Eve of a Hundred Midnights Read Free Page A

companies.
    On March 8, 1922, the year Manfred bought a controlling stake in Germain’s, he and Elza wed. The marriage lightened Elza’s spirits as well as Mel’s. Though Mel welcomed “Uncle Manfred” into his life, he still spent enough time at his grandparents’ home that their youngest son, Eugene, considered Mel—ten years his junior—more akin to a younger brother than a nephew.
    If Mel felt smothered by Elza, he didn’t make such feelings known. Still, Elza sent Mel away to summer camp when he was eight years old, in part to help put some distance between them.
    â€œI still remember the expression on that little fellow’s face, when I drove away and left him with all those strangers,” she wrote nearly two decades later. “When he saw I was beginning to weaken, he said ‘you promised me you wouldn’t cry,’ and I didn’t—nor have I the many times in the past six years, when I have bid him goodbye—only because Melville has helped to make me a stronger woman.”
    Despite his father’s early death, Mel had a happy childhood full of typical boyhood passions. He was a lifelong stamp collector, or philatelist, who would search for new designs throughout his journeys around the world. Mel’s “boy” Elmer, a black and white Australian shepherd, meant so much to him that he sometimes sent postcards home addressed to the dog from his many travels; over the years lovers and friends would know to ask after Elmer, having either heard about or met the dog.
    Mel also started writing early, beginning with small pieces that appeared in Hollywood’s Selma Avenue Elementary School’s weekly paper. After transferring to Hawthorne School in sixth grade, he became a sports editor. By the time he was a junior at Beverly Hills High—where he was an honor society member—Mel was the school paper’s business manager and, later, its news editor.
    A fan of camping and being outdoors, Mel also grew up when much of the Los Angeles area was still undeveloped and blanketed with sagebrush, oaks, and poppies. He had ample space to freely explore the wild hills and canyons surroundingBeverly Hills and Hollywood, collect Native American artifacts, and attend summertime concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.
    He often refused the box seats offered to his well-connected family and chose instead to climb the outdoor amphitheater’s stairs to its highest row. There, lying on a bench and staring at the night sky, he would lose himself in the stars and the music.
    This wistful streak reflected in Mel’s stargazing nights grew into a restlessness as he got older. He recognized as much as anyone his need for direction. Despite the relative comfort of his childhood, Mel was eager to succeed through his own efforts. Nevertheless, Mel wooed dates, impressed employers, made friends, and developed sources with charisma augmented by a dry sense of humor, handsome features, and a slim but athletic body sculpted by years of swimming and recreational boxing. At six-two, Mel was certainly tall. A hirsute man descended from Central European Jews, he had fair skin with dark hair and eyes, traits that later prompted a newspaper in China to describe him as “a rugged dark featured young American.” Quick to flash his amused, closed-lip smile, he had a habit of absentmindedly stroking his cheek as he thought.
    â€œMel was tall, dark, and slim, alternately boyish and then mature beyond his [years],” another of his contemporaries wrote.
    After high school, Mel went to Stanford University. There he signed up with the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and even learned to fly. He also joined Stanford’s water polo team and made varsity by the end of his sophomore year.
    â€œI’m nuts about water polo, and I can’t wait to get into the pools,” he told his parents, undeterred by the black eyes, cut lips, and bruises he also