Indecent Exposure (35 page)
- It had been rumored in Hollywood that if Columbia did not reinstate Begelman the studio would lose Peters and Streisand. Hirschfield did not take the rumor seriously, but since the
Begelman
issue remained unresolved, he chose not to confront them with it. Instead, Alan strove simply to provide a few hours of easy conversation through which they might at least get to know him better and sec what a bright, capable, engaging fellow he was. As it turned out, Peters and Streisand had no interest in talking about David
Begelman
or motion pictures. Their main concern was money. Jon Peters wanted to meet Hirschfield's i
nvestment and tax advisers. And
Barbra Streisand said, not for the first time or the last, that she had never made any money from investments and had never had a satisfactory investment adviser. Hirschfield suggested that they consider placing at least part of their fortune under the care of his people or others in New York who he felt were generally more reliable than Hollywood money managers. - Streisand and Peters left at dusk, having enjoyed the relaxed afternoon in the woodsy autumn of Westchester County.
- Hirschfield
took his children, Laura, Marc, and Scott, to see the Giants lose to the Dallas Cowboys at Giants Stadium Sunday afternoon. Then they met Berte at the Ziegfeld Theater on Fifty-fourth Street in Manhattan for the first of two private screenings of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
which Columbia was holding that evening for several hundred members of the press from around the country. Herbert Allen brought his children as well. Because of the tension between their fathers, Laura Hirschfield felt uncomfortable around Christie Allen, Herbert's daughter, whom Laura had not seen recently. They had been friends at one time. The children all loved
Close Encounters,
however, which was more than could be said for Herbert, who expressed little enthusiasm. - A frustrated Alan Hirschfield asked himse
lf how Herbert could be so blasé
. - TWENTY-FOUR
- Promptly at 9:30 Monday morning, November 7, David Begelman reported to Bungalow 14 of the Beverly Hills Hotel to begin two day
s of interrogation by Peter Grue
nbergcr. - Gruenberge
r had reserved the bungalow just for the interrogation. He wanted to question
Begelman
on neutral ground, and the Beverly Hills Hotel was as neutral as anyplace in Hollywood. Gruenberger also wanted to keep the proceedings as calm as possible. To have conducted the interrogation in Begelman's own office at the studio, which symbolically had become Gruenberger's office, would have heightened the psychological tension of the encounter. Privacy was a consideration, too, but there was no way to guarantee privacy absolutely at any location that was convenient. So Bungalow 14 was deemed satisfactory. It was away from the main part of the hotel, away from the street, on the second row of bungalows, backing on the hotel employees' parking lot. - David
Begelman
was as drained as the investigators. Except for the two days in Dallas for the
Close Encounters
screenings, Begelman had stayed in Los Angeles, rarely venturing more than a few blocks from his home on Linden Drive, emerging for little other than his thrice weekly sessions with Dr. Marmor and occasional dinners with very close friends like Sy Weintraub and the Leonard Goldbergs. Mostly, he had waited, brooded, and wondered what Gruenberger was finding and what Peter would do with his findings. Dan Melnick telephoned Begelman frequently, as did Herbert Allen, ostensibly to talk business but really to cheer him up. They and others were genuinely concerned about David's emotional stability—afraid that he might "put a gun in his mouth." "Hollywood is a funny community," Herbert would say later; ". . . it's a community full of poseurs and out there it's not a negative. And David always had a tremendous facade of respectability and I thought that this might cause him enough damage—I just didn't know what he'd do with himself. . . ." The suicide speculation was even given literary impetus around Allen & Company by Herbert's lawyer. Robert Werbel, for whom Begelman and his plight were reminiscent of the poem "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. - Whenever Richard Cory went down town.
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown.
Clean favored, and imperially slim. - And he was always quietly arrayed.
- And he was always human when he talked:
- But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
- ' 'Good morning,'' and he glittered when he walked.
- And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
- And admirably schooled in every grace: in fine,
we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place. - So on we worked, and waited for the light.
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night.
Went home and put a bullet through his head. - Occasionally someone would call
Begelman
with a fr
agmentary report on what Gruenberge
r was up to, whom he had questioned, what he had asked. There had been a flurry of phone calls ten days earlier when the Martin Ritt check was discovered.
Begelman
had effectively camouflaged his exhaustion and worry, however, by the time he arrived at the bungalow on Monday morning. He was impeccably coiffed, groome
d, and dressed in a suit and tie
, and was cordial to everyone present. - Except for the setting, a dining-room table in a hotel bungalow instead of a conference table in
a
law office, the interrogation was simi
lar to a formal deposition. Gruenbe
rger sat at one end of the table, flanked by his two colleagues from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Joel Harris and Nancy Barton.
