golden Arm, I was promised a percentage of the picture, but I guess they forgot somehow.”
“You never got a bonus?” I asked.
“One time before Vertigo my agents got me a sort of bonus. They got me a special loan at seven per cent interest for a year so I could buy my house. But I was on my old salary schedule.”
“Don’t you collect for TV?”
“I can’t do TV.”