Frank Vespe

The Day I Blew Off Cubby Broccoli

 

 

 

High school homework always got in the way of my bigger-than-life interests: baseball, basketball, football…and Celia, so it was with no surprise when my tenth grade English teacher Susan Davidoff, rather Miss Davidoff, blindsided me waving an 8 X 11 white sheet of paper that looked eerily similar to my Smith and Corona courier twelve font homework assignment while I barreled down the first floor hallway across from the main entrance of Long Island City High School dressed in my baseball uniform already late for practice.

 

“Can I speak with you?” asked Miss Davidoff, a diminutive 5’ 3”, with long brown hair, parted in the middle late twenty-something, a woman I always daydreamed in front of our class peering through her tortoise shell overly round eyeglasses with a Martin twelve string acoustic guitar slung over her left shoulder embossed with yellow smiley faces singing Michael Row the Boat Ashore.

 

“Sure,” I whispered expecting a reprimand for a poorly written report worthy of a 67.

 

“Did you write this?” she asked twitching my assignment at her right side.

 

“You asked us to use a lot of adverbs and adjectives,” I mumbled as I delicately put down my beat-up black duffle bag filled with catcher’s equipment and my lucky Carl Yastrzemski 32” Louisville Slugger maple bat’s pine tar laden handle sticking out. “Did I mix them up?”

 

Pulling on my long-sleeved purple baseball shirt, she ushered me into the Guidance Counselor’s office next to the Assembly room.

 

“In all my years teaching, I’ve never read a story more prolific than yours,” she said.

 

“Prolific?” I asked.

 

“Very prolific,” she answered.

 

“Prolific?” I repeated with a smirk.

 

“And if I were you” she said thrusting her right index finger into my baseball shirt’s 2nd button from the top, “I’d drop the bat, pick up the pen.”

 

Seeing my reflection in her round eyeglass lens I thought, “She has some nerve calling my story prolific,” until twenty-five minutes later, while struggling with a six inch thick Bible-like dictionary, I found its definition.

 

Arriving late for baseball practice that afternoon, my coach Marty Rifkin, rather Mr. Rifkin, was more pissed-off than prolific.

Ten years would pass for me to take Miss Davidoff’s advice and “pick up the pen,” as my bigger-than-life interests got in the way again: baseball, basketball, football…and Debbie, but it wasn’t due to a yearning to write a novella, impress a girlfriend with a poem or write a song with clever lyrics such as “where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,” but rather the release of a James Bond movie and a surprise call from my older brother James who never forgot the tale I told him about my tenth grade English teacher’s comment.

 

“A new James Bond movie is coming out,” he said.

 

“If Sean Connery’s not in it, I won’t see it,” I answered.

 

“Did you know the producer of the Bond films grew up in Astoria?” he asked.

 

“No way!” I blurted astounded someone famous came from my hometown .

 

“Maybe you can contact his office and write a story about him, might be a lot of fun,” he continued.

 

“What’s his name?” I asked.

 

“Albert Broccoli, but he’s known as Cubby.”

 

The next day, I spent an hour in the Steinway library on 31st Street in Astoria squinting at microfilm on large teleprompters searching for info on Albert Broccoli’s life and where he might have an office; London. So I typed a simple two sentence letter on my Smith and Corona typewriter asking for an interview on his memories of Astoria for publication in a Queens newspaper, uncertain which newspaper if any would accept my rookie story. I included an international pre-paid postage stamp, mailed it on July 30th from the Astoria post office, and waited.

 

Within two weeks, a letter dated August 10th arrived from Mr. Broccoli’s Eon Productions London office written by his assistant Charles Juroe:

 

Dear Mr. Vespe,

 

Mr. Broccoli has passed on your letter…I will be writing you after our France location…

 

N.B. Returned are the 2 international coupons you kindly enclosed with your letter.

