Even if the article had been entirely accurate, Herbert Allen naturally would have been dismayed to see it published. But he was more than dismayed—he was deeply angry and even desperate— because the article was not accurate. It was strewn with falsehoods, large and small. And where Truscott had come close to the truth, he revealed information that Herbert did not want revealed. The article quoted Alan Hirschfield extensively, reflecting his version of the Begelman fight, a ve
rsion highly critical of the All
ens, and disclosed the direct link between Hirschfield and Jimmy Goldsmith.
Herbert suspected that Hirschfield was behind the entire article. But since he couldn't prove that, he confined his immediate efforts to
The New York Times.
He quickly summoned his lawyer, Robert Werbel, who informed a
Times
lawyer by phone that Allen & Company would sue the
Times
if the article was distributed. On Friday morning, Charlie Allen, Herbert Allen, Robert Werbel, and two other attorneys visited James Goodale, a
Times
executive vice president and publishing lawyer. They presented Goodale with a four-page letter outlining the
Allens
' objections to Lucian Truscott's piece and demanding that it be withdrawn from circulation. Goodale said it was too late; the magazine already had been distributed to thousands of news dealers for insertion in the Sunday
Times.
Word on the article was beginning to circulate, the price of Columbia's stock was plummeting, and at noon on Friday, the New York Stock Exchange stopped trading in the stock because an influx of sell orders had made orderly trading impossible.
That afternoon, Allen & Company announced publicly that it would sue
The New York Times
for $150 million for publishing false and defamatory statements.
Privately, Herbert Allen told Jimmy Goldsmith that he was no longer willing t
o consider selling the All
ens' interest in Columbia Pictures. And he told Alan
Hirschfield
's la
wyer that there would be no further talk for the time being of a new contract for Hirschfield.
Herbert Allen was mystified by
The New York Times.
Just a little more than a year earlier the
Times
had published a lengthy and flattering feature article on Charlie Allen. And now this. It seemed inexplicable. Reports quickly began filtering into Herbert's office about Lucian Truscott's past (the drugs and the trouble with the Army) and about the background of the editor of the article, Lynda Obst. Herbert had never met Lynda Obst, but he objected to everything about Truscott: his manner, his assertive personality, his dress and hair style, not to mention his writing and research. Herbert sensed that he might be the victim of something quite rare in the upper echelon of American journalism: a prominent investigative article which would
be widely believed because of t
he good reputation of the newspaper in which it appeared, but which had been prepared so carelessly that it obviously was an aberration when measured by the standards of
The New York Times.
The article somehow had slipped through the editing process and into print with its major as well as its minor flaws intact. Instead of bein
g savaged by an established, credentiale
d investigative reporter, Herbert appeared to have been the victim of a fluke—a hatchet job perpetrated by an eccentric, long-haired polemicist from
The Village Voice
and a young female editor from
Rolling Stone
and
Beatlemania.
Where were the
Times
editors? Where was Abe Rosenthal?
Herbert knew that he could and would refute the article, but he also knew that the process would take months. Having published the piece, the
Times
would feel
obliged to defend it vigorously. He was right. Three months later, after elaborate negotiations between lawyers for the two sides,
The New York Times
found it necessary to publish perhaps the most elaborate retraction, correction, and apology in the history of major American newspapers up to that time.*
*A. M. Rosenthal, the
Times'
executive editor, was away when the Truscott article was published. It is unlikely, however, that the article would have been stopped even if Rosenthal had been on duty. Several editors below Rosenthal
had more direct responsibility f
or the Sun
day magazine than Rosenthal did,
and those editors all approved the article. Two clear mistakes were ma
de: First. because o
f a zealous commitmen
t to speed, mainly by Lynda Obst,
normal fact-checking procedures were not observed as carefully as they normally are
. Second, the higher editor failed to supervise Obst
sufficiently closely to compensate for her relative inexperience with this type o
f article. In a broader sense, too,
some
Times
people naturally questioned in retrospect whether Lucian Truscott should have been hired in the
firs
t
place. A careful review of his previous work might have cast doubt on his suitability for such a sensitive assignment, despite some creditable investigative stories in the
Voice
and an obvious talent for other types of writing. The
Times
naturally tried to avoi
d another such debacle. Truscott
was not asked to do any more compl
ex
business investigative articles. Several months later be published a successful novel about West Point. And the Columbia Pictures article led directly to Lynda Obst's departure from the magazine. Subsequently she became a Hollywood producer.
The article was not entirely false, of course. Lucian Truscott and Lynda Obst were on to something. They had sensed correctly that somewhere in the morass of the
Begelman
scandal there lurked a good story that had not yet been told. But even after weeks of groping, Truscott had not grasped correctly what the story was. He wrote it as he saw it, however, and he wrote it sloppily.
Truscott's central thesis—that Columbia Pictures was for sale— was true on its face. But it was true only in a very narrow sense, which Trus
cott did not emphasize. The All
ens had not put their interest in Columbia up for sale. The sole initiative to sell the company or any part of it had come from Alan Hirschfield, who was trying to wrest power from Herbert Allen by enlisting an outsider willing to acquire enough stock to
neutralize or eliminate the All
ens' influence and anoint
Hirschfield
the chief executive in fact as well as in title. (Outsiders indeed had expressed interest in the company, and the extraordinary irony was that, had Truscott's article not appeared when it did,
Hirschfield
might have succeeded: Herbert Allen, for reasons quite different from those set forth in the article, might have accepted an offer from Sir James Goldsmith that very week.)
