The Book You Have to Read: “Tender Is Levine,” by Andrew Bergman

(Editor’s note: This is the 163rd installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
Author Andrew Bergman exhibits real chutzpah when he combines kitsch, high art, and the mob in Tender Is LeVine, his third—and as far as one can tell, final—Jack LeVine mystery. Divorced, alone, and drinking too much, New York City private eye LeVine is a “depressed dick” in desperate need of a psychic kick in the pants. Luckily for him, he’s jolted from the middle-aged blues when violin player Fritz Stern asks for Jack’s assistance, making the summer of 1950 the most interesting one in his life.

Stern is a tentative, self-effacing, German immigrant who possesses “the nervous attentiveness of a refuge who had never stopped escaping.” His manner doesn’t give LeVine much confidence in his story, and it’s a whopper: Stern and several others in the world-famous NBC (Radio) Symphony Orchestra believe their maestro, octogenarian Arturo Toscanini, has been kidnapped and replaced with a look-alike. This might be too preposterous for anyone to swallow, especially since Toscanini is one of the most recognizable men in the world. However Jack needs to get his act together and start making some money, so he takes the case.

LeVine’s initial stop is at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (aka Radio City), the home of NBC, to pay a visit to Sidney Aaron, the executive who oversees the orchestra. Aaron looks like he “had made it on his own, leaving numerous casualties in his wake,” and he’s the first of many barriers LeVine will face in his quest. Aaron pooh-poohs the notion of Toscanini’s snatching; however LeVine, ever the skeptic, just has to ask: “If you’re so positive this claim is bullshit, why did you want to see me?” Aaron fast-talks around that point, but LeVine knows a lie when he hears one. So the next morning, he and Stern try to drop in on the Maestro at his Westchester home, only to be put off by a couple of torpedoes. When Jack spots those two guards tailing them back to Manhattan, he’s convinced something is actually amiss.

His suspicions are fatally confirmed when Fritz Stern is murdered on a deserted west side dock later that same day. Aaron then finally tells Jack that Toscanini has been grabbed, and he hires Jack to look into the matter, showing him a ransom note written on stationary from a mob-owned hotel in Havana. When Jack flies down to Cuba to investigate further, this tale becomes interesting, developing a convergence between its plot and the theme of old-school criminals who, to survive, must adapt to a fast-changing crime-scape, involving the rising gambling town of Las Vegas.

Tender Is LeVine is long on action and plot twists, but as with Bergman’s first two LeVine novels—The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 (1974) and Hollywood and LeVine (1975)—it’s also a nostalgic appreciation of a place that no longer exists, post-World War II New York City, and is therefore a lamentation on the passage of time; yet this story is more so, because the cultural changes are not only evident but imminent—and deadly. In Havana, notorious American mobster Meyer Lansky allows the P.I. to connect some of the dots he’s encountered. The NBC Symphony, LeVine learns, is a money-losing organization, and in 1950, television is beginning to overtake radio as the premier in-home source of entertainment. NBC wants to jettison Toscanini and, to add a little class to Las Vegas, it hopes to relocate the NBC Symphony to a hotel that Lanksy, his criminal associate Lucky Luciano, and executive Aaron are planning to build in Nevada. Toscanini would never go for such an idea. Hence, the plastic-surgery-altered stand-in. The bonus from this scheme is a quick fortune the ransom demand would provide to all of those involved.

As LeVine talks with Lansky, he’s astounded to find violinist Stern’s college-age daughter, Barbara, approaching their table. LeVine had already met Barbara in New York, and she’s as intelligent and calculating as she is comely. (“She had thick black hair, brown, almond-shaped eyes, a beautifully sculpted nose, and a mouth you couldn’t look at for long without becoming thoroughly ashamed of yourself.”) Barbara admits that at a tender age, she’d been the elder Lansky’s lover. It was a time in her precocious youth which she calls a “totally fascinating episode.” Their affair, though, is long over, and she and LeVine embark on a tryst that very night. But they’ve hardly pulled down the bedsheets, when LeVine is extracted from the hotel with help from a blackjack. He awakens aboard a yacht bound for Miami, Florida, and discovers his fellow passenger is the real Toscanini, who believes the FBI is protecting him from Italian fascist gunmen. From that point onward, things move very quickly and in much better focus, beginning with the next stop: Vegas.

