"No," I whispered. "I can't take you out of your opening night."

"To hell with opening night," said Starkie. "You're sick!"

Starkie and Coghill led me out of the seat and rushed me up the aisle, the whispers trailing us, out the door. I was slumped in back of the car. Martin was feeling my head, taking my pulse. We go by the Hilton. "Look," I said, "if I can just get in there, sit down, have a glass of water, maybe I'll feel better."

We found a couch in the lobby. These guys were all over me, pale with fear, certain I was going to die.

"How do you feel?" asked Coghill.

"A little better," I said.

"What can we do for you?" asked Starkie.

"Well," I said, "I really want to buy the show."

"Will that make you feel better?" asked Coghill.

"Oh, Nevill," said Starkie, "just sell him the goddamn show."

I bought it for ten grand. (My check bounced, but that's another story.) With the terms agreed on, my condition improved greatly. The play was over by then. We went to the cast party. Everyone was there. Coghill stood on a chair and made the announcement. "The American rights to Canterbury Tales have been sold to Jerry Weintraub." All those Broadway producers stood dumbstruck, couldn't figure it out. Neither could Loesser. He kept saying "How, Jerry, how?"

I'm not saying you should fake a heart attack every time, only in a pinch.

As I said, in those years, I wanted to acquire, perfect, produce, and sell tickets to everything that moved me. It was not just about money. It was about love. I wanted to share whatever electrified me. In 1976, I was, for example, mesmerized by Dorothy Hamill, the perky, young, short-haired figure skater dominating the Winter Olympics. She won the gold medal, but it was her charm and style that made her a sensation. I was glued to my television. I did not want to miss a minute of it.

One afternoon, I was talking to Roone Arledge, who was producing the Olympics for ABC. I said, "Look, Roone, if you happen to talk to Dorothy Hamill, ask if she needs someone to advise her. This all happened so fast. She must be overwhelmed."

Ten minutes later-boom!-the phone rings. It's Dorothy. She asks to meet right after the closing ceremonies. The whole world wants her, and she does not know what to do. We met in the lobby of a hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. We talked for hours. She had a difficult family situation. She was eighteen, and, like most of the kids who skate-because they practice twenty-four hours, seven days a week-she had not had much interaction with the outside world. She was very childlike. The only people she knew had either staked their careers on her success, or staked their careers on someone other than her being successful. She asked me to manage her, take care of her, and so forth. I made several moves right from the hotel lobby. I called the guys that ran Bristol-Myers, for example, and made a deal for a shampoo called Short N' Sassy. Because that was Dorothy. I called ABC and made a deal for eight Dorothy Hamill TV specials. Within a few hours, this girl who had never seen a nickel in all her life was a multimillionaire. It was fantastic. She came to California after that and lived with me and Jane. My friends were her friends, and she married Dean Martin's son, Dino Jr.

The Grand Master

Okay, here's my favorite of the crazy, why-the-hell-not-try-it stories of those years. In the summer of 1972, I got hooked on the World Championship of Chess, which was being shown on PBS and ABC Wide World of Sports, with Bobby Fischer, the American, playing Boris Spassky, the Russian, in Reykjavik, Iceland. The men crouched over the chessboard in utter silence for hours on end. I do not know a thing about chess, have never played it and don't want to-I was relying on the PBS commentator, who moved pieces around a board to explain the game-but I was transfixed by Fischer. He was tall, with blue eyes and wild hair and the slow, graceful motions of a hypnotist or magician. He sat stone still, radiating a weird charisma. It came right through the set. I rushed home every night to have dinner in front of the TV. You could not get me out of the house. I was mesmerized.

Jane finally confronted me.

"What is wrong with you?" she asked. "Have you gone nuts?"

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"You. You sit in front of the TV for hours every night, watching a chess match. You don't know anything about chess, not even the rules."

"I'm not watching a chess match," I told her. "I'm watching this guy Bobby Fischer."

"Why?"

"Because he's a star."

"You're insane."

"Oh, really," I said. "I will show you how insane I am."

I picked up the phone and called Icelandic Airways. I asked when they would next fly to Reykjavik.

Nine o'clock tonight.

"Good," I said. "I want a seat."

I got on a plane to Reykjavik. There was a young guy in the next seat. We started talking. He was a priest and also a grand master at chess. He knew everyone in that world, and had actually played Fischer and Spassky. He asked why I was going to Iceland. I told him I was going to meet Bobby Fischer.

"You're going to meet Bobby Fischer?" he said, surprised. "Do you have an appointment with him?"

"No," I said. "I'm just going to track him down."

"Oh, no," he said. "You can't just track down Bobby Fischer. He doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't go anywhere. He is locked off from the world."

"What? Why?"

"Because he's crazy."

It was the first indication that the goal I had set for myself-get in touch with Fischer, talk to him, pitch him, sign him, make him rich, and take a percentage-would be more difficult to achieve than I had thought.

I reserved a room in the hotel where most of the chess people were staying. The lobby was filled with tables, each with a chessboard, where grand masters were locked in combat. After each move, they hit a button to freeze the clock. Click. Click. Click. It made a kind of rhythm. A group of reporters, mostly Americans, were taking notes in the corner, searching for a new angle on the story. Spassky wouldn't talk to them because the KGB had forbidden it. Fischer wouldn't talk to them because he was nuts. When I went to the desk to check in, one of the reporters recognized me. He came over with a microphone; I was just off the plane, burned out and groggy, and now I was on the radio.

"Are you Jerry Weintraub?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"You represent rock acts, Elvis Presley, John Denver. What are you doing in Reykjavik?"

"I'm here to see Bobby Fischer."

"Do you have an appointment to see Mr. Fischer?"

"No, I don't have an appointment. I don't even know him."

"Then how are you going to see him? He won't see anybody."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll see him."

"Do you play chess?" the reporter asked. "Are you a chess fanatic?"

"I don't even know how to play chess," I told him. "I don't know anything about it."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm here because I've been watching Bobby Fischer on TV," I said. "I am glued to the set every night. He's like Mick Jagger. He's like Elvis. The man is a rock star."

I got my key and went to my room-it was the only hotel in Iceland, the rooms were little white cubes-climbed into bed, and passed out. A long, dreamless, time-zone-crossing sleep. The phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before I had woken up.

Where the hell am I, half asleep in this tiny white square?

"Yeah?"

"Is this Jerry Weintraub?"

The voice was a spooky, otherworldly whisper.

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Do you really think I'm like Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger?"

"How do you know I said that?"

"I heard you on the radio."

He paused, then said, "We need to meet."