Johnson telephoned Joe Fischer at his home in the New Jersey suburbs at seven o'clock Monday evening, Eastern time. Fischer, too, was unfamiliar with the name Pierre Groleau. He instructed Johnson to say nothing to Begelman and to get the Groleau material to Mickey Rudin's office in Beverly Hills immediately. Then Joe Fischer called Alan Hirschfield: "It looks like we may have another one."
Mickey Rudin hadn't heard of Pierre Groleau either. But Rudin's first move after receiving the Groleau file aroused further suspicions. An assistant whom he sent down the street to the address on the Groleau check—9465 Wilshire Boulevard—could find no trace of a Pierre Groleau. The name was not on the building registry and never had heen. Then Rudin established, through an informal channel, that Sy Weintraub was the purchaser of the cashier's check that Begelman had presented with the cancellation of the Groleau agreement. Although Rudin did not know that Weintraub was a friend of Begelman's, Rudin himself had known Weintraub casually for many years, and it struck him as strange that Sy Weintraub would have bought a cashier's check that David Begelman had used to cancel an obscure Columbia Pictures contract for work in France by a man with a Wilshire Boulevard address that appeared to be phony.
As Rudin sat at his octagonal conference table studying the documents, one of the young lawyers in his firm en
tered the room and noticed Grole
au's name.
"What
are
you doing with Pierre Grole
au?"
"Just who is Pierre Groleau?" Rudin asked.
"He's the maitre d' at Ma Maison. I play tennis with him every so often."
The pieces of the Groleau puzzle were telephoned to New York over the course of Tuesday. Although they did not form a complete picture, they strongly suggested another embezzlement. Hirschfield and
Fischer knew that Sy We
intraub and
Begelman
were close friends and also surmised that since Ma Maison was one of Begelman's favorite restaurants, he certainly knew Pierre Groleau. A copy of the
Groleau check was sent to New York on a facsimile transmitter, and Herbert Allen's handwriting contact said that the endorsement appeared to have been written by Begelman.
As in the previous week, appointments and lunches were canceled, secretaries were told to hold all calls, and the high command of Columbia Pictures Industries assembled again at 711 Fifth Avenue. The investigation had not even begun and already they were confronting three separate embezzlements totaling S70,000. The Cliff Robertson forgery was beginning to look trivial when compared to the Peter
Choate
and Pierre Groleau transactions,* which involved not only forgery but the creation of false contracts and multiple checks, as well as the use of unwitting assistance by high-level studio staff members in their preparation. Even though the Robertson forgery, if viewed charitably and in isolation, might have seemed impulsive, the other two embezzlements clearly were acts of a careful, rational mind.
Furthermore, Columbia had to face the chilling knowledge that if the Cliff Robertson matter had not been
forced
to the attention of the company by Robertson's own persistence—had it not been for a single IRS 1099 form—none of the embezzlements would have been discovered.
And apart from the nature of Begelman's acts and the process of their discovery, still another ominous issue presented itself: the massive dimensions of Begelman's lying. He had lied to Joe Fischer ten days earlier on the Thursday and Friday immediately after Detective
Silvey
's call. Then he had been summoned to New York and, under threat of summary dismissal, had made an emotional plea for forgiveness, and sworn that they had found everything—that there were no more embezzlements to be found. He had sworn to Herbert Allen in the limousine Wednesday night. He had sworn to the top officers and lawyers of the corporation at the Carlyle on Thursday. Now it appeared that while he was still in New York, swearing and pleading, he had initiated a plan to conceal the third embezzlement through a sequence of additional carefully devised ruses—a check that was not really from Pierre Groleau, a bogus release from a bogus contract, and a bogus telex from France.
Alan Hirschfield, Joe Fischer, Herbert Allen, Todd Lang, and the others deliberated through Tuesday afternoon, adjourned for the
*
Like Choate. Gr
ole
au knew nothing or Begelman's use of his name to embezzle money.
night, and convened again Wednesday. Joe Fischer in particular found the new developments too egregious to be accommodated by the interim solution that had been devised the previous Friday. Almost from the beginning, Fischer had advocated
Begelman
's dismissal from his studio job as well as from his corporate post. Lacking strong leadership from Hirschfield, however, he had gone along with the idea of dumping Begelman at the corporate level while retaining him at the studio. The Groleau discovery, however, prompted Fischer to conclude that the company had no choice but to fire
Begelman
unequivocally and irrevocably.
Agreeing with Fischer was Allen Adler, a thirty-one-year-old senior vice president of the corporation who was invited into the deliberations on Wednesday, September 28, the day after the Groleau embezzlement was confirmed. Adler was a somewhat controversial figure in the Columbia upper echelon. A protege of Alan
Hirschfield
's, he was undeniably brilliant and could be charming. But he was also very abrasive on occasion and prone to violent displays of temper. Tall, with curly dark hair, he had agreed to be a "Bachelor of the Month" in
Cosmopolitan
magazine, which quoted him as saying of his Colu
mbia duties, "I function as an e
nergizer. I make things happen!"
Some at Columbia considered Adle
r a hothead, but
Hirschfield
valued his advice. Hearing about Begelman's crimes for the first time, Adler found himself shocked not only by the substance but by the tone of the discussion. Over lunch around Hirschfield'
s large glass coffee table, Adle
r heard talk of nuances, of shadings, of degrees of culpability. He heard talk of resignation versus leave of absence; of precisely what to tell and not tell the SEC; of euphemisms that might be used in the press release to obfuscate
Begelman
's deeds and blunt their impact while still meeting the company's legal requirements for public disclosure. But Adler heard no talk of what he perceived to be the essence of the situation, and no talk of decisive action. Finally, he pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and said:
"I want five minutes. I can't believe what I'm hearing. Arc you guys crazy? Where have you been for the last few years? Have you never heard of Watergate? I'm not saying
Begelman
has to be prosecuted, but of course he
does have to leave the company!
