*
The
district attorney's of
fice
also investigated the Katleman case at and
found no ground for p
rosecution, confirming Hirschfie
ld's view that Katleman's conduct was not comparable to
Begelman's.
directors and writers, had disputed studio accounting practices at one time or another and in some instances had begun lawsuits. Most cases were settled out of court.
A few people tried to take advantage of the sensitive climate to induce change in Hollywood business practices. Norman Horowitz, after resigning from Columbia to become president of PolyGram Television, published an open letter to the entertainment industry as a double-page advertisement in
Variety.
"The beginning of Poly-Gram Television represents a departure from the traditional values of the television business," Horowitz wrote. "In the coming years, there will be opportunities with PolyGram television
...
to depart from normal industry deals and begin anew, based on a concept of sharing.
...
I want to have a new approach to partnerships, not another new definition of net profits." Horowitz took three other double-page ads, each accompanied by a cartoon. "Have you ever owned a piece of a 'cop' show and ended up being 'robbed'?" asked the first ad. The cartoon showed three Hollywood sharpies robbing a naive script writer.
Despite the good intentions. Horowitz's ads were ineffectual. Although some people were angry and others privately applauded, most just smirked and shrugged. The ads, like a lot of the press coverage and the district attorney's activities, overlooked a crucial point. Hollywood is rife with corruption, all right, but the occasional embezzlement, fraud, cheating, and chiseling—as serious as they are—constitute symptoms of a more pervasive and subtle corruption, a corruption that is more difficult to combat than outright theft.
It is the corruption of power and arrogance. It is the corruption that inevitably pervades a large and glamorous institution when that institution is tightly controlled by a handful of people, and thousands upon thousands of other people are clamoring for entry.
Hollywood is as glamorous as it ever was, and the relatively few who strike it rich amount to a dangling lure that is irresistible to many others. Thus, hundreds of motion-picture ideas are presented for each one the studios produce and release. Hundreds of television ideas are presented for each one the networks put on the air. Hundreds of actors audition for each one chosen.
Such a radical power imbalance fosters overweening arrogance in some quarters. When not held in check, it can breed all manner of abuses, including the notion—sometimes subtle but always malignant— that anything goes, no one can stop it, and indeed no one cares. It was arrogance in part that led David Begelman to forge checks. It was arrogance in part that led the board of directors of Columbia Pictures Industries to believe that it could quietly investigate
Begelman
, quietly observe the legal niceties of quietly telling the SEC, and then restore Begelman to the studio presidency without anyone else's learning the details of what he had done, without a single executive or employee's getting upset, and without the press's spreading the whole affair across page one.
In more specific and tangible terms, the power imbalance and arrogance also result in employer-employee relationships that normally are weighted overwhelmingly in favor of the employer, giving rise to the "shoddy business practices" and "murky contracts" of which the district attorney spoke. In analyzing Hollywood's abuses, the truly sophisticated experts tend to focus not so much on the occasional instances of flagrant illegality as on (he more prosaic standard terms and conditions of the average Hollywood contract— perfectly legal terms and conditions—that give die studio or the network enormous advantages over the actor, director, writer, or small production company. The powerful and arrogant few tend to take full advantage of every situation, and the lure of working in the industry is so strong that the fearful mass of prospective employees will sign just about anything to do so—often to their later regret. Hollywood is full of people who argue,
after
a film or TV se
ries becomes a hit, that they deserve more money and are being cheated, when in fact they signed a legal contract—onerous and unfair perhaps, but legal nonetheless—that entitles them to no more money than they
are
getting.
And yet they keep coming. Would-be actors, directors, writers, producers—many with genuine talent—in far greater numbers than Hollywood can ever absorb. Hollywood always has been tough for newcomers. Even big companies that try their hand at the movie business often encounter difficulty. Time Incorporated, after deciding against acquiring all or part of Columbia Pictures in 1978,.got into the motion-picture production business in 1979 by buying David Susskind's company. Talent Associates. Two years later. Time got out. "This isn't business, it's rocketry—nine out of ten fizzle," grumbled Time chairman Andrew Heiskell, who found that he disliked nearly everything about Hollywood, from what he considered excessive use of limousines to odd accounting practices.*
Only a small number of people and corporate entities are in such demand that they are able to force a righting of the power imbalance. They do so only for themselves, however, and even they remain dependent on the existing power structure—the studios, networks, and few big talent agencies and production companies that run the town. The two most visible symbols of the so-called "New Hollywood," Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, who never miss an opportunity to assail the traditional Hollywood "system," actually desire nothing more than to create studios of their own that they can control. Meanwhile, they must rely on the existing studios to distribute their films.
