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Ivanhoe, Silas Marner, The Oregon Trail. That was the kind of stuff we had to read. At least, I loved Ivanhoe, and that started me on Walter Scott. Then I began reading a little bit better books. I was still reading popular magazines. I wasn't an exceptional kid. I was a New York kid.

In those days there was a cut-rate ticket agency at 43rd Street and Broadway called LeBlang's Ticket Agency, and they would sell tickets to shows that weren't sold out, and you could get an orchestra seat for about a dollar--of course way in the back, you know. Then Howard Dietz and I began to haunt the theaters on Saturdays. We became great friends because we both loved the theater. We didn't know there was anything in front of the 14th row. To us that was no man's land.

Do you remember anything you saw at that time?

Well, yes. The first big show I think I saw was called “Top o‘the World,” a musical show. But Dietz, who later became a great lyricist, you know, and vice-president of MGM, entered a contest that was given by the Strauss Theater Program Company. They printed all the programs for the theaters. You were given three lines of a poem and you had to write the fourth line, some kind of a little jingle. Dietz won one of the prizes. This was the beginning of his career. And the prize was two seats in the sixth row of the orchestra for the Astor Theater Saturday matinee. I don't remember the name of the show, but I remember the theater. Dietz invited me--and I