It's a shame, but you can't change the fact of what has happened and you've got to suffer some consequences. You can't fog this over. There are people out there, even as we sit here, who know what he's done. What makes you believe the details aren't going to get out? Nixon would still be President if he had revealed the errors at the beginning and fired those responsible. It's the cover-up that makes you look like you're an accomplice."
Amidst a lot of throat clearing, Adler was assured that there would be no cover-up. But his outburst was counterproductive. Coming from a man whom many in the company considered brash and immature, his thoughts on this occasion were dismissed as brash and immature. This was not Watergate. It was a complex and ambiguous corporate problem that required the application of sophisticated, seasoned corporate minds.
In principle, A
lan Hirschfield agreed with Adle
r and
Fischer,
Begelman should be fired outright. But Herbert's and Matty's views had to be considered, too. There was a bizarre quality about David's conduct that eluded understanding and seemed to demand further inquiry, despite the rationality and premeditation of the acts themselves.
In the end, the group again found a way to avoid firing Begelman pending the results of the investigation. It was agreed that he should be called back to New York for "direct discussion." "Absent a suitable explanation" of the Pierre Groleau matter, the board secretary wrote in the minutes of the meeting, Begelman would take a "leave of absence" from the studio in addition to resigning as a director and officer of the parent corporation. The formal action would be taken Friday in New York. So that Begelman would not be lost to the company entirely, however, he would become a "consultant" and would continue to draw his full presidential salary.
Of the thousands of journalists who had covered Hollywood over the decades, none had ever garnered the fame that had come to Rona Barre
tt by the late seventies. Not He
dda. Not Louella. No one. Emerging from Queens into Manhattan in the fifties as Rona Burstein, she first decided that she had to change her name. ("Burstein would never make it in the world of glamour," she wrote lat
er in her autobiography. "Burste
in was for the grocery business.") As Rona Barrett, she got a job as the "chief coordinator" of the Eddie Fisher fan clubs. She moved to Hollywood and became a fan magazine columnist. ("There is probably no reporter who knows the Frankie Avalon story better than I do.") She switched from print to television, first to the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles, then to the Metromedia group of stations, and finally to the full ABC network as the
Hollywood reporter on
Good Morning America,
whose audience (thanks in part to Rona's presence) had come to rival that of
Today on
NBC
. In addition to her twice-a-morn
ing broadcasts, Barrett did prime-time specials, published her own fan magazines, made millions in Beverly Hills real estate, and socialized with the mighty and the near-mighty of the entertainment world. She had become a Hollywood institution.
Rona had known David Begelman well for many years and they often saw each other socially. But it was rare if not unprecedented for Rona to go to David's home for breakfast as she did on Thursday, September 29. When she accepted the invitation, Rona thought that David might want to chide her gently for broadcasting so many reports on Columbia Pictures' difficulties in making
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The picture's budget had been substantially exceeded. There had been drugs on the set. The studio had found it necessary to banish one of the co
-
producers from the lot. But David that morning did not mention Rona's reports on
Close Encounters.
He had little to say of substance on any subject. It was just a friendly and very bland chat, and Rona drove away from the house on Linden Drive thinking "What was that all about?"
Alan Hirschfield, Herbert Allen, and Leo Jaffe flew to Washington that morning for an obligatory, long-scheduled meeting of the board of directors of the Motion Picture Association of America. Top officers from each of the major movie companies were there, including Arthur Krim of United Artists, Lew Wasserman of MCA, Dennis Stanfill of Twentieth Century-Fox, Frank Wells of Warner Bros., Barry Diller of Paramount, and several others. (Begelman had canceled earlier in the week.) The film industry showed its flag in Washington every so often and this was an especially auspicious occasion. The group met with President Carter in the Roosevelt Room of the White House early in the afternoon, then went to Capitol Hill for a meeting with the congressional leadership, and then on to Vice President Mondale's mansion for cocktails and dinner. The Columbia people got through the day without letting even a hint slip to their competitors that they were mired in a crisis. (A few weeks later, after the word was out, Frank Wells told Alan Hirschfield that it was the best performance he had ever seen, on screen or off.)
Leo Jaffe, having confirmed with the lawyers in New York that they would be prepared to deal with Begelman by Friday morning, telephoned David from a pay booth in the Capitol building and asked that he fly to New York that evening, be at Todd Lang's office by ten the next morning, and bring a lawyer with him. Begelman agreed to come and did not ask why. He called his financial manager, Jerry Breslauer, and told him that he needed to see him urgently and would be over at two o'clock. He then located his wife, Gladyce, and pal Sy Weintraub, and asked that they meet him at Breslauer's office. There, he told them that he was being summoned to New York to answer for "terrible, terrible financial transgressions" which he had committed against Columbia.
"I
am in deep, deep, deep trouble," he said, declining to be specific. David said he would go to New York alone, but Gladyce and Sy insisted on accompanying him. After rushing home for a few overnight traveling items, they caught the 4:30 American flight, the last nonstop of the day before the red-eye. Before leaving Los Angeles, Sy Weintraub managed to track down Herbert Allen by phone on Capitol Hill and made an appointment to see him at his Broad Street office early Friday morning.