Indecent Exposure Read online

  Robertson's frustration grew. Even a sophisticated, influential lawyer like Seth Hufstedler, a law partner of the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, didn't seem able to prod the authorities to action. There had always been a tacit assumption around Hollywood that the Los Angeles law enforcement agencies tended to take it easy on the movie colony. But how could they ignore a blatant case of forgery? Was some sinister force impeding the investigation? Cliff had not been able to shake off the fear planted by his accountant's comment that the check forgery might be the "tip of the iceberg," and by Seth Hufstedler's suggestion that he stay out of sight. The apparent inaction by the police fed his anxiety.

  In the middle of August, while still in Illinois, Robertson decided on a new course of action. He telephoned Congressman Morris K. "Mo" Udall, the Arizona Democrat in whose 1976 presidential campaign Cliff had worked. The two had become friends. After hearing Cliff’s tale, Udall said: "It sounds like you may have your own Watergate."

  "Well, what can I do? I seem to be at the end of the road in Los Angeles."

  "There might be some federal crimes involved. Cliff. The check appears to have gone through a couple of national banks. And Begelman may have IRS problems if he's stolen any money. I'd consider calling the FBI."

  Cliff fretted through Labor Day. Dina finished A Wedding and the family returned to New York. There was no news from Los Angeles. Finally, through a friend of Dina's family, Cliff arranged an appointment with the FBI in Washington for Monday, September 12, two days before he was to leave for London. An agent met him at National Airport and drove him to headquarters where he told his story and stressed his feeling that he might be in some personal danger. The agents asked that he telephone the FBI office in London immediately after he arrived.

  Washington telexed the pertinent details to London, and when Cliff was settled a few days later, he gave the local FBI office the address of the studio where he would be working and the address of the country house where he would be living. The London agent said that he would keep Cliff posted and that in any event Cliff should check in by telephone once a week but say nothing to anyone else in London about the matter. His chauffeur was told to be alert for anyone who might be following his limousine. The studio was asked, without explanation, to admit the limousine through a back entrance. And it was suggested to Robertson that as the vehicle approached the studio in the morning and left it in the evening he should lie down on the back seat and cover himself with a blanket.

  He dwelt on the absurd array of possibilities that his state of affairs seemed to pose. Either he was paranoid and would be a laughingstock if anyone ever found out about the FBI, the back entrance and the blanket. Or he was in genuine danger from the "iceberg of fraud" and might be vulnerable despite the security measures. Or, lacking any knowledge of the fate of his now-three-month-old report of David Begelman's crime, which seemed to have vanished into a void of silence and inaction, he was merely taking judicious precautions.

  Although he preferred to believe the latter, he felt very unsure of himself during those first several days in London. Things seemed to have gotten out of control since he discovered that odd little IRS form on his sunny patio in Fremont Place last February.

  Never before had Cliff Robertson felt so frustrated, so helpless, so ridiculous.

  SIX

  After David Begelman mentioned the check inquiry to his boss from New York, Alan Hirschfield—the president and chief executive officer of Columbia Pictures Industries—at Chasen's on the evening of Friday, June 3, the subject did not come up again. Even though Begelman and Hirschfield were together in Los Angeles and New York at least half a dozen times through the summer, often in the company of Joe Fischer, the corporation's financial vice president, Begelman naturally avoided the issue and Hirschfield and Fischer soon forgot about it, having accepted Begelman's word that it was an innocent misunderstanding. In Alan Hirschfield's universe, the Robertson check was nothing more than a tiny scrap of information that was visible only partially and only momentarily, and then was quickly swept from sight and mind by much larger, more pressing matters that commanded his full attention.

