He roared. "No kidding! What gives? God, isn't it hot? If I had a human head, I could shrink it right here on my terrace—and it's only nine-twenty, A.M.!"
"Dave, I got trouble."
I told him about Paul.
"I have a ten-thirty conference with some movie moguls," he said when I finished, "so I'll be right over."
He was there in less than a half hour.
David Abraham Lincoln Berne is the most interesting man I know—a statement which covers quite a few interesting men.
A lawyer.
A lawyer, furthermore, whose principal employ is with the movie companies.
He was not always a lawyer....
Dave was born over a delicatessen, in Madison, Wisconsin, of serious minded, musically gifted, orthodox Jewish parents in the winter of 1906, the fourth child of eight, and no culls in the lot. As soon—he says—as he could pound with his porringer, they gave him a violin. But—again, according to him—he swiftly saw that he was going to be only a semiprodigy, so he turned to other fields. He did well in school. One of his playmates, a Milwaukee realtor nowadays, who liked Dave in spite of his personal limitations, long ago told me about that—and succinctly: "Some of those bastard Jews are born with a high school education!"