When Robert Redford, one of the very few truly powerful actors, accepted his Oscar as best director for
Ordinary People
at the Academy Awards ceremony in March 1981, he said, "It may not be too fashionable, but the fact is that I really do appreciate the support of Paramount Pictures—Charlie Bluhdom, Barry Diller. They
let us make the film the way we
wanted to, and I'm very grateful for that." And when Warren Beatty was honored as best director for
Reds
in 1982, he said, "I want to name Mr. Barry Diller, who runs Paramount, . . . and Mr. Charles Bluhdorn, who runs Gulf & Western and God knows what else, and I want to say to you gentlemen that no matter how much we might have wanted to strangle each other from time to time, 1 think that your decision, taken in the great capitalistic tower of Gulf & Western, to finance a three-and-a-half hour romance which attempts to reveal for the first time just something of the beginnings of American socialism and American communism, reflects credit not only upon you; I think it reflects credit upon Hollywood and the movie business wherever that is, and 1 think it reflects more particular credit upon freedom of expression that we have in American society, and the lack of censorship we have from the government or the people who put up the money."
Redford (and implicitly Beatty) were right. It was not fashionable for an actor or director to thank the chief executive of the parent
*
Time decided to concentrate on cable and pay television in which it had genuine expertise and exerted growing power in show business in its own right. (It owned one of the nation's
largest cable systems, as well as Home Box Office,
which maintained an ongoing relationship with Columbia Pictures.) Upon leaving Time. David S
usskind made a production deal with David Bege
lman at MGM.
conglomerate and the head of the studio, but it was an accurate reflection of the realities of power.
"God, this is a tough town," Budd Schulberg's character Kit tells her companion in
What Makes Sammy Run?
. . . "Sometimes I think the three chief products this town turns out are moving pictures, ambition, and fear."
It was still true more than four decades after
Sammy
was written.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation of Columbia Pictures dwindled and died. Aside from David Begelman's crimes, which already had been handled as an isolated issue by local Los Angeles authorities, the SEC found no evidence of federal law violations by anyone at Columbia. (Waging intense and brutal psychological warfare docs not necessarily violate the law.) Specifically, the SEC found no evidence that Columbia Pictures Industries was "out of control" under Alan Hirschfield's regime, as Dan Lufkin and Herbert Allen had asserted privately. Had the corporation beer out of control it would have been in violation of federal securities laws, and the officers and directors could have been cited.
The few private lawsuits ag
ainst Columbia did not amount to
much either.
Nevertheless, Fay Vincent and Robert Stone
(Fortune
magazine named Stone one of "The Te
n Toughest Bosses in America" in
1980) substantially increased Columbia's self-policing capability
Ilana
Cytto, the ambitious young
internal auditor, who was dubbed
"
Ilana
Piranha" by certain studio people durin
g the Audrey Lisner
investigati
on, built an empire on the Lisne
r case. Her staff was increased from two to twenty-fou
r over the next few years. In an
interview with
The Hollywood Reporter
in 1981, Cytto said "my
boys" will be auditing individual motion pic
tures and all of Columbia's
new businesses, including home video.
Several people who figured directly or indirectly in the affairs o
f
Columbia Pictures died in recent years:
· Serge Semenenko, 76, the deposed vice chairman of the Firs
t
National Bank of Boston and the
original "evil genius" of movie
financing, who had been a long
-
time
friend of Charlie Allen and Jack
Warner and had aided the
Allens
' takeover of Columbia in 1973, o
f
an unspecified illness at New York Hospital.
· James Wilmot, 68, the Columbia director who gave a Cadillac to Idi Amin, of cancer at his farm near Rochester, N.Y.
·
Matty Rosenhaus, 69, the Geritol magnate and Columbia board member who called Alan
Hirschfield
"Iago," of a heart attack at the Pierre Hotel.