(Right) Author Andrew Bergman

There, LeVine manages to escape his captors, and—disguised in a hideous toupee—commences to snoop. He realizes how deep in trouble he is when he sees Lucky Luciano gambling in a casino. The putatively persona non grata mobster, and Lansky’s wingman—deported to Italy back in 1946—is in the country illegally, and without a doubt is conniving with both Lansky and NBC’s Aaron. After Barbara shows up in Sin City herself, she and LeVine grab Toscanini and then negotiate a cross-country obstacle course to get the genuine Maestro back to New York, and safety.

Released in 2001, this third installment in the LeVine series was a definite late-comer, arriving in bookstores 26 years after the publication of Hollywood and Levine. No doubt that delay was due to Bergman’s intense work schedule as a Hollywood screenwriter and director. His film credits include Blazing Saddles, The Freshman, and Honeymoon in Vegas.

Whether the now 75-year-old Bergman will ever offer up a fourth LeVine yarn is anybody’s guess. Perhaps he’s sequestered Jack in some literary Witness Protection Program until it’s safe for him to emerge once more. After all, in Tender Is LeVine, that Jewish gumshoe managed to foil the grand plans of the most powerful criminals in the world and, at the end of the book, reached an unspoken and undefined détente with them. But isn’t two decades of his silence long enough? With the world as crazy as it is these days, it would seem an excellent time for Bergman to bring Jack LeVine out of the shadows and back onto the gritty streets of Gotham.

The Book You Have to Read: “The Big Kiss-Off of 1944,” by Andrew Bergman

(Editor’s note: This is the 156th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
Just when you thought it was safe to venture back into the voting booth for America’s mid-term elections, along comes this ardent exhortation to first re-read private eye Jack LeVine’s debut in The Big Kiss-Off of 1944. That 1974 novel is a tightly constructed noir, which at its core is a political thriller. Author and Hollywood veteran Andrew Bergman has the chops and good sense to keep the ideology simple and his P.I. far from the halls of power; instead, LeVine pounds the pavement in search of the schmucks who do dirty for the groysmakht—as that Jewish boy from New York might say.

LeVine lives in Queens, New York, and works amongst the hoi polloi. His office is in a sooty Midtown Manhattan building “supported by the sheer density of cigar smoke and cheap perfume.” Mel, that structure’s obese elevator boy, is a pain in the neck, and the house dick, Toots Fellman, lives up to his job title. The sensible Kitty Seymour is an affable “friend with benefits,” who shares the same interests as LeVine and helps keep his morale up and his feet on the ground. Just when business can’t get any slower, in walks trouble with a bagful of money.

Good girl Kerry Lane’s acting career is currently experiencing an uptick, but she took a flyer from propriety a while back to star in a stag film. Full of regret and career jitters, she hires LeVine at the start of this yarn to retrieve the movie before her Broadway producer boss—Warren Butler, “a straight-laced old fairy” (LeVine is the product of his times)—gets wind of her moral slip and fires her. But of course, it’s not that simple. LeVine’s natural skepticism has him believing that Lane is not being forthright about her motivation for hiring him, and he’s correct: Lane is being blackmailed, and it has nothing to do with her job security. Like the great femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon, Lane is good, very good; and LeVine, who ought to know better, has difficulty discerning if she’s “telling the truth or reading from a script.” To get a better grasp on the circumstances, he takes the words of his client at face value and begins the odious task of turning over rocks to investigate on his own.

