Page 2 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

Alternate Hollywood

The director winced. His leading man was not coming across as an
authentic peddler. He knew why, but didn’t want to embarrass him in
front of cast and crew.
“Cut! Y’all can take a break, now. Bernie: let’s go for a walk.”
“Sure. Why not?” Bernie Goldberg, idol of millions, shook off a
makeup artist and followed B. J. Cochran as he picked his way over
cables and around equipment boxes to a secluded spot on the set of
‘The Czar and my Yiddishe Mama.’
Cochran motioned to his star to sit down on a prop barrel marked
‘HERRING’ in heavily Hebraized roman letters. Then B. J.
pushed back the brim of his Stetson hat and looked Goldberg in
the eyes.
“Bernie, ol’ boy,” began the Oscar-winning director of ‘Miami
Dybbuk’, “I’ve made fifteen movies in this town, all grossing over
fifty million. Twelve of those were shtetlers, just like this one. You
better believe me, son: I know how to film shlock, and I have the
awards to prove it.”
Goldberg squirmed. He was not accustomed to a dressing-down
from his director—a mere hired hand with no financial interest
in the picture beyond his own inflated salary. “I don’t doubt it, B. J.
In fact, I asked Amos Kingsley specifically for you when I signed on
to this project. Is there some kind of problem here?”
Cochran’s pale blue eyes briefly wandered from the actor’s
artificially olive-complected face to the middle distance, where
goose-wranglers were attempting to calm their charges while a
carpenter hammered on a yeshiva door designed to be pulled
easily off its hinges. B. J. was known for squeezing the last ounce of
talent out of his cast, but a star as big as Bernie Goldberg had to be
handled very carefully.
“Bernie, I know that Kingsley—and the other producers, as well
as the front office here at Windsor Brothers—have every
confidence in you. And so do I. Shoot, this picture wouldn’t be
happening without you. You’re bankable. But something is
missing in your performance, and we’ve got to work on it.”

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