Begelman
sat at the other end of the table with his lawyer Frank Rothm
an on one side and Marianna Pfaelze
r, another partner from the firm of
Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman & Kuche
l, on the other. Stationed nearby was Michael Passarella, a senior partner from the New York
headquarters of Price Waterhouse & Company. Peter Gruenberge
r's secretary from New York sat in the next room behind a closed door typing copious notes of the proceedings as the notes were made and passed to her by Nancy Barton
. (Gruenberge
r had decided that a standard courtroom stenographer was not necessary and might be intimidating.) - Grue
nberger began by taking
Begelman
through the four documented acts of embezzlement—Cliff Robertson, Peter
Choate
, Pierre Grole
au, and Martin Ritt.
Begelman
admitted everything. - Gruenbe
rger then recited a list of major expense account abuses:
- Begelman had charged S6,000
worth of personal use of limousines in Miami, Florida, to the budget of the film
The Greatest
starring Muhammad Ali
. - He had drawn a total of 54,372 in cash from several European hotels, put the withdrawals on his hotel bills, and charged the total bills to Columbia Pictures. It was unclear how much of the money had been used for business. Gruenberger calculated that about 52,000 had not been properly accounted for.
- · He had charged Columbia $4,145 for a trip to the French Riviera in September 1975, shortly after his wedding to Gladyce Rudin. The Leonard Goldbergs had accompanied the Begelmans on the trip, which appeared to Peter Gruenberger to constitute a honeymoon, not a business trip.
- Begelman
acknowledged the limousine allegation and put up only mild resistance to Gruenberger's conclusions on the travel expenses. - Gruenberger then questioned Begelman about his automobiles. Under Columbia's contract with Begelman, the company was obligated to furnish him with and pay all expenses on two cars, which he was free to select. At the time the contract was negotiated,
Begelman
was driving a Mercedes and a Jensen. Later he sold the Mercedes and obtained a Rolls-Royce. Despite Begelman's contractual freedom to choose whatever car he wanted, Alan Hirschfield let it be known that he did not want Begelman driving a Rolls-Royce. So
Begelman
asked the man who was leasing him the Jensen to raise the amount that Columbia was being charged for the Jensen to an amount equivalent to what it would pay if the Rolls were included. Peter Gruenbergcr contended that Begelman should have settled the issue with
Hirschfield
openly instead of, in effect, creating a false charge to pay for a car that
Hirschfield
did not want him to have. The important issue to Gruenberger was
Begelman
's lack of honesty, not his technical rights under the contract. Begelman contended that Columbia should simply have paid him the cost of leasing two cars and left the allocation to him. He agreed, however, in the interest of harmony, to reimburse Columbia for the cost of the Rolls. - Gruenberger raised similar issues of forthrightness and honesty in discussing the arrangements under which Columbia Pictures paid a major share of
Begelman
's housing costs. As far as Columbia knew,
Begelman
had a three
-ycar lease on a house in Beverly Hills owned by an entity called Burton Way Management Company. What Columbia did not know was that Burton Way Management Company was wholly owned by a lawyer named Gerald Lipsky, one of whose principal clients was Ray Stark, the most important producer on the Columbia lot. Columbia furthermore did not know that Gerald Lipsky had bought the house and leased it to
Begelman
specifically at
Begelman
's request, that the master lease in fact ran for thirty years, and that Begelman and Lipsky had an informal understanding that Begelman might purchase the house if and when he could obtain sufficient financing. - Gruenberger posed the questions about the house in the context of David
Begelman
's extensive overall relationship with Gerald Lipsky and Ray Stark, with whom
Begelman
did a great deal of motion-picture business on behalf of Columbia. Gruenberger had no evidence that the overall relationship affected the terms of the house deal. But would it not have been more forthright of Begelman, Gruenberger asked, to have let his employer know that Gerald Lipsky, a man with whom Begelman was engaged in frequent and vitally important negotiations over Ray Stark's pictures, was also
Begelman
's landlord, and that the landlord-tenant arrangements, in fact, were more extensive than Columbia had been led to believe? - Begelman
saw nothing improper about any aspect of the housing arrangements or the degree to which he had informed Columbia of them. - Gruenberger went on to explore
Begelman
's direct financial relationships with Ray Stark.
