of her friends at The New Yorker were saddened by her decision—it felt as if an era was ending, and indeed it was, in more ways than one. Around the time she filed her last column, Nora Ephron wrote to tell her how much she would miss reading her. Her old nemesis Ray Stark also contacted her: “Now we can be friends again—I hope.”
A number of people close to her attempted to talk her out of her plan. Whatever problems she had encountered at The New Yorker, after all, she had essentially been in the company of gentlemen and gentlewomen—too much so, at times, for her taste and temperament. She believed she had been too tough for The New Yorker, and she believed that she was tough enough to withstand anything that Hollywood could hand her. Warren Beatty was famous for being a master manipulator, and several friends warned her that he probably wanted to bring her out to Hollywood to neutralize her. “He wanted to hunt her down, and get her,” observed Paul Schrader. “If she was a twenty-two-year-old starlet, he would get her in one way. If she was a sixty-year-old film critic, he would get her another way.” But Pauline was an enthusiast, and with enthusiasm went a certain naïveté that does not exist in the heart of a true cynic.
On the occasion of her departure, the fact-checking department composed an extended limerick, with numerous jabs at Penelope Gilliatt:There was a fine writer named Pauline
Who chose judging films as a calling
But she shared half her chores
With the Empress of Bores
A limey whose work was appalling
So Pauline became a producer
A calling where deadlines are looser
And if she ever needs
Some new stars to play leads
We hope our debuts won’t traduce her.
From now on those of us who CK
Current Cin will be seen much more than TK
With Penelope here
Fucking up her career
Oy vey, will we miss La PK!
Her X-rated prose was too jarrin’
To the boss of the mag she was star in
Though the alternative critic
Leaves us near paralytic
Still we wish her the best with old Warren!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There is a famous story about Fred Zinnemann, the veteran director of From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons, and The Nun’s Story, being interviewed in the 1980s by a young, arrogant studio executive with no knowledge of movie history, for a job directing a major new studio film.
“So,” said the executive, having done no homework whatsoever on the director’s distinguished career. “Tell me—what have you done?”
“You first,” said Zinnemann.
While Pauline’s desire to go to work in Hollywood was unquestionably driven by her desire to have an effect on how movies got made, she had a much simpler motivation as well—money. Her half-year’s salary at The New Yorker was still insufficient for her and Gina to live at any consistent level of comfort, and as she approached sixty, she became increasingly concerned about building up a nest egg. She worried that her meager earnings at the magazine would never be enough to provide Gina with any kind of decent inheritance. And now she faced the prospect of more money than she had ever seen in her life.
Kenneth Ziffren’s negotiations with Warren Beatty’s lawyer, David Saunders of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp, were complicated and protracted. “Now I know what Warren meant when he said that his attorneys must get paid by the word,” Ziffren wrote to Pauline, adding that it would “probably take the whole weekend” to examine the contract that Saunders had sent over. In the end Ziffren worked out a very attractive deal for her: She would receive a salary of $150,000 a year, payable in monthly installments. The agreement stipulated that if one of the films she worked on wound up being produced, her annual salary would rise to $175,000 for the second picture and to $200,000 for the third and any succeeding ones. Ziffren also secured a payment of $750 weekly for Richard Albarino to act as Pauline’s associate producer on Love and Money. She was granted the right to remove her credit on any picture, provided that Beatty decided to remove his. And there were various other perks thrown in, including reimbursement for transportation, since she still didn’t drive.
One thing was clear to everyone close to her: Despite the fact that she had left the door open by only requesting a leave of absence from The New Yorker, she was not at all sure she would ever return. Pauline viewed her job with Beatty as the first step