Working in the fact-checking department was arduous and painstaking work. The four of us were required to check every miniscule detail of the manuscripts we received on our desks. This meant verifying quotes, facts and even establishing the accuracy of dà ©cor in restaurants.
Occasionally, we would call a high-priced eatery and explain to the manager that we were calling on behalf of Esquire. Nine times out of ten we were invited to check out the premises ourselves and treated to lunch. It was a lot better than the automat.
At the time, Nora Ephron was writing a column for the magazine. I don't remember how, but we became friends and she took me to literary parties, many of them attended by New York's most illustrious writers. Needless to say, I was star struck.
But then Harold Hayes resigned and my hopes of becoming an editor were dashed. Nora saved me. Apparently, Playboy had an editorial position available. She landed me an interview with the head honcho and I was hired as an assistant editor.
Needless to say, Playboy was not exactly the kind of publishing environment H.L. Mencken might have envisioned. Half-naked females ran around everywhere, expense accounts had no roof, and every Sunday night there was a movie screening at Hef's mansion, where Sea World was duplicated Playboy-style with tropical fish that bore uncanny resemblances to young unclad females with surgically-enhanced breasts.
My first assignment at Playboy was a little bizarre. The interview editor, Murray Fischer, strolled into my tiny office and plopped a twenty-pound manuscript on my desk. "This is an interview with Groucho Marx," he said. "He's old and it's not funny. I hear you're a humorous guy. Make it funny." When I said, "Umm-- he replied that it was due yesterday.
This was not exactly the Woodward and Bernstein approach to journalism, but I did as I was told and made the interview as comical as I could by adding a few of my own, mostly stolen, one-liners and some of Groucho's old movie dialogue, as well as a few of his impromptu remarks from You Bet Your Life.
After the interview appeared, Groucho wrote a gushing letter to Murray, saying that it was the best interview he'd ever given. Murray should have given the letter to me, but he didn't. Nevertheless, my star was on the rise. Groucho had done it again. Because of him, I was promoted. I'd say more, but I'm off to see A Night at the Opera for the fifteenth time.
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