By the late seventies, I had so much going in LA, it left no time for Chicago. I stopped going, stopped hanging out, bullshitting, and instead sent Bill McKenzie, the chief financial officer of my company, to talk to Mr. Wirtz and settle up after a show. The money from the city had come to seem automatic. Then something changed. The profit dipped, the numbers went down. One year I made eighteen million with Arthur, the next year I made fifteen million, then thirteen million.

My accountant called.

"Jerry," he said, "something is wrong in Chicago. The receipts have been going up, but the backend stays the same. I think you're being shorted."

"Shorted?"

"Yeah. Shorted. You're being ripped off."

I called Mr. Wirtz.

"What's happening with the money?" I asked.

"If you want to talk to me," he said, "come to Chicago and talk to me."

I went to his office.

"Okay," he said, "what's the problem?"

I had written all the numbers on a sheet of paper, costs, ticket sales, and where I was coming up thin. He looked these over. "So you think you are being shorted?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"How much you think you've lost?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "I think I'm behind about a million and a half dollars."

"Hold on," he told me, opened his desk drawer, took out a paper, looked at it, then said, "Not bad. You're only off a little. I actually owe you two million."

"What's going on?" I demanded.

"Don't get hot," he said. "I have every penny of it for you right here. You would have had it months ago if you had not been such a bastard and come here and been with me and talked to me and done business with me. You should have been here taking care of your business," he told me. "You weren't taking care of your business. This is a good lesson for you."

Years later, when Mr. Wirtz was dying, I went to Chicago and sat by his hospital bed. He could hardly talk. He was just a mountain of a man under the sheets, with the tubes, and the nurses coming in and out, but he was still sharp and missed nothing. You could see it in his eyes.

Once I was established in the entertainment business, I began to see the possibility of shows everywhere. All life was theater and I wanted to put it on a stage and sell tickets. I wanted to produce everything. This is when Billy Friedkin started calling me "Presents." As in, "Hey, Presents!" "How you doing, Presents?" I wanted to put the world under a marquee that read: "Jerry Weintraub Presents." I began to expand away from concerts, pursuing fantasies of the Great White Way. Like every kid from the boroughs, I dreamed of Broadway. I put on a few small shows but realized that to be good, I would need a teacher and guide. If you want to learn, find a person who knows and study him or her.

Which is how one day in 1968, I found myself in the office of Frank Loesser, that Broadway legend, author of, among others, Where's Charley?, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and, my favorite, Guys and Dolls. Frank Loesser worked in movies, too-he had been under contract with Universal-but he will always be associated with the theater.

He worked in a big office on 57th Street. There was an upright piano and a view of the city. New York is like an infinite library, with everyone you ever wanted to meet tucked in a little room. Knock on this door, Sinatra answers. Knock on that door, Presley answers. Knock on this door, Frank Loesser answers.

"What the hell can I do for you, kid? Did they send you for the dry cleaning?"

"No, my name is Jerry Weintraub."

"Okay, Jerry Weintraub. What do you want?"

I told him he was my favorite writer in the world, that Guys and Dolls was my favorite show, that I was a producer, and was going to produce on Broadway, and told him that he should produce a show with me.

"Why would I do that, kid?"

"Because I'm going to be a great Broadway producer."

Loesser laughed. "All right," he said, "but why not tell me what you are now."

"I told you," I said. "I'm Jerry Weintraub."

He thought a moment, noodled on the piano, notes drifting across the room, then said, "Tell you what. There is a show in London called Canterbury Tales." It's in previews. Hot as a pistol. Goddamn, I want to stage that in New York. But so does every other producer on Broadway. You go to London and get me the rights to that show, and we'll produce it together. We'll be partners.

"We got a deal?" he asked.

"Hell, yes, we got a deal."

"And you are again…?"

"Jerry Weintraub."

"Okay, Jerry. Go get it."

Loesser said everything but "fetch."

I had a big career on Broadway later, and owned a stake in several theaters with Jimmy Nederlander, who ran one of the great organizations in the history of the business. His name is up there with the Shuberts. But this is how I started, in that office off Broadway, with Loesser calling for this trick: Go to London and snatch the prize from the jaws of a dozen hungry producers.

When I landed at Heathrow Airport, I went straight to a house in Chelsea, where I met Nevill Coghill and Martin Starkie, who produced and adapted the original production of this play, Canterbury Tales. I say "this play" because I did not know anything about it. I had heard of Chaucer but did not really know who he was. Maybe if instead of the Air Force I had gone to college… but, as I said, I did go, only my professors were Colonel Tom and Frank Sinatra, who offered neither a core curriculum nor lectures in medieval English poetry. My classes, which were various, included deportment ("Talking Straight With a Buzz On"), History ("The Rise and Fall of Dukes and Kings"), Business ("Don't Be a Sucker"), vocations ("Knowing What You Got, and Using It"), and philosophy ("I think therefore I dance").

I knocked on the door of the house. A beautiful-looking guy came out in tight white pants with no shirt. He was Coghill and Starkie's butler. His name was Bunky. He led me to a dining room, where lunch had been set out. The producers were waiting, proper, English, amused. Referring back to my class with Professor Sinatra ("Knowing What You Got, and Using It"), and considering myself a not terrible-looking kid, I switched gears, turned a little flirty. We talked about the play. As I said, I did not know who Chaucer was, but the show had been a hit in previews and Loesser said get it, so here I was, drinking Perrier and asking the guys to pass the dill. I could not have the show, they said. Not yet, anyway. They were still making up their mind, had to meet with everyone, and so forth. But I persisted. I went over there every day for a week, pitching, selling. We got to be friends. They invited me to go with them to the opening night, which was a real honor.

We got to the theater. Freyer, Carr, Harris, Merrick, Bloomgarden-all the Broadway big shots were there, looking to acquire rights to the show. They were craning in their seats, looking over, perplexed, trying to figure, Who is the kid with Coghill and Starkie? Is that Jerry Weintraub? Doesn't he work with Elvis? What the hell is he doing here? The lights go down, the curtain comes up on a road in the country, a cart filled with travelers, each itching to tell his or her tale. The crowd is silent, rapt, but I'm not hearing it, not seeing it. I'm thinking about Frank Loesser: "Go to London, get the rights, we'll produce it together. We'll be partners." I'm with these guys, have them to myself… but the show will end, the party will start, the drinks and congratulations and Broadway hotshots, and I will miss my chance.

I have to act now!

I leaned over and whispered to Starkie-we're in tuxedos-"I'm sorry, Martin, and don't want to alarm you, but a pain is shooting up my left arm and into my chest."

Starkie looks over, thinks a moment, takes my wrist and says, "We're getting out of here right away. We're going to the hospital."