The first stop in his pursuit of Lane’s skin flick is a deserted and slovenly house out on Long Island. There, LeVine gets a break which at first confuses more than informs, but he’s streetwise enough to see that this investigation may have a political angle. The house is littered with newspapers from around the nation, with articles about the upcoming presidential election (Franklin D. Roosevelt vs. Thomas E. Dewey) neatly clipped from their pages. LeVine’s curiosity is piqued as his understanding of the case becomes heightened and muddled; but he’s also put on high alert. The murders of two greedy errand boys working for Lane’s blackmailer confirm that more is at stake than his client’s job hoofing in a chorus line. By the time LeVine discovers that the trail he’s picked up leads to the White House, it’s too late for anyone to turn back—especially a guy with LeVine’s integrity.

At this point Kerry Lane takes a powder, leaving LeVine with no clear path forward. But a hunch bordering on clairvoyance takes him to the Quaker National Bank in Philadelphia, and to Eli Savage, its president, whose front-page photograph LeVine spotted in the dingy house on Long Island. Savage is a figurehead of WASP money and rectitude (“If the Mayflower slept with Mount Rushmore, Savage would have been the result”), and during LeVine’s unwelcome yet fateful meeting with the banker, he saves Savage from a sniper’s bullet meant for himself. The dust settles, and who should stand in the shadows of Savage’s office but Kerry Lane, who turns out to be Anne Savage, Eli’s daughter. The karma scale is now tipped in LeVine’s favor, and Savage and Anne have some explaining to do.

Their story goes like this: Savage is a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Dewey, a former racket-busting prosecutor and now the governor of New York, who seeks to replace FDR just as World War II is coming to an end. Roosevelt supporters are appalled at the thought of a Dewey presidency, being convinced that he doesn’t possess the ability to safely steer the free world through the postwar rubble and the rising communist threat. The blackmailers hope to use Anne’s bad judgment in making that stag film as leverage to force Eli Savage to drop his deep-pocketed backing of Dewey, thus simplifying FDR’s path to victory. But it won’t be that easy. A sit-down at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel between LeVine and members of the Allied Forces military brass, who attempt to dissuade our hero from doing his job, only adds fuel to the fire of his search. “My politics are strictly for LeVine,” he insists.

LeVine realizes he may be in the position of determining the outcome of America’s 1944 presidential race, so he devises a plan to prevent Democrats from weaponizing the porno flick. At the same time, he keeps Savage and Dewey in the dark as to the identity of the blackmailers, lest they use that knowledge to headline underhandedness by the Democratic Party and perhaps throw the country into chaos. LeVine tells Dewey he thinks mobsters are behind the extortion, but Dewey’s not buying it. A New York City cop who’s no friend of LeVine raises additional doubts, suggesting to Dewey and Savage that the election is being tampered with. His proof is that the investigation of the blackmailer’s pair of errand boys has been sidelined by higher-ups. That, Dewey believes; but with no hard evidence (except for what LeVine won’t tell him), he focuses on getting the film and getting elected.

LeVine’s ultimate plan to preserve truth, justice, and the American way, as well as his own scruples, requires a magnificent bluff. He schedules a sham national radio address, during which Eli Savage will reportedly discuss politics … and ethics. If the stag reel isn’t returned to Savage, the blackmail plot will be revealed across the airwaves. It’s a swift plot turn on author Bergman’s part, and it works.

Andrew Bergman has successfully hopped back and forth over the years between screenwriting (Blazing Saddles, The In-Laws, The Freshman) and novel writing (which includes two sequels to Big Kiss-Off: 1975’s Hollywood and LeVine and 2001’s Tender Is LeVine). His career harks back to a time when some of the finest novelists, such as William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, toiled for the Hollywood establishment. Unfortunately, those two literary geniuses were accused by the literati of copping out for big paydays; the now 73-year-old Bergman hasn’t had to endure such caviling.

