Indecent Exposure (28 page)
- There is an immutable law of the universe that most of us are dest
ined to learn, forget and relearn
over and over again during our lifetimes: no one is irreplaceable. - There is a corollary also: everyone is expendable. I suspect that these laws
are
better known than the Ten Commandments and certainly are observed with religious fervor by those who have the power to enforce them. It is ironic, but fortunate, that those holding power do so only temporarily, for the rule is never broken. Those who decide who is expendable themselves become expendable someday and
are
replaced by other expendables. . . . - Eli Horowitz was so struck by the article that he distributed copies to several of his colleagues. But even Horowitz did not realize just how prescient the article would turn out to be.
- The week exhausted Alan Hirschfield. From breakfast through nightcaps, he had reassured everybody in town that the
Begelman
problem was under control while fearing privately that it might never be. He had seen
Begelman
weep at La Serre. He had soothed the group from IBM. He had thrilled to
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
He had sat through a less-than-thrilling presentation of the marketing and advertising plans for
Close Encounters.
After a long argument, he had convinced Michael Phillips, the film's coproducer, that the sound-track album from the movie should go to Arista, Columbia's own label, instead of being put out for bids. - Hirschfield
thought his performance through the week had been pretty good, and it had been. He had made only one serious mistake, though he did not realize it at the time. He had failed to spend enough time in private with Ray Stark. They had been in the same groups at dinner twice during the week but had been alone together for only about an hour. Stark was still miffed at Hirschfield's refusal, two weeks earlier at Herbert Allen's apartment, to appoint him as interim head of the studio. - He remained skeptical of Hirschfield's motives. It would take much more than an hour to repair the relationship. But, in much the way that Herbert Allen's signals too often eluded Hirschfield, he failed to discern the depth and complexity of Ray Stark's concerns.
- After nearly a full day of meetings on Friday,
Hirschfield boarded a late-aftern
oon flight for New York. It was past 2:30
a.m
. when he turned off his light in Scarsdale. He was up Saturday morning, however, in time to coach two soccer games. - On Sunday afternoon, Hirschfield made his way through heavy rain to Todd Lang's nearby home where he spent a couple of hours with Lang and Peter Gruenberger, who had flown in for the weekend. Aside from the inevitable tension of the investigation itself, another problem had arisen: tension between Gruenberger and the chairman of the board's audit committee, Allen in-law Irwin Kramer. Lang and Gruenberger felt that Kramer should confine himself to a general overview of the investigation. Instead, Gruenberger claimed, Kram
er and his own lawyer, Robert We
rbel, were on the verge of becoming a nuisance. It was almost as if Kramer did not trust Gruenberger—as if they were adversaries rather than allies. - TWENTY
- David
Begelman
gave an interview to Martin Kasindorf of
Newsweek
about the "unauthorized financial transactions." - "It involves things that I had relatively unlimited authority over— and I may have abused that authority," Begelman said. "I want to say that any judgments I made
I
stand by. I like to think of myself as a doer, and if you
are
a doer you are going to make
mistakes. I am prepared to say I
was wrong." - Published Monday, October 10, the article reported that Begelman "hopes to be back in a matter of weeks, and one source close to Columbia agreed he has a good chance—if the investigation finds no further blot on the record."
- Hirschfield's week was even busier than usual—shortened by the Columbus Day holiday and glutted with tasks that had accumulated while he was in Los Angeles. He conferred with Sam Cohn of International Creative Management, one of the top talent agents in the world, about the film rights to the Broadway musical
Annie
and about a possible investment by Columbia Pictures in a new Bob Fosse stage musical to be called
Dancin'.
He talked with Peter Guber, the producer of
The Deep
and
Midnight Express,
about a new production deal for Guber; with Richard Munro, a group vice president of Time Incorporated, about Time's investment in Columbia's film program; with Fred Pierce, the president of ABC television, about possible candidates to head Columbia's television arm; with Ira Harris, an investment banker at Salomon Brothers in Chicago, about two companies that Columbia might want to buy; with John Vogelstein, a New York investment banker and the chairman of the executive committee of Twentieth Century-Fox, about Columbia's possibly purchasing a big block of stock in Mattel Incorporated, the toy company; with Joe Fischer and Victor Kaufman about a plan for the General Cinema Corporation, operator of the nation's largest movie theater chain, to make a multimillion-dollar investment in Columbia's film projects; with Robert Stone, who had been fired seven months earlier as chief executive of the Hertz Corporation, about joining Columbia in some executive capacity; and with
Rolling Stone
publisher Jann Wenne
r, who wanted
Hirschfield
to become a director of the
Rolling Stone
company. - All of these people, and dozens of others with whom Hirschfield spoke, asked about the
Begelman
problem, and all of them, with only slight variations, got the same answer: We're still looking into it and we expect to have it clarified in a few weeks. - Over lunch on Tuesday with Herbert Allen and Matty Rosenhaus, Hirschfield suggested that it might be wise if he began at least an exploratory survey of potential candidates for the studio jobs that
Begelman
had vacated. (The motion-picture and television presidencies historically had been held by two people.) Herbert Allen, recalling (hat Hirschfield had refused to accept Ray Stark's offer to run the studio, asserted that the management gap did not appear to be an emergency and recommended that they await the investigators' report on
Begelman
. - The three men then joined other Columbia directors and lop executives to hear a report from Peter Gruenbcrger on the initial stages of the inquiry and his plans for carrying it on. Since it appeared impractical to peruse all of the hundreds of thousands of checks that the studio had dispensed during Begelman's tenure, Gruenberger proposed to examine each check for $10,000 and over, which had been drawn in round thousands of dollars, i.e. $11,000, $17,000, or $50,000, as distinct from, say, $12,217 or $37,142.89. The search, which would be aided by computers, could be expanded later, but it appeared from the three embezzlements discovered to date—$10,000, $35,000, and $25,000—that Begelman did not bother with odd amounts.
