His solitude was broken by another passenger in the first-class cabin, Dino De Laurentiis, whom Alan knew casually but had not seen for a couple of months.
"I read that David is-a back with-a you," De
Laurentiis said. "That's a-nice
. I didn't understand the whole hullabaloo, but it's a-good that he's back. He's a good man."
"Yes, Dino, we're very happy that everything worked out," Alan said.
In Los Angeles, where Hirschfield last had been on a bright, warm day in late November, winter had begun in earnest. His Miami flight landed at LAX in a chilly rain, which persisted through Tuesday. Joe Fischer had flown out from New York, and the meetings they held at the studio that week were notable less for substance than for mood.
The studio twitched with tension.
David Begelman had been back in his office less than three weeks, two of which were slowed by holidays. While retaining his sleek, controlled demeanor, he propelled himself through a packed schedule of meetings and other activities, determined to appear worthy of what had come to be perceived as an extraordinary if not bizarre gesture of support by his employer. His underlings mustered a kind of brittle ebullience in his presence. Privately and among themselves, however, they fretted about how his unexpected return, and the tangle of circumstances that lay behind it, would affect their relationships with him and with each other. There was unspoken tension, for example, between Begelman and Dan Melnick, who had quietly supported Begelman's ouster; and between Melnick and production vice president Bill Tennant, who had schemed ardently for
Begelman
's reinstatement.
The arrival of Hirschfield naturally heightened the tension. The reversal of his decision on Begelman had bewildered the studio people, and now they had been bewildered again by the Columbia board of directors' public pillorying of Hirschfield in
New York
magazine. Though he continued to benefit from a considerable reservoir of affection among the staff, no one knew what to say to him or how-Jo react to him. His authority was in doubt. No one knew whether he was truly in command.
Hirschfield had lunch on Wednesday with Ray Stark. Like his mi
ssion to Miami to see Rosenhaus,
the meeting with Stark was a peace overture made at the suggestion of Herbert Allen, who had told Hirschfield that it would be necessary for him to repair his relationships with each of the board members individually. Since Stark wielded at least as much power over the company as most board members, he was in the same category. Hirschfield, of course, had grown to hate these men—Stark, in particular—and it was difficult for him to feign even a modicum of good will. He held Stark personally responsible for much of the pressure to reinstate
Begelman
and had assailed Stark many times in conversations with others. He and Stark had talked occasionally by phone but had not met privately since late October. In the same setting as that meeting, Chow's Kosherama Deli, just off the Burbank lot. Stark was being both magnanimous and nonchalant.
Hirschfield
certainly had made a wise decision. Stark said, in bringing Begelman back into the company. What Alan should do now is forget the past, give David his full support, make peace with the board of directors, and get on with the important business of the company.
"How do you expect mc to forget the despicable things that were done to me?"
Hirschfield
asked.
"Put it in perspective, Alan. It was nothing personal. It was like a war. All's fair in war. But once it's over, it's over. You'll drive yourself crazy by dwelling on it. We all have to get on with our lives. A year from now, or sooner, we'll all be laughing about this."
"What about the board's responsibility for making peace? What am I supposed to do when the board calls me a liar in print, and says I'm untrustworthy and am on probation?"
"Just let it roll off your back. It's only a magazine article. We all have things written about us that we don't like."
"There's more coming."
"Forget it. It'll all blow over in two weeks. It'll be like yesterday's newspaper. D
oesn't mean a thing." "We'll see
."
Hirschfield
,
Begelman
. and Fischer talked through that afternoon and into the evening at the studio about
California Suite,
which Neil Simon had adapted from his play, and which Ray Stark was producing for Columbia. Despite the potential appeal of the film's cast— Jane Fonda, Alan Alda, Walter Matthau. Richard Pryor. Michael Caine, and Maggie Smith—
Hirschfield
questioned whether the film stood much chance of making a profit and posed the idea of selling a half interest in
California Suite
to another studio. But Begelman, who had considerable faith in the project, staunchly opposed dividing it. They argued until nearly eight o'clock and decided to continue over dinner.
Hirschfield wanted to avoid the main-line Beverly Hills restaurants where they inevitably would be seen and interrupted by acquaintances in the industry. Everyone in town was gossiping about whether Begelman and Hirschfield truly were reconciled. Hoping to attract a minimum of attention, they went to the Beverly Hills Hotel's main dining room, recently redecorated and renamed The Coterie. The Coterie served some of the finest food in Los Angeles, but unlike its sister establishment across the lobby, the Polo Lounge, where anonymity was impossible, The Coterie had never acquired the cachet of an official movie industry hangout. The odds of dining undisturbed, therefore, were greater.