  In the four years that Alan Hirschfield had been at the helm of Columbia Pictures Industries, the corporation not only had regained its financial health but achieved the highest profits and revenues in its history. It had just completed a fiscal year (Columbia's year was

  July through June) in which the motion picture and television operations had taken in nearly S300 million. Phonograph records, pinball machines, broadcasting stations, and other smaller businesses had added another $100 million, bringing the year's total to almost $400 million. Debt had been reduced to well below SI00 million from the more than $220 million that had nearly swamped the company just before the new management took over in 1973. In the late spring of 1977 the banks had increased Columbia's line of credit and lowered the interest rate they were charging.

  Alan Hirschfield was delighted but not satisfied. Although Columbia was healthy again, it remained essentially what it had been since the Cohn brothers and Joe Brandt founded it in 1920—one of the smaller of the major entertainment companies. Its revenues were less than half those of Warner Communications Incorporated, parent of the vast Warner Bros, group of movie, television, and record companies, and also less than half those of MCA Incorporated, whose principal subsidiary. Universal Pictures, was supplemented by a diverse cluster of other businesses, including major publishing interests.

  With a modest amount of luck, Hirschfield believed, Columbia could double its size. Much depended on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the most expensive and ambitious film the company had ever made. Hirschfield. David Begelman, and a growing number of other insiders felt that Close Encounters, scheduled to open in November, stood a chance of becoming one of the biggest box-office hits of all time. If it did, Columbia's coffers would be overflowing and the company would be in a position to make another major acquisition or two. Alan Hirschfield had his eye on several companies. They included Mattel Incorporated, the world's largest toy company, which made Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels, owned the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and financed a few movies. (Mattel had co-produccd the award-winning Sounder starring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield in 1972.) High on Hirschfield's list as well was EMI Ltd.. the huge London-based entertainment conglomerate which owned Capitol Records and major motion picture and television interests. If Columbia Pictures Industries somehow could get its hands on Mattel, and then the combined corporation could go after EMI, Columbia would ascend to the ranks of Warner and MCA where Hirschfield longed to be. For the time being, however, he was willing to await the results of Close Encounters and bask in the immediate glow of record corporate profits and revenues.

  Alan Hirschfield gave several press interviews that summer, having always attracted good press, even before Columbia's new success was certified. Reporters, especially women, enjoyed interviewing him. He was an attractive man—a six-footer of medium build with an athletic bearing, hair that was expertly coiffed even though thinning and graying, and a countenance that revealed his droll, playful personality through twinkling eyes and the trace of a smile. Relaxed and informal, he laughed easily and often, and his speaking voice was the kind of soft,-gentle adult voice that children find comforting.

  In 1975, Hirschfield had been the subject of major articles in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Variety. "Imagine!" exclaimed Forbes. "All but broke in 1973, Columbia under Alan Hirschfield suddenly has three hits: Funny Lady (Streisand), Tommy (Elton John), and Shampoo (Julie Christie, Warren Beatty)." In 1976, Business Week had published two articles portraying Hirschfield as a management wizard. Unlike those pieces, however, which were prompted by specific news events, the interviews in the summer of 1977 pointedly reflected Hirschfield's increasing visibility as a personality—a major figure in the entertainment business. Financial columnist Dan Dorfman, after interviewing Hirschfield, wrote in New York and New West magazines
: "Twentieth Century-Fox, with its Star Wars, may be the hottest play in the stock market, but Columbia Pictures is on its way to stealing center stage." An article in Women's Wear Daily, carrying the headline, ALAN HIRSCHFIELD SETTING A PROFIT MOTIF AT COLUMBIA, was illustrated with a photograph of the Hirschfield children at a Gottlieb pinball machine, which was set up in the Columbia boardroom in front of a display case full of Oscars. "When I came to Columbia." Hirschfield was quoted as saying, "it just never occurred to me that we'd fail. . . . My wife gets angry with me. She says. 'You're a success. Why don't you show any emotion?' I tell her, 'That's what I'm supposed to be.' "