- In addition to surveying Begelman's personal and corporate financial records, the investigators planned to check the leases covering his house and automobiles. In only a few days on the job they already had turned up indications that there might have been abuses in those areas, as well as in his use of limousines. And a major issue looming over the entire inquiry was gambling. Did Begelman gamble? If so, did he have large gambling debts? There were persistent rumors that he did.
- Alan
Hirschfield
left his office at noon Thursday and took a taxi to a small Italian restaurant called San Stefano in a disheveled block on East Fourteenth Street. San Stefano was one of the finest Italian bistros in Manhattan, but it had not been in business long and was virtually deserted at lunch.
Hirschfield
found it useful when he did not want to be recognized by friends and business acquaintances as he was at La Cote Basque and the other restaurants around the
Columbia building. Thus, San Stefa
no was perfect for h
is meeting with Eric Ple
skow of United Artists. - It had been thirteen days since banker Bill Thompson had told Hirschfield that the five top officers of United Artists were planning to resign from their posts because of differences with their corporate pare
nt, the Transame
rica Corporation. But since he had been in California the previous week,
Hirschfield
had not had an earlier opportunity to schedule a lunch with Pleskow as Thompson had suggested. - Instead of grilling Pleskow, Hirschfield began by pouring out his own problems stemming from the
Begelman
affair. Implying that
Begelman
would not be returning to Columbia, he said, "I'm not soliciting; I'm just saying that I have an obvious hole in my organization. I don't know what you're up to, or what you're thinking, or where you hope to be in a year or five years. If
you're going to stay at Transame
rica, power to you. But if the event should take place that you're available, or you together with your associates, I think there could be a lot of magic in putting your talents together with our talents. We could build the kind of company that we would both be proud of. At Columbia you wouldn't be dealing with the kind of people you
are
at Transamerica, who
are
watching every penny and have no appreciation of what you do or how you do it." - Pleskow was more candid and receptive than Hirschfield had anticipated. He confirmed that he and his colleagues were unhappy at Transamerica and that they were going to take some sort of action soon. He wasn't able to say much more just yet, but he wanted Hirschfield to know that he respected him and appreciated his interest. They would stay in touch.
- Herb Allen, hearing about the meeting from
Hirschfield
the next day. remained as cautious as he had been the first time
Hirschfield
had broached the possibility that the United Artists group might want to join Columbia. - Herbert Allen's weekend retreat in Southampton originated as a modest cottage, reportedly in 1720, and grew gradually upward and outward over the next two and a half centuries into a sprawling, two-story-plus-attic. Colonial mansion. The house contained little art and few Books but many photographs: Herbert with Ray Stark; Her
bert with Fritz and Joan Mondale
; Herbert w
ith Bob Strauss, with John Tunne
y, with Hugh Carey, with Tom Brokaw, with Candy Bergen, and of course with his children and girl friends (film actress Jennifer O'Neil in the early seventies,
and model-actress Barbara Rucke
r in the middle seventies). Like many other large beach houses in the Hamptons, the Allen place was not literally a beach house as the term is used in Malibu, where spacious homes
are
situated just a few steps from the surf and sometimes wash away in the winter storms. Herbert's house was a hundred yards or so from the water line at high tide. But so that one could experience the immediacy of the Atlantic without really roughing it, the main house had its own small satellite beach house, down the path just beyond the tennis court, right above the sand—a one-room structure with a deck and sauna overlooking the ocean. Herbert Allen had had some of his most intimate conversations in that sauna. On Saturday, October 15, his guest was Marty Ransohoff, and their subject was David Begelman. - Allen had met Ransohoff through
Hirschfield
a decade earlier when Ransohoff was still doubling as a movie producer and chief executive officer of the Filmways Corporation, a medium-sized television and film production company which Ransohoff had founded in 1952 with a capital investment of $200. A blunt, profane man of medium height with receding brown hair, a persistent paunch, and a baritone bark for a voice, Ransohoff in years past had been called "the messiah of the New Hollywood" by Budd Schulberg and "L. B. Mayer without overhead" by Joyce Haber. His record, however, was never spectacular or consistent enough by Hollywood standards to qualify him for either label. He produced some of the most successful television scries of the early 1960s, including
The Beverly Hillbillies
and
Petticoat Junction.
Yet the moviegoing public did not know quite what to make of his films. Whether they were intelligent and pungent
(The Americanization of Emily)
or pretentious and boring
(
The Sandpiper),
they rarely were in the mainstream
of commercial Hollywood blandne
ss and rarely were commercial hits, although most earned modest amounts of money. - In 1966. Alan Hirschfield had attempted to arrange a merger between Filmways and Seven Arts, and probably would have succeeded had it not been for the enmity that existed between Marty Ransohoff and Ray Stark. In 1972, Ransohoff left Filmways, whose growth and diversity demanded more time
t
an he was willing to give it, and began producing movies full-time. But he stayed in touch with the corporate side of the business, and his friendships with
Hirschfield
and Allen deepened after they took over Columbia. Herbert Allen's close relationship with Ray Stark, and the continuing animosity between Stark and Ransohoff. never kept Herbert from liking Marty and finding him amusing.
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