 

Mr. Juroe soon put me in contact with Tom Carlisle, the United Artist rep, to arrange the interview in the office of Myer Beck, Mr.Broccoli’s publicist. Within a week, I was zooming up an elevator in 1710 Broadway, a yellow legal size pad in my left hand and a small battery-operated cassette tape recorder in myright; a 60 minute cassette stuffed inside awaiting the most important writing assignment of my life.

 

Tom Carlisle, a tall Jimmy Stewart look-a-like, happily greeted me at the door and ushered me into Myer Beck’s office, a simply furnished room that could have been a dentist, a stock broker or Eleanor Rigby’s office overlooking Broadway, where he sat behind his cattycorner desk, a patch covered his right eye. Leaning over his desk to shake hands, and out of the corner of my eye, an imposing figure rose from the cloth couch on the opposite wall; it was Albert Cubby Broccoli, whose broad smile quickly resembled my father’s after I hit my first double.

 

“Hi Frank,” he said as though he knew me for years.

 

And for what was scheduled for only a thirty minute interview and one audio cassette, I discreetly reused the same cassette four times, he took me on a four hour journey through his farmer-to-fame life, handing me pieces of pink Violets candies while occasionally puffing on pencil-thin More cigarettes, as he resurrected long-ago memories.

 

“I used to flirt with Ethel Merman (ne: Zimmerman) when she came off the Broadway subway station in Astoria,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Those were good times.”

 

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

 

“Did you know my family was the first to bring broccoli to the States?” he continued. “They started the Andy Boy broccoli brand,” he proudly said.

 

“My favorite,” I chuckled. “What did you do for entertainment?”

 

“Most summers were spent farming on my family’s farm in Ronkonkoma,” he happily recalled. “The rest of the time was spent swimming at the Boys Club on Van Alst, (21st Street). Is it still there?” he asked.

 

“Anything stand out as usual in your memory from your move to Hollywood?” I asked.

 

“One day, I went to this massive house to offer actor Alan Ladd a movie part,” he said with a smile. “Banging away on top of the roof fixing the shingles with a hammer was this guy dressed as a carpenter,” he continued, lighting another More cigarette. “He climbed down this tall ladder, stuffed his hammer in his side holster, stuck out his and said, ‘I’m Alan Ladd, pleased to meet you.’ I couldn’t believe this movie star was fixing his own roof!”

 

During our chat, we sat side by side in chairs, Myer Beck’s secretary entered the room quite often, “Phone call for you Cubby,” but he always turned to her and said, “I’ll call them back, I’m with Frank Vespe.”

 

Some of his thoughts were private, such as how he discovered the first Bond on a back lot of a studio and his salary for each Bond film, but all the time, each recollection was fraught with enthusiasm, warmth and him handing me another Violet candy, perhaps his ease was because of our close birthdays, his April 5th mine April 3rd, our Astoria connection, or perhaps he saw me in him.

 

“You’ve brought back some great childhood memories Frank,” he said with a smile staring off to the side.

 

“Have you ever thought of returning to Astoria, perhaps open an office in the Astoria Studios?” I asked.

 

“I’ve thought about it, and when I do, I’ll have you head it up, okay? he asked as he patted my left knee.

 

With our chat near an end, I extended my hand, but he hugged me tight like I was going off to war, and pulled me close for a photo, a photo I cherish to this say.

 

A few months later, the Western Queens Gazette published my two page centerfold article on Cubby Broccoli. With Pee Wee Herman glee, I called Myer Beck to pass on the good news I would mail a copy of the newspaper for Mr. Broccoli.

 

“Cubby asks about you quite often Frank,” he said, “and can’t wait to read your story.”

 

“Thanks Mr. Beck,” I answered.

 

“By the way,” he continued, “have you given any thought to working for Cubby?”

 

“And leave Queens?” I asked.

 

And as I buy my morning paper, I glance at the top shelf of Hershey Bars, Strawberry Twizzlers and multicolored M & M’s, but squint at the lower rack where a lonely 5” X 5” paper box of purple tin foil packs of Violets sit filled with memories of the day I blew off one of the most prolific movie producers of all time.

 

 

Frank Vespe writes from Long Island, New York.