  As Alan Hirschfield's press clippings accumulated, they began to raise eyebrows, especially in Hollywood, which had always been extremely sensitive to the nuances of acclaim. What was responsible for Columbia Pictures Industries' recovery? Was it Hirschfield's adroit management of the corporation's financial structure? Or was it David Begelman's adroit selection of profitable movie projects? Hollywood voted heavily in favor of Begelman, one of its own, and against Hirschfield, the intruder from Wall Street. Hollywood insiders were particularly rankled to see Alan Hirschfield applauded as broadly as he was in some articles, as if Hirschfield himself had made Funny Lady and Shampoo and Tommy and Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  It is Hollywood's nature to be touchier about such things than are other American industrial subcultures whose products are more tangible and prosaic than Hollywood's. This touchiness—hypersensitivity born of insecurity—is one of the differences between an industry which makes, say, refrigerators, and an industry whose principal product is, in essence, fantasy. The reasons for the success of a piece of fantasy—a movie or a TV show—rarely are as identifiable as the reasons for the success of a refrigerator. A movie is shaped by disparate and often indistinct collaborative elements, and represents an amalgam of highly subjective and even arbitrary creative and financial decisions.

  The allocation of credit for a movie's success, therefore, is inherently imprecise, elusive, and subject to elaborate manipulation, particularly among people in the positions of David Begelman and Alan Hirschfield. Unlike the actors, the Begelmans and the Hirschfields are one or more steps removed from the actual making of the picture, and thus their contributions to the success of the venture are ambiguous. How much acclaim does the head of the studio deserve? Or the president of the parent corporation who put up the money and perhaps was instrumental in structuring the project? Or the key member of the corporate board of directors, who approved the expenditure of funds and the concept of the movie? Since it is difficult to evaluate their contributions by objective criteria, the executives normally vie with each other, even if only subtly, for the most acclaim they can garner, whether they deserve it or not.

  Acclaim is as important to executives as it is to stars, for it is through acclaim that most show-business executives obtain and consolidate their power. The acclaim for making a successful movie or TV show, whether the executive deserves it or not, usually is accompanied by the power to make more movies and TV shows. The acclaim for making several successful movies or TV shows, whether the executive deserves the acclaim or not, often leads to the opportunity to run an entire studio or network. And whether it is deserved or not. the acclaim for rescuing a studio or network from financial ruin (the kind of acclaim that had begun to become an issue between David Begelman and Alan Hirschfield by the summer of 1977) usually opens even larger vistas—the chance to be a genuine mogul of show business, to become truly rich and famous, to play a major role in determining how the nation and indeed the world are entertained. For men like Hirschfield and Begelman, who long had aspired to power in show business, and who had achieved a lot but wanted much more, the stakes could hardly have been higher.

  Every executive learns eventually, of course, that power in Hollywood can be as ambiguous, elusive, and ephemeral as the acclaim that leads to it. The power can even be mystical, just like the institution of Hollywood itself. Hollywood—its mores, its modus operandi, even its raison d'etre—has been shrouded in myth since movies began and remains so today. And anyone who has held power for very long has found it necessary to fathom the truths behind the myths. They have had to learn where real power resides and where it docs not. And they have had to accept and accommodate those aspects of the institution of Hollywood that are eternally mysterious and impenetrable by computer analysis.

  Myth: The Hollywood of today is totally different from the Hollywood of a half century ago. Truth: Even with a more diverse group of power seekers, even with all the changes wrought by television in the fifties when it became a mass medium competing for audiences with movies, even with all of the impending changes posed by new forms of home entertainment, the institution of Hollywood has changed far less than is conventionally believed. More than a place, Hollywood is a state of mind. And the same elemental forces that drove it in the twenties and thirties still drive it today. In addition to the pleasures of power, there are money, fame, sex, a stake in creating American popular culture, and an opportunity to have a great deal of fun in the pursuit of these pleasures.

