Herbert A
llen waited on the line while Be
gelman made his way up the two flights to his office. "There appears to be a serious problem with you, David," Herbert said. "Is it as serious as I'm being told it is?"
Begelman was trembling slightly, his voice quaking. "Yes, I guess it is." "Could you come in and talk to us about it?" "I'll come this evening."
"Fine, David, I think it's best if we have a full discussion. That's the only way we can help you."
A moment later Joe Fischer called and asked that
Begelman
stop at Mickey Rudin's office on his way to the airport.
When the Peppard film ended an h
our later, Dan
Melnick
and Bill
Tennant returned to the executive suite and asked David's secretary where he was.
"He's gone to New York. Herbert Allen called and he went to New York."
Melnick was surprised, but Tennant remembered that
Begelman
had made enough sudden trips to New York over the years to have been known as "The Phantom" when he was an agent. Melnick and Tennant put the sudden disappearance out of their minds.
Begelm
an declined Mickey Rudin's offer of coffee or a soft drink. They had known each other for many years, but only casually, and Rudin did not prolong the conversation. He explained that Columbia Pictures had asked him to look into the Cliff Robertson and Peter
Choate
matters, and that it would be wise if David retained a lawyer.
Begelman
was so visibly upset that Rudin offered to have his driver take him to the airport. David said he could make it on his own. He caught the 4:30 American flight to JFK.
Alan
Hirschfield
's parents had come up from Oklahoma City for the Brandeis event the night before, an
d were staying over in Scarsdale
for a few days. After dinner, Alan took Norman into the privacy of the den and told him for the first time about the
Begelman
problem. Alan felt himself becoming mired in the complexities that seemed to be involved in the proper handling of the matter. To Norman, however, it was all quite clear:
"You're a public corporation, kiddo. I've been an officer of a public corporation for a long time. You can't have a thief around you. It doesn't make any difference how or what he steals. It contaminates all concerned. And you'd better let the SEC know what the hell's going on."
After a few minutes, Todd Lang, whom Alan had asked to drop by (he lived only two minutes away), joined the conversation. Although they did little more than commiserate with each other, Lang underscored the explosive nature of the problem confronting Columbia. The entertainment industry is the most visible industry in the world. Once a scandal becomes known, it will get ten times the publicity, and cause ten times the embarrassment, of a comparable scandal in the steel industry, or the computer industry, or the shoe industry. Columbia had to be absolutely certain that when the
Begelman
matter became public, as it almost certainly would eventually, the company had observed all laws—the unwritten laws of propriety as well as the written laws of fraud—in the strictest and most conscientious way.
The Allen & Company limousine stopped outside the American Airlines baggage area at half past midnight. Herbert Allen took the escalator to the upper level, passed through the security screen, and headed toward the designated gate. His mood was sour. It was two hours past his usual bedtime, and he was tired. More important, he had wanted
Hirschfield
to accompany him to meet
Begelman
as a demonstration that the company was united in its compassion for a valued officer in trouble. But Alan had declined, reminding Herbert that Todd Lang felt it best that contact with Begelman be limited, because of the legal delicacy of the situation, to an official confrontation scheduled for Thursday morning at Herbert's apartment—a meeting at which Todd would preside. Alan had even tried to dissuade Herbert from going to the airport, but Herbert was impatient with Lang's caution and determined to question Begelman himself before the lawyers had at him. The more he pondered what David apparently had done, the less sense it made.
David looked even worse than Herbert had imagined that he might—pale, slightly unkempt, and obviously nervous—a stunning contrast to his usual spiffy, controlled mien. In the limo, Herbert closed the sliding window behind the chauffeur as the vehicle pulled into the Manhattan-bound traffic.
"Well, David, I'm sure you'll agree that the time has come for candor all around. It's time to open up. We're your friends. You've been wonderful to us, and we're prepared to be as good to you as we can be under the circumstances. If we have a problem, let's deal with it together, okay?"
"Okay."
"The first thing we need are the facts—all of them. What about this check? The Cliff Robertson check. Is it your endorsement?" "I guess it must be, but I have no recollection of writing it." "Why would you do something like that?" "I don't know."
"You could have borrowed ten thousand
dollars—from me, or anyone." "I
just can't explain it."
"What about this thing with the architect,
Choate
? That makes no sense to me at all."
"I'm sorry. I know it seems impossible to believe, but I can't come up with a logical, or even an illogical explanation, for any of this."
"Do you remember the
Choate
thing?" "Only dimly."
"Are we going to find other things when we look, other checks, other fake contracts?" "No."
"How can you be sure if you can't remember these?" "I'm not a thief, Herbert."
"I must tell you, David, that if these two items are all of it, we may be able to help you. But if we find more, you're finished, period. We can't have this sort of thing. No company can condone it, whatever the explanation or lack of one."
"There is no more."
"I hope not."
They passed the rest of the ride in silence, staring out into the New York night. Herbert Allen was deeply worried. Either Begelman was lying o
r he was mentally unstable. In e
ither case, Herbert suspected that whatever investigation Columbia conducted would turn up more embezzlements, unless they had been concealed in some way. The basic illogic of what they knew so far was staggering. If someone were going to steal from a movie company, he wouldn't go about it in the way that Begelman apparently had, especially if he knew the company inside out—all its nooks and crannies all over the world—like David knew Columbia Pictures. David might have millions of dollars stashed away somewhere that no one would ever find. But if he did, why would he forge a single check, or draw up a single bogus contract?