The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 concludes with Anne and Eli Savage, plus LeVine and Kitty Seymour, all sipping highballs around the swimming pool at Eli’s estate. Thinking of the future, the banker sounds out LeVine for a position with the Dewey campaign, reasoning that the shamus has a “common touch,” which could be useful in the election run-up. LeVine, true to character, takes umbrage and shoots from the hip. “Be the house prole, you mean. Translate what the dumbbell on the street means when he moves his mouth,” says the rankled P.I. Jack LeVine is no martini-swilling thin man. He’s a self-described “balding Jewish bullfrog,” who knows his place in the world and is quite comfortable there, thank you. LeVine isn’t the Cadillac of gumshoes, but he’s a hardworking and honorable stiff, as dependable as a beat-up Checker cab. Pay the fare and he’ll take you where you need to go.

The Book You Have to Read: “Hollywood and LeVine,” by Andrew Bergman

(Editor’s note: This is the 154th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
Private investigator Jack LeVine possesses the “wise and forgiving heart of a Talmudic sage,” but he’s no antiquated milquetoast. Screenwriter/director Andrew Bergman’s trench coat-clad retro-noir novel Hollywood and LeVine (1975), the second book in a trilogy, avoids caricature and cliché, giving its story the power to intrigue the most demanding readers of noir; yet its locale, its place in history, along with its plot circumstances and stage dressing, will satisfy anyone who craves the invigorating company of a slap-some-sense-into-you, old-school shamus.

For a while at least, the end of World War II seemed like a great time to be in the P.I. business. New York City’s LeVine has been making bank checking up on how the wives of GIs returning from the battlefields amused themselves while their husbands were off protecting democratic values. However, as quickly as the soldiers came home and the party started, those vets “combed the confetti from their hair … and commenced to brood.” Peacetime inflation set in, and with the champagne ceasing to flow, a deep sense of paranoia descended slowly upon the land.

By early 1947, Jack LeVine is finally down to his last dollar. It’s then that he is approached in his Manhattan office by an old friend, Walter Adrian. The pair had been fellow travelers two decades before at the City College of New York, a hotbed of leftist thinking ever since the days of Sacco and Vanzetti. The practical LeVine had eventually cooled toward “Uncle Joe” Stalin and his brutality, got his gumshoe license, and chosen to save civilization one worried or confused client at a time. Meanwhile, Adrian has become a successful (if never Oscar-winning) screenwriter, spreading hope for a better world through popular culture. Shortly after they reunite, Adrian invites LeVine out to Los Angeles for a visit—and a paycheck.

Yet when LeVine arrives in Southern California, he discovers Adrian and his Hollywood clique running scared.

Remember, the United States’ early postwar years brought not only a turn away from political isolationism and the kickoff of the nation’s “baby boom,” but also the birth of the Cold War and the concurrent fear campaign remembered as McCarthyism. Led by a self-promoting U.S. senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, that last effort made the federal government complicit in a witch hunt for homegrown communists and “red” spies—real and imaginary—wherever they might exist. McCarthy’s dubious investigation focused principally on government employees, college educators, and labor union activists, as well as members of the entertainment industry, especially those living and working in Tinseltown. McCarthy and his nationalist-crusader cohorts sought to “blacklist” anyone at the major film studios who they’d convinced themselves were “communist sympathizers,” thus undermining those people’s careers.

It’s against this backdrop that Walter Adrian draws Levine west. Adrian suspects that Warner Bros., the studio for which he’s worked since 1938, is giving him the cold shoulder. His contract is up for renegotiation and he is being offered considerably less money than was included in his previous agreement. What’s more, a theatrical play he’s written is attracting exactly zero interest from producers, and he is concerned that he’s being followed. Adrian declines to offer an explanation for his perceived fall from grace, but the balding, divorced, and Blatz-drinking LeVine is no chump. He figures Adrian is concealing crucial information, and he’s seasoned enough to realize that such secrecy may bring unfavorable results. “I didn’t think he was holding out on me for any malicious reason,” explains Levine. “That’s what bothered me: it’s the ones with good intentions who get pushed off the tops of buildings.”