Bored with
California Suite,
Hirschfield began complaining about his fight with the board and Matty Rosenhaus in particular.
"Matty says he
doesn't trust me. He said to me
, 'I never trusted you, Alan, from the
day you came to this company. I
never trusted you.' How could Matty say a thing like that to me?"
"Well," said
Begelman
, "attribute a lot of it to emotion and to overheating."
"It's more than that,"
Hirschfield
said. "He's had a chance to cool off. Instead he's turning up the heat, saying those things in
New York
magazine."
"Alan, I
don't know what passed between you and Matty,"
Begelman
said, "but I know what must pass between you in order for this to be resolved. You've got to make a speech to Matty that goes something like this: 'This has been a time for which no textbook has ever been written. Perhaps no one has acted as well as one would have liked, given all the circumstances, but we must forget the events of the recent past.
We must wipe the slate clean. We
must start anew, refreshed, and renew our labors for the company with the same amount
of trust and resolution that we
had when we all came together in the late summer of 1973, and continue to do our good work for this comp
any!' If you make that speech, I
can't imagine a reasonable man in the world who won't say, 'Amen, okay, done!' "
"Matty's not a reasonable man."
"He's not so unreasonable that he wouldn't respond to a plea such as that," David said. "I can almost guarantee it. In fact, I'll set it up. When I'm in New York next week, I'll make it a point to meet with Matty and create the environment in which that speech can be made."
"You're underestimating the depths of their feelings," Alan said.
"No, 1 know their feelings are deep. They feel you misled them all the way through the investigation, and you did. People had reason to believe by the things you said or implied that you were going to be open-minded. If you were going to be open-minded, then they felt that, as a reasonable man, you were available for persuasion. But it turned out that your mind was made up all along. And yet you never let on that it was made up."
"It wasn't made up until all the evidence was in," Hirschfield said.
Warming to his subject,
Begelman
continued with his own speech that he had been waiting for months to make.
"The one thing
you were never able to say to me
, Alan, man to man, was 'David, I don't want you back. Period.' Nicer than that, but clearly, in words that were unmistakable. They might have been sympathetic or commiserating words, but unequivocal. And you never said that to me. You never said that to me on the day I was placed on leave of absence. You never said that after the board meeting in November when you apparently indicated to the board that you were leaning against me. We had breakfast the next morning, and you gave me reason to hope there was a chance. If you had said, on the advent of my leave of absence, 'We're going to go through this investigation because we have an obligation to our shareholders and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I pra
y it isn't Equity Funding, and I
pray we know most of what there is to know. If it's this and no more, then, in consideration of your seeking psychiatric assistance, in consideration of your past service to this company, which has been extraordinary, in consideration of your ability to render further service to this company, we will make an arrangement which will see you self-employed as an independent producer making pictures for Columbia so that your talents and abilities will not be lost to Columbia. But under no circumstances are you coming back to Columbia." If you had said that, it would have been a
clear signal
to everyone, to me. but more important, to your associates, to Herbert, and to Matty. And none of this brouhaha would have gotten started. But you never said that."
"Yeah, that was our original mistake," Fischer agreed.
"You never said that,"'Begelman continued, "and therefore, everybody else assumed the option of reinstatement was open, and they're thinking, okay, we'll go through this investigation, and when we come out of it, we'll see everything laid on the table, and if we find nothing of any substance that is new, we'll talk it through, with the distinct possibility that David can come back to the company. You allowed them to believe that you were part of that approach to the problem."
"I was," Alan said.
"Well, it didn't appear so in the end. The only new thing that was found was Ritt, which was not of such a different character as to make it a new ball game. It was the same ball game, a ball game you had a fix on. And yet you then surprised everybody by turning out to be adamant, which would have been fine had you made your position clear at the outset. But since you did not make your position clear, the board, in the end, felt you had led them on a merry chase. They felt betrayed."
Hirschfield shrugged, sighed, and rolled his eyes. He did not have the energy to respond. Chief executive officers had fired line officers for comments far less blunt and critical than Begelman had just uttered. But both men knew that much of Hirschfield's authority as chief executive officer had been eroded by the events of recent weeks. As a practical matter, Hirschfield had been stripped of a number of the prerogatives he once had had, including the prerogative of firing David Begelman.
Depressed, Hirschfield flew back to New York Thursday and did not go to the office until Monday.
