When I Stop Talking You by Jerry Weintraub, Rich Cohen

your own steak; it's cheaper.
    On most nights, I was out till dawn, racing through Manhattan from club to club, scouting, booking, signing acts. I used to sit with Barbara Walters in back of the Latin Quarter, a famous Broadway hot spot owned by her father, Lou Walters. "Hey, Barbara, who's been filling the seats?" I'd ask her. I was in search of established acts, but was also trying to hit on the right package or trick to sell tickets. I have never been afraid to try even the craziest idea. Later on, I would sell Elvis tickets by advertising: "On sale Monday morning, 9:00 A.M., first come, first served." What does that even mean? Of course the first one gets served first. But I made headlines out of that. And everything I did was a limited edition. But what are they limited to? 82 million? 700 million? 455 million? I mean, there's no law about it. I think this is why I got along better with older men than with my contemporaries. When I told my ideas to people my age, they would wave me away, call me nutty. But when I brought these same ideas to people who had been around, such as Colonel Tom Parker or Frank Sinatra, they got it right away. They knew just who I was and just what I wanted to be. Not a junior agent, not a young man on a ladder to the executive suite, but P. T. Barnum!
    I'll give you an example.
    Around 1963, I had an idea drifting through my head. I wanted to put on a softball game at Yankee Stadium, in which Elvis would captain a team against a team captained by Ricky Nelson. I had booked Ricky Nelson at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, but did not know anyone with the Yankees, or anyone with Elvis. I just figured the idea would generate the relationships. I called Dan Topping, who owned the Yankees. It took some persistence, but he finally agreed to meet me. We met in his office at the stadium. I said, "Mr. Topping, I want to rent your facility."
    At first, he thought I was crazy. In those days, no one rented out stadiums. But when I made the pitch, his tone changed. "That's pretty interesting," he said. "Do you actually know Elvis Presley?"
    "No," I said, "not yet."
    "And besides, what makes you think that tens of thousands of people will pay to watch Elvis play softball? Do you understand how big this place is?"
    "Sure," I told him. "I've been scalping your box seats for years."
    "Come with me," he said, "I want to show you something."
    He brought me down the ramp and out onto the field, then stood me at second base. "Look around," he said.
    Have you ever stood in an empty baseball stadium? It's unbelievable, all those seats, each representing a person who has to be reached, marketed to, convinced, sold. It was intimidating, and it stayed with me. Whenever I am considering an idea, I picture the seats rising from second base at Yankee Stadium. Can I sell that many tickets? Half that many? Twice that many? In the end, the softball game did not come off, but neither did Dan Topping think I was crazy. An idea is only crazy, after all, until someone pulls it off.
    Within a year or two, Directional Enterprises was putting on shows all across the country. I had a hit at the Brooklyn Paramount, a fantastic theater. One night, after curtain, two guys come in, big guys in flashy suits. One of them steps forward, the talker, you know the type. This is how it's gonna be, this is what you're gonna do. "From now on," he says, "me, you, and him is partners."
    I consider, sort of confused, then say, "But I don't want partners."
    "You don't understand," he tells me. "You're in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is our neighborhood. We get a piece of whatever happens in our neighborhood. So we're now partners."
    I was tough, but not stupid tough, and now I was scared.
    "Ask around," the man says, "find out who we are, and we'll be back tomorrow to work out the this and that."
    I raced home in a panic and called my father. He had been around; he knew and had dealt with tough guys before. He grew up in the Bronx, after all, where if you were