I walked across the stage.

"I like how you walk," he said. "You walk like John Wayne. But you're still no actor."

"Yeah," I said, "but maybe I will be."

He whispered back and forth with Sydney Pollack, then said, "Okay, you're a big, good-looking kid. Maybe you're right. Maybe you will be. You're in."

I had moved out of the Bronx by then, and was living with two hookers above P. J. Clarke's on Third Avenue. I had met them one night when everyone was drinking and the air was filled with smoke. I followed them home. I started having an affair with one of them, and they moved me in. I was in class most of the time anyway. The school was a powerhouse, packed with talent. James Caan, Dabney Coleman, Brenda Vaccaro, Elizabeth Ashley-they were all at the school around this time. I remember doing an improvisation with James Caan, the two of us getting so mixed up between the real and the make believe that we came to blows on stage. It ended with me sitting on him, shouting, "I'll kill you, I'll kill you!"

I was not going to be a movie star, that much was clear. I did not have the passion for it, or the talent. "You're no actor." Well, Mr. Meisner was right. In my life, I have only been comfortable playing one role: Jerry Weintraub. Still, I had not made the wrong decision. I learned things at the Playhouse School that have been invaluable. About actors and artists for one, what drives them, what terrifies them (this is often the same as what drives them), what they need. (Managing talent is my business, after all.) These are people who do not make a product, perform an essential service, or, as my father would say, have an inventory, so even the most successful of them are haunted by the following thought: "Who really needs what I'm making?"

If you go to a movie set a week before wrap, you will see the biggest stars in the world on the phone in a panic. "What do I do next?" "Who wants me?" It's not that these people are unusual-it's the situation that's unusual. The on-again, off-again nature of the work would test anyone.

So what do I do? I help. I take the pressure off. I handle the mundane concerns so the actor or director or writer can do what only he or she can do: perform, create. An artist who attempts to get into business-to do what I do, produce or deal or whatever-is an artist who has stopped being an artist. Most important, I do not treat artists like children. I do not patronize. Some people on the business side of entertainment do patronize. They feed off the insecurity of the situation: Your fear is money in their wallet. These are sharks. But other people help artists through that bad stretch after they have finished and before they have started again-these are the David O. Selznicks and Bryan Lourds, the producers and agents who built Hollywood.

I learned a lot from the improv exercises, too. For me, this was less a matter of becoming another person or character than learning to trust the logic of my own mind. Sometimes, when you're up against it, maybe this is an old Bronx thing, you just have to open your mouth and start talking. I can't tell you how many jams I've gotten out of by talking, seeing where the words take me. "What are we going to do about it?" "Well, I'll tell you what we're going to do about it…" And I open my mouth and see what happens. That's improv.

For me, the end of the Playhouse School came during dance class-or, to be more specific, when Jimmy Caan and I went to buy clothes for dance class. This was Martha Graham's workshop. It was legendary-every student had to take it. Jimmy's father drove a fruit truck and took us to Capezio on Broadway in that truck. We get out-and we were street kids, you'd never peg us in a million years for actors-and go up to the showroom where they sell the clothes. A saleswoman puts a tape measure around my waist, chest, shoulders, then comes back with a stack of stuff, slippers, tights, whatever. I put it on and look at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, "Whoa! Wait a minute. If I walked down the street in my neighborhood like this, they'd kill me." And here's the kicker: They would be right to kill me! I would deserve killing! So I look at Jimmy, and say, "Nope. Uh-uh. Can't do it. No way."

I go to the class in my jeans and T-shirt. I'm surrounded by dancers, these beautiful butterflies. I never felt so big in my life. I was Sylvester Stallone trapped in a painting by Edgar Degas. Martha Graham comes out, elegant, floating around, and says, "Where are our tights and dancing slippers?"

I shrug and say, "I can't wear that stuff."

"In my class," she says, "you wear my clothes."

"Look at me," I tell her. "I'm never going to be a dancer. I don't want to buy the clothes."

She puts her hand to her chin and cocks her hip and sighs. "Okay. Let me see you walk."

Now, by walk she did not mean walk. She meant ballet walk. Up on your toes. When I get across the room, turn, and look, she throws up her hands and says, "You, sir, are a klutz!"

This was the dividing line, the moment of truth. Jimmy Caan put on the slippers and tights, so his name appears in the credits as Sonny Corleone or whatever, whereas I, being filled with normal human shame, did not put on the slippers and tights, so my name appears in various credits as producer.

Years later, I produced Martha Graham on Broadway. Did she remember me from class? Of course not. It's opening night. I sent her ten dozen roses, filled her dressing room with flowers, then showed up in my tuxedo, doing the whole F. Scott Fitzgerald routine, walking through the lobby, smiling and waving. A girl grabbed me by the cuff. "Ms. Graham wants to see you right away." I went to her dressing room, knocked. She threw open the door with a flourish. She was tiny but had huge gestures, was very dramatic. She took me by the wrists, pulled me close, and said, "You sir, are my impresario! My impresario, oh, my impresario! The greatest impresario in the world!"

"No," I told her," "I'm not your impresario. I'm your klutz."

Stay Off the WATS Line

I began to look for work a few months after I started taking classes. The business side of entertainment-that's where I was heading as far back as the family trip to the Fox lot. I applied to all the television networks and talent agencies in the city, intern, gofer, office boy, mailroom clerk, anything to get in the door. Most of the big outfits had unofficial programs to recruit executive talent. The men who hired for these jobs-it was always men-were middle-aged midlevel executives. I had an ability to win over these men and land myself these jobs. I was first hired as a page at NBC, this being, for many, the first step in a corporate program that turned the raw-boned kid into the executive in a Brooks Brothers suit.

There were hardly any Jews in the page program-it was mostly Irish kids. I remember the jacket they gave you the first day: a gorgeous blue coat, a gold braid snaking down the lapel.

I worked at the Hudson Theater on Forty-fourth Street, where I later produced Ann Corio, This Is Burlesque, and made a fortune. I lined up crowds, ushered people into their seats. The Steve Allen Show, The Jerry Lester Show, Broadway Tonight with Dagmar, I worked on them all. I was in and out of the theater all day, talking, schmoozing, picking up bits of gossip. I met Sophie Tucker. I met Ted Lewis. I met Steve Allen. I met Jerry Lester. I met Dagmar, a beautiful woman. I was getting an incredible look at an era that was vanishing: the Golden Age of Television. It was the late fifties. Ten years later, all these shows would be gone. It taught me about the rise and fall of empires, the fickle nature of fame. The point is, do not get attached to the world as it is, because the world is changing, something new is coming, every ten years a big hand comes down and sweeps the dishes off the table.