FORTY
In order for any event, public or private, to become a major news story, a story that dominates the media for weeks or months, the event and the coverage of the event must acquire a key ingredient. Without that ingredient, the story drifts and eventually withers. The ingredient is reaction—broad public reaction. Until there is reaction, either in the form of growing attention in the press, or visible public attention of other kinds, the event is like an airplane moving along an endless runway, unable to get up enough speed to take off. Some events are sufficiently momentous to compel substantial and varied reaction from the time they occur until far into the future. Just as often, though, reaction develops gradually, and then is sharply accelerated by some form of catalyst—a particular news article or a subsequent event.
For months after
The Washington Post
began reporting the Watergate scandal, reaction was tentative and grew gradually. Then there were two catalysts: the attention devoted to the story by the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, which introduced it to a substantially larger audience than was reached by
The Washington Post,
and the attitude of Judge John J. Sirica,
which induced a number of peopl
e to tell more of the truth than they previously had been disposed to tell.
In the case of the Columbia Pictures scandal—a less cosmic event than Watergate to be sure, but s
till the focus of a major media
-onslaught—one of the most important catalysts was an article by syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, published in the New York
Daily News
and about sixty other newspapers on the morning of Thursday, January 12. 1978.
Most reactions to developments in the Begelman affair until that time had reverberated inside the entertainment and business communities.
The Wall Street Journal's
revelation on December 20 that Begelman had forged checks and embezzled funds had shocked many in Hollywood and on Wall Street but attracted little attention elsewhere.
The Washington Post's
long interview with Cliff Robertson, published on Christmas, took several days to circulate because of the
Post's
negligible distribution in Los Angeles and New York, and low newspaper readership in general over the holiday period. The
Journal
and
Post
pieces, moreover, were published on inside pages, reflecting the editors' judgments that the
Begelman
story was not front-page news.* The
Los Angeles Times,
which had the resources to cover Hollywood better than any other publication but never had done so, waited until Friday, December 30, and then ran, deep inside the paper, a severely truncated reprint of the previous Sunday's
Washington Post
story. Even fewer people saw the
Times
reprint than had seen the
Post
original.
Rona Barrett, with all of her fame, and
Variety's
Art Murphy, with all of his prominence as a trade journalist inside the industry, were not well positioned to be catalysts because they were so closely identified with Hollywood that whatever they said or wrote tended to be perceived only as Hollywood reacting to itself.
As the new year began, therefore, the Columbia Pictures story was still on the runway and still not moving fast enough to take off. Dan Dorfman's article in
New York
magazine January 9 gave the story a push. Because of the nature of its readers,
New York,
the first and flashiest of the new breed of city and regional magazines, exerts an influence substantially greater than its modest circulation would indicate.
New York
is seen by just about everyone who runs the international communications and media institutions headquartered in New York City. Whether they admitted it or not, the editors of
The New York Times, Time, Newsweek,
the Associated Press and United Press International, as well as executives of the television networks, motion-picture companies, talent agencies, book publishers, and the advertising community, used
New York
magazine (among other things) as a tip sheet, a loose guide to what's hot and trendy.
New York,
therefore, was automatically influential because, week in and week out, it touched the perceptions of this potent group of people.
*
Washington Post
publisher Katharine Graham, who had initiated the Post story alter Dina Merrill's call, w
as surprised on Christma
s morning
to
find
that
her editors,
had not played the story on page 1
.
But though the Dorfman article on Monday added momentum to the Columbia story, it was Liz Smith on Thursday who lifted it off the ground. After her syndicated column was begun in 1976, Liz Smith quickly had become the leading newspaper gossip columnist in America and a prime practitioner of the new form of gossip journalism that burgeoned in the seventies and effectively eclipsed the Hedda Hopper-Walter Winchell school of gossip that had flourished in past decades and lived on in publications less respectable and powerful than the New York
Daily News.
Unlike the old columnists, Liz Smith wrote with a droll sense of humor and a lack of malice. She did not take herself or her work more seriously than the subject merited, but she did strive for accuracy, and on the few occasions when she erred, she corrected herself openly. A skilled reporter by any standard. Smith consistently broke major news stories—not only show-business stories but also stories from other fields such as politics and publishing. Thus, she had helped to redefine gossip, elevate it to a new level of respectability, and broaden the audience for it. And even though she wrote mostly about entertainment and personalities, she was based in New York and did not suffer from the close identification with Hollywood that sometimes worked to the disadvantage of Rona Barrett. By the late seventies, Liz Smith's column was very influential and, in a way, essential. In much the way that a change in U.S. foreign policy was not certified as major news until it had appeared in
The New York Times,
and the bankruptcy of Pcnn Central was not certified as major news until it had appeared in
The Wall Street Journal,
the scandal at Columbia Pictures was not certified as major news until it was addressed at length by Liz Smith.*
A
nd
N
ow
F
olks,
"H
ollywoodgate
" was the headline on her January 12 column.