Truscott's portrait of Charlie Allen also embraced some truth. Charlie
had
been active in the motion-picture business, but it was hardly his "career" and he had made most of his money elsewhere. To call him the "Godfather of the New Hollywood" grossly inflated his true role. And Charlie
had
had business dealings with unsavory men in the Bahamas. But to link him by innuendo to Meyer Lansky, and to portray Allen & Company as a firm that habitually dealt with mobsters was a reckless and irresponsible overstatement of the facts.
With those major errors of theme and substance, it hardly seemed worth worrying about Truscott's many smaller mistakes. He misstated several crucial aspects of Columbia Pictures' financial condition. And he couldn't even spell "Carlyle," as in "hotel."
The events of the week exhausted Alan Hirschfield emotionally and left him more depressed and pessimistic than ever. He had known Goldsmith was coming to New York. He had been exultant to the point of disbelief when Ira Harris and Jimmy Goldsmith both had told him on Wednesday that it appeared Herbert might accept an offer and turn the company over to Goldsmith. The
New York Times
article, however, seemed to have scuttled not only the Goldsmith deal but all other possibilities that the company might be sold. Even though the article was far off the mark, Herbert was not about to give it even a modicum of credence by selling now under any circumstances. Moreover, Herbert's conviction that Alan had aided and abetted the Truscott piece, and the suspension of negotiation toward Alan's new contract, left the relationship between the two men as incendiary as ever.
On Friday, with his hand still in a cast, Hirschfield met
Rolling Stone
publisher Jann Wenne
r, who had been skiing at Aspen, and together they flew in a private jet to Los Angeles to appear on the dais at a black-t
ie charity dinner honoring Clive
Davis.
Hirschfield
returned to Vail early Saturday to spend the balance of the weekend with his family. He flew back to Los Angeles late Sunday for a week of budget reviews and, more important, the beginning of the search for a new studio president.
Hirschfield knew that the search would be difficult, complicated, and perhaps ultimately futile. Who would want to work for a company whose atmosphere was contentious and whose lines of authority were clouded? Everyone in Hollywood knew or suspected that he and Herbert remained at odds, and thus no one knew who really was running the company, or who would be running it in six months or a year. Would the civil war end or worsen? Would Hirschfield be fired or kept on? What was the true extent of Ray Stark's influence in Columbia's affairs? Hirschfield suspected that even if he and Herbert gave solemn assurances of peace and stability they probably would not be taken seriously. Even with a long-term contract and a lot of money, it seemed doubtful that any qualified person would want to work in an environment where his own authority was in doubt and he might be distracted frequently by fights in upper management.
FORTY-SEVEN
The Securities and Exchange Commission had watched patiently as Columbia Pictures suspended David Begelman in September, conducted an internal investigation, decided tentatively in November to make the suspension permanent, reversed itself and reinstated
Begelman
in December, and then finally accepted his resignation from the company in February after the media attention made his position untenable. The SEC is affected by the news media like everyone else. As one senior enforcement official said to another in late February, "All the times
I
've been in California and didn't notice before: the Mercedeses, the Lincolns, the Cadillacs. There's got to be fraud." On Tuesday, February 28—two days after the publication of the Truscott article—the commission authorized the enforcement staff to launch its own formal investigation of the
Begelman
affair, Columbia's handling of it, and any evidence the investigators might find of fraud elsewhere in Hollywood.
Although the SEC's decision did not surprise many people at Columbia, Herbert Allen was incensed. He telephoned SEC enforcement chief Stanley Sporkin and angrily protested. But Sporkin would n
ot be deterred. He wanted to see
for himself whether there was any substance in what he had been hearing and reading.
* * *
Though Cliff Robertson had submitted to many press interviews by late February, he had refrained from appearing on television. But the networks were persistent, appealing to his sense of "fair play," and he finally decided to grant their requests in the most efficient manner possible—all in one day—all in one trip around midtown Manhattan. On Wednesday morning he was driven to NBC for
Today,
then to ABC for
Good Morning America,
and then to CBS where he taped an interview for use on the evening news. No new information wa
s elicited from Robertson, but t
he unusual concentration of appearances was itself considered news. Stories appeared in newspapers across the nation. The people at Columbia Pictures a
gain were furious at Robertson.
While Alan
Hirschfield
sought an experienced show-business executive for the Columbia studio post, the most promising candidate he saw that week was not a
n executive. He was a lawyer, De
ane Johns
on, the managing partner of O'Me
lveny & Myers, the largest and most prestigious law firm in Los Angeles and one of the few West Coast firms with a major national reputation. O'Melveny & Myers employed more than two hundred lawyers in Washington and Paris as well as Los Angeles and served a
diverse array of clients. Deane
Johnson's specialty, however, had always been entertainment. His clients included stars (Burt Reynolds and Ryan O'Neal), producers (Norman Lear and Marty Ransohoff). and corporations (several major studios). Johnson also had been Ray and Fran Stark's personal lawyer for more than two decades, and it was Ray who had recommended that
Hirschfield
see Johnson about the Columbia job. Johnson as well had long been friendly with Charlie Allen, and with Herbert, who had endorsed Stark's suggestion that Johnson might be right for Columbia.