When Adrian in fact ends up swinging from a rope on a deserted movie set, his death is labeled a suicide. LeVine doesn’t buy that explanation for a minute. More likely, Adrian was among the first to have felt the wrath of the anti-communist blacklist, and fell on his sword—or he might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This being an era marked by secrets and betrayals, perhaps Adrian knew too much about something he wished he knew nothing about. To get to the truth, LeVine dives headfirst into Hollywood culture, and the discrepancies he finds can be ludicrous.

“If this was communism, it looked pretty good to me,” LeVine opines as he calls on the palatial homes of Adrian’s well-paid socialist pals. Nonetheless, the disdain studio managers exhibit toward writers—the bedrock of the movie business—is painful. Those wordsmiths are deemed disposable, a perception made clear to the P.I. when a talent agent “stuck a polished shoe up on his desk, careful to place the heel on a script.” Readers who’ve dug deeper into Hollywood history may recall a resounding put-down of screenwriters attributed to legendary studio chief Jack Warner, who allegedly called them “schmucks with typewriters.” Is it any wonder that Hollywood scripters of that time often felt like doormats in a B movie?

The case unfolds swiftly and engagingly. LeVine finds Adrian’s beautiful red-headed wife, Helen, to be a grieving yet very merry widow, but not somebody he considers capable of any foul play. In an obligatory confrontation, L.A. police warn LeVine to stay clear of their inquiries, which of course only intensifies his interest in them. Author Bergman, whose screenplay Tex X was the basis for Mel Brooks’ classic Western satire, Blazing Saddles (1974), possesses a sly sense of humor. He combines historical context with spot-on parody when, in this novel, he introduces a young Republican congressman from California named Richard Nixon. Eager to build a reputation, Nixon—in “a stern hand-on-the-Bible voice”—questions LeVine and Warners studio boss Johnny Parker on behalf of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative body of the U.S. House of Representatives that, just like McCarthy’s Senate council, was charged with rooting out subversives. Amid all of this, LeVine learns of the theory that Adrian was murdered to prevent him from naming fellow Communist Party members in the movie biz. That solution would give the matter closure, placing any resolution behind the impregnable “Iron Curtain.” However, patience and some solid snooping lead our man LeVine in a different direction.

The shamus spots cowboy actor Dale Carpenter rushing into Johnny Parker’s house. In the process, a scrap of newspaper falls from a folder in Carpenter’s hands, and this supplies LeVine with a critical first piece of the puzzle. He follows that clue to a small-time Colorado cop who has blackmailed his way into federal law enforcement and the Hollywood craft unions, and then to a man that cop arrested years ago for rape—someone who’s now a studio executive. When LeVine closes in on Adrian’s killer, the FBI agent who has been leaning on Parker to identify commies in the motion-picture industry suddenly accuses Helen Adrian of being a Soviet agent responsible for her spouse’s slaying. And as it becomes clear that Helen is slated for extermination as well, Bergman really pulls out the stops. He teams LeVine with Humphrey Bogart at a party where Helen is abducted. Bogart, a stand-up guy no matter what fiction he might appear in, aids LeVine in a middle-of-the-night car chase to rescue her from a certain death, and to flush out the guilty parties—even though some of them are bound to escape punishment in the end.

The palpable divisiveness of our political scene in 2017 might lead readers to feel a sense of relief that, as bad as some things are nowadays, at least they’re better than in the early postwar years, when fear and intolerance bred mob rule, censorship, and tyranny. Hollywood and LeVine reminds us of just how bad those old days could be. Putting the message ahead of the fictional narrative in this fashion may seem underhanded, unfair to unsuspecting and impressionable consumers. But altruism takes many forms. Percy Bysshe Shelley advised artists of their responsibilities, saying that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Temper this with Ernest Hemingway’s admonishment, that if “you want to send a message, call Western Union,” and perhaps a coexistence between fact and fiction can be reached. As a work of fiction, Hollywood and LeVine perfectly blends entertainment with edification.

READ MORE: “Hello Dahlia!” by J. Kingston Pierce (January Magazine).