*lronically. Liz Smit
h would have
written sooner about Columbia and Begelman if agent Sue Mengers had not convinced her for
a
time that the story was unworthy.
Mengers
a
lso h
ad succeeded in influencing Rona Barrett
's reporting
The saga of tycoon David Begelman and his improper behavior concerning finances while running Columbia Pictures is not over yet, even though the company has forgiven and reinstated him, he has repaid the money, almost everyone in the film community has rallied around and closed ranks, and the devout wish is that it w
ill all be quickly forgotten.
It
won't be.
Even as I write this,
The Washington Post
—that scourge of Watergate—has deployed top reporters to California to dig further into the Begelman-Columbia story. The name that these behind-the-scenes diggers have for the situation is "Hollywood-gate." They say that what has been published so far, pro and con, is merely the tip of the old iceberg . . .
Even though she had only one piece of marginal new information— that the
Post
was still working on the story—Liz Smith, merely by devoting the bulk of her column to the subject, drew more attention to it than the combined enterprise of
The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post,
and
New York
magazine had drawn by that time. She certified it as a story of broad interest to the general public and helped make up the minds of important editors all over New York and all over the country, who had been only vaguely aware of the story and were wondering whether they should cover it. Liz Smith thus played an integral part in launching one of the most intense, frantic, and chaotic media pursuits of a story of less than life-and-dcath importance that America had seen in many years. The resulting climate would serve to heighten the impact of the major magazine articles then in preparation by Andrew Tobias for
Esquire,
Jeanie Kasindorf for
New West,
and Lucian K. Truscott, IV, for
The New York Times.
That Thursday afternoon, the
New York Post
appeared with a prominently displayed story under the headline
H
ollywoodgate
C
overup:
C
liff
R
obertson
B
lasts
T
reatment of
F
ilm
M
ogul.
"Actor Cliff Robertson has charged an 'incredible coverup' of the Columbia Pictures president's forgery of a $10,000 check made out to him.
...
'It is as though
Begelman
is above normal law enforcement. This scandal has to do with Hollywood and I think it involves an enormous amount of money, an incredible coverup and I believe it is the tip of the iceberg,' " Robertson told the
Post.
The New York Times
published an article on the front page of its business section Friday morning. Written by the
Times's
Los Ange
les bureau chief, Robert Lindse
y, the story began: "Three months after David
Begelman
was ousted as chief of Columbia Pictures and one month after his reinstatement in one of Hollywood's most powerful jobs, controversy and mystery continue to surround the flamboyant film mogul." The article reviewed information previously published elsewhere but contained little new information.
In the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
on Friday, entertainment columnist James Bacon wrote:
"The Washington Post
apparently is incensed because the Hollywood trade press never used the word 'embezzlement.' There's a reason for that. Embezzlement is not a sin in Hollywood. It's a way of life. I once asked a well-known Hollywood producer, who has never made a picture for less than $10 million, if he wouldn't be happier if he were making SI million pictures. Less headaches and all that. His answer: 'You can't steal
$1
million from a
$1
million picture.' Hollywood, for all its prestigious industry awards, which one segment of the industry gives to another and vice versa, is really the greatest concentration of con artists in the world."
Cliff Robertson, after months of silence, and then a soul baring to
The Washington Post
after his name was published in
The Wall Street Journal,
now was talking to just about anyone who called. Having been interviewed by the
New York Post
on Thursday, he talked on Friday to the Associated Press, which circulated a story on its major wires around the world. "Actor Cliff Robertson says the case of Columbia Pictures President David
Begelman
—still on the job despite his admission that he embezzled $60,000 from the studio—raised 'disturbing kind of remembrances of Watergate.' . . . Robertson said that the lack of legal action in the case Meads one to think that there are two levels of justice' in Hollywood. 'Wealth and power create a kind of atmosphere of fear. I think they begin to believe that they
are
above the law.' "
That was enough for the Los Angeles District Attorney, John Van dc Kamp, who announced Friday that his office would examine police investigations of the case to date. "One of the problems for police agencies involved in this case." Van de Kamp said, "is that neither Columbia Pictures nor Robertson has wanted to file a criminal complaint."
Van de Kamp'
s announcement fueled another se
ries of news stories across the country.
DA
Will Review Scenario with Mogul as Heavy
(New York
Daily News)
DA
Steps into Probe of Columbia Studios Chief
(Los
Angeles Times)
Begelman Case . . . Better Than a Movie
(Los
Angeles Herald Examiner)
Columbia Pictures top brass will be holding an emergency meeting here to "re-examine" the David Begelman case. There may be another explosion shaking the upper echelons. (Earl Wilson's syndicated column)