  Myth: By the 1970s, movies had become a rational business, with much of the risk eliminated. Truth: Despite attempts to rationalize it—and even a modicum of success—the fundamental process of conceiving, producing, and distributing a motion picture is more arcane now than it was Fifty years ago. There has never been any mystery about how a refrigerator is made. There has always been a mystery about how a movie is made. "Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1940.* Fitzgerald's comment was still apt four decades later. And the presence of television only thickened the plot.

  Myth: The spirit of the old moguls, with their consummate showmanship and their insistence on quality, even at the expense of profit, is gone forever. Hollywood today is run by accountants concerned about nothing but profit. Truth: The old moguls were far from homogeneous. Some were skilled showmen with good taste. Some were inept fools with bad taste. All of them, however, were in business for the money more than for the art. Pictures of high quality were the exception rather than the rule, just as they are today. And despite many obvious differences from their predecessors, the men who vie for power in Hollywood today are the direct cultural and psychological descendants of the men who founded and ran Hollywood from the early 1900s until the fifties, men whom Irving Howe has called "the dozen or so Yiddish-speaking Tammarlanes who built enormous movie studios [and] satisfied the world's hunger for fantasy, [men who were] bored with sitting in classrooms, too lively for routine jobs, and clever in the ways of the world." Contrary to popular notions about bland financiers, most important executive positions in the entertainment business today are occupied by high-spirited, entrepreneurial Jews who emigrated to Hollywood from New York and other points in the East and Midwest. Even though the incumbents are better educated and more urbane, they are colorful, creative, flamboyant—and in some cases outrageous—in many of the same ways as the old moguls. And Yiddish remains the second language of Hollywood.

  Myth: The studio system is dead. Independent producers and agents now hold the power in Hollywood. Truth: Despite many structural changes, the power wielded by the major studios in the production of motion pictures and television programs remains formidable. The studios no longer directly employ large numbers of actors, directors, and writers. Instead, they normally contract with "independent" producers who in turn hire the talent. But the change is hardly revolutionary. The studios still put up most of the money for movies and retain the considerable power that resides with the money. With few exceptions, the studios still have a major voice—

  *The statement actually was made by Fitzgerald's character Cecilia Brady in The Last Tycoon

  frequently veto power—in the producer's assembly of a film project and in the production of the film itself. Most "independent" producers in fact are dependent producers.

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p; Myth: Studio bosses used to have absolute power but are impotent today. Truth: The heads of the film studios have—and always have had—less power to function independently of their corporate parents than has been commonly portrayed. Louis B. Mayer was one of the most famous figures in America from the twenties until the fifties, and was thought to have absolute power over his Hollywood domain, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. Fewer people had heard of Nicholas M. Schenck (pronounced Skenk), the president and chief executive officer of Loew's Incorporated. Loew's Incorporated, however, owned MGM. and L. B. Mayer did not function in a vacuum. He reported to Nick Schenck. They talked by telephone two or three times a day in an age when coast-to-coast telephone calls were not made so casually as they are today. Nick Schenck was the "undisputed boss of the whole shebang." reported Fortune in 1939. and had an "uncanny eye for profitable pictures." It was Nick Schenck. not L. B. Mayer, who spoke perhaps the most prescient sentence ever uttered about the movie business: "There's nothing wrong with this business that good pictures can't cure." The two men railed at each other constantly. Mayer referred to Schenck variously as "the general." "Nick Skunk." and "the smiler and the killer."

  "That Nick." Mayer once said to MGM production boss. Dorc Schary, "he always has to be the big 'I am.' The big cheese. All he knows about movies you could stick in a cat's ass."

  David Begelman and Alan Hirschfield were saying comparable things about each other in the seventies, although not to each other's face. Their rivalry was subtle and their relationship actually was quite cordial and reflected a strong mutual grasp of the truths of Hollywood. They understood that power in Hollywood resided where it always had—in the top echelon of the film studios and networks and their parent corporations: that power rarely was absolute and usually was shared among the two or three or four top people in each company; that a degree of rivalry and jockeying for position was inevitable;* and that when all the acclaim had been handed out, and