Herbert also had begun to ponder another problem quite apart from embezzlement—how to replace David if it came to that. The studio presidencies were the most difficult jobs in Hollywood, and one need look no farther than the turnover rate to see how few people embodied the delicate mixture of diverse talents required to perform them successfully. It was relatively easy, Herbert felt, to fill the jobs above and below the studio head. There were enough people around who could run the corporation—essentially a matter of managing and fine tuning a financial structure. There were also a lot of people who could make a particular movie. But it took a very rare combination of abilities to coordinate the making of two or three dozen movies at once: to make judgments about rough cuts of those near completion; to divine whether a picture in mid-production is going well; to decide what to do about it if it is not; to choose just the right producer, director, writer, and cast for a particular project (it was astounding how many people were under the mistaken impression that the studio heads weren't involved in those decisions anymore); to choose the few worthy projects in the first place from the hundreds that come along, anticipating public tastes two years in the future; to maintain cordial and durable relationships in every segment of a community of inflated, distorted, temperamental people; to anticipate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and release patterns, not only in America, but throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America as well. Most of these judgments were subjective, and most of the criteria on which they were based were intangible and elusive. Running a studio had always been an arcane business, and when you added television to motion pictures, it became even more so.
Begelman
had proven that he was one of the very few people who was up to the task. Replacing him with someone as able would be extraordinarily difficult, and Herbert dreaded having to do it.
He dropped Begelman at the Carnegie House, where Columbia Pictures maintained one of its apartments for executives, at 2
a.m.
Thursday, September 22, was Yom Kippur, and although the Columbia offices were open, relatively few people were working. So as not to attract attention, it had been decided to convene the next meeting on the
Begelman
problem at Herbert Allen's Carlyle apartment at ten o'clock that morning.
Not many of the Columbia executives were particularly devout, but two of them—Joe Fischer and Victor Kaufman, the young inside legal counsel—were religious enough that it was unprecedented for them to work on Yom Kippur and miss attending temple on the holiest of Jewish holy days. Fischer had confided the reason to his wife. Kaufman, who had been told of the
Begelman
problem only the day before, was acutely conscious of the secrecy that still shrouded the matter and told his wife nothing.
Alan
Hirschfield
and Todd Lang dr
ove down together from Scarsdale
.
Begelman
arrived w
ith two lawyers, Pete Pryor and
Gideon Cashman, whom he had used in the past mainly for handling entertainment contracts. Neither was a specialist in the law of public corporations. While Lang huddled with Cashman and Pryor in the den,
Hirschfield
, Fischer, Kaufman, and Begelman sat in the living room. Herbert Allen flitted back and forth between the two groups, frequently making or taking telephone calls. Barbara Rucker was in and out.
Although Allen had briefed Fischer and Hirschfield on his post-midnight conversation with Begelman, Todd Lang cautioned again that morning that no one except the lawyers should discuss the merits of the case with Begelman. The conversation in the living room, therefore, was extremely uncomfortable. These were men who had worked closely together for four years, who were accustomed to an easy, open relationship with each other; who spoke daily on the phone not only about the most confidential business matters but about the state of their personal lives; who had dined and drunk and laughed together in ea
ch other's homes; at "21," La Co
te Basque, Lutece, Orsini's, and the boardroom at 711 Fift
h; at Chase
n's, La Scala,
Ma Muison, the Mandarin, La Ser
re, and the Burbank Studio commissary; in Cannes, Paris, London, Miami, and other cities; as well as in the first-class cabins of countless wide
-
bodied aircraft. Now, their talk was stiff, subdued, and bland. They chatted at length about the studio and current film projects, especially the surprising success of
The Deep
over the summer, and the anticipated success of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
There were even a few brittle jokes. When lunch was brought in,
Begelman
said, "I'd be happy to sign for that, but under the circumstances I guess it wouldn't look right."
In the den
Begelman
's lawyers had tried to convince Todd Lang that while their client's acts were reprehensible, he was deeply contrite, would make restitution, and woul
d seek psychiatric care. Couldn’
t the matter be concluded simply on that basis, with David remaining in his job? Lang, shocked at such a suggestion, found it necessary to lecture them at length on the responsibilities and imperatives of public corporations, why the SEC must be informed, why Columbia had to launch a full investigation, and why Begelman almost certainly would have to be suspended or terminated. They finally agreed, and after several smaller meetings—
Begelman
with his lawyers, Lang with the Columbia executives—the full group assembled in the living room.
Lang recited the facts of the Cliff Robertson and Peter Choate embezzlements. Did Begelman have any explanation? Any comment? Begelman elaborated on what he had told Herbert Allen in the limousine.
"I have no logical explanation. I can't give you one. I can't even give myself one. It's like a nightmare. Some people's vice is drinking. Some people gamble. Some people use drugs. Some people have a voracious appetite for women. I wish those were my vices. If they were, I wouldn't be here today. I am here today because I apparently misappropriated funds in a highly improper manner which I cannot explain. I have no pressing need for money. I know that even if I did, I could borrow from any one of several people in this very room. My most painful guilt is that I have caused embarrassment and difficulty to you—some of my closest friends."