Begelman
confirmed that he had borrowed $15,000 from Stark in 1964 or 1965 and another $27,500 in 1976. He had kept the $27,500 in cash in his desk and used it for various purposes as the need arose. Stark also apparently had guaranteed a $185,000 loan to
Begelman
from the City National Bank of Beverly Hills in 1972. All the loans had been repaid. Gruenberger implied nothing improper about any of the loans. But the loans did show that
Begelman
's relationship to Ray Stark had been closer than Alan Hirschfield or Columbia Pictures had known it was. - Begelman was asked about a long list of rumors which the investigators had been unable to verify—stories of gambling and the like. He denied them all. He was asked about a report that in the early 1950s, when he was working in the insurance business, he had left a job with an insurance concern under some sort of financial cloud. Something about premiums or loans being handled improperly? Begelman acknowledged that there had been a misunderstanding but denied there was anything improper and said that he had been intending to leave the job anyway. Frank Rothman suggested to Peter Gruenberger than whatever might have happened twenty-five years earlier was irrelevant and that it was improper to raise such questions. Gruenberger found
Begelman
's answer to the question about the insurance matter unsatisfactory, but since there was no hard evidence of misconduct, Gruenberger let the matter drop. - And there it was—a tedious, exhaustive two-day interrogation following a hurried five weeks of investigation. David
Begelman
stood revealed as a man who had committed four separate acts of embezzlement totaling $75,000; who had stolen thousands more by the more genteel method of cheating on his expense account; who had been less than forthright about the terms under which Columbia Pictures paid for his home and automobiles. - Although the interrogation did not necessarily mean that the investigation was at an end, Gruenberger doubted that he would find anything else. Alan Hirschfield and the board probably would have to decide Begelman's fate on the basis of what was already known.
- During
Begelman
's suspension, Alan
Hirschfield
found himself nagged by numerous small responsibilities that normally would have fallen to the president of the studio. The burden was even worse in early November because Dan
Melnick
, the acting studio head, was in Europe. On Monday, as Peter Gruen
berge
r was grilling
Begelman
at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Hirschfield sat in his office in Manhattan trying to persuade a recalcitrant Al Pacino to cooperate with
People
magazine, which wanted to do a cover story on him a
nd his companion, actress Marthe
Keller. Pacino claimed that th
e story in fact was about Marthe
only, and that his photograph on the cover would imply that it was about both of them. The studio was urging Pacino to permit the use of the photograph as a means of promoting his current film,
Bobby Deerfield,
whose box-office receipts were lagging. Robert Cort, the studio's advertising vice president, had tried to induce Pacino to cooperate with
People,
as had Sydney Pollack, the director of the picture. The actor was still balking, so Bob Cort asked
Hirschfield
to see Pacino. After half an hour of cajoling, Pacino relented. - The Pacino meeting was followed immediately by a somewhat similar session with Steven Spielberg, the director of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Spielberg was reluctant to provide
Newsweek
with photographs of the most dramatic scenes in
Close Encounters;
he was determined that audiences would experience the scenes for the first time on the screen, not in a magazine.
Newsweek
wanted to do a cover story on the movie but had told Columbia it would do the story only if it had the pho
tographs. Bob Cort and producer
Michael Phillips had been unable to sway Spielberg. Again, Cort appealed to
Hirschfield
, who told Spielberg: "We desperately need the cover story to validate the importance of the movie. It's critical." Spielberg finally agreed, and at four Monday afternoon, Bob Cort trudged five blocks with the photographs, through the heaviest rain of the year, to the Newsweek building on Madison Avenue. - Hirschfield dined that evenin
g with David Geffe
n, whose warnings about malevolence in Hollywood were finally beginning to sink in. From the mists of the Bel-Air cocktail circuit were emerging the outlines of an organized effort to discredit Hirschfield's motives and portray the
Begelman
problem as something different from what it was. And on the East Coast, each time Herbert Allen and Matty Rosenhaus stated the case for
Begelman
, as they did at every opportunity, it was another version of the same campaign. These people all had a common goal: to apply pressure to Alan Hirschfield. And though
Hirschfield
saw and felt it, he still did not fathom it.
He
hadn't forged the checks; Begelman had.
He
hadn't embezzled thousands of dollars from Columbia Pictures; Begelman had.
He
wasn't a criminal; Begelman was. And yet the focus of attention seemed to be shifting from
Begelman
to Hirschfield. No one seemed to care what
Begelman
had done. They only seemed intent on impugning
Hirschfield
's motives. - Hirschfield felt disoriented. The following week Columbia Pictures would experience the most spectacular event in its history—the world premiere of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
During the same week the company would experience what seemed to be developing into the most traumatic event in its history—the climax of the
Begelman
drama. The premiere would quite literally be bathed in the brightest of light, one of the biggest entertainment occasio
ns of the year, or of any year.
The
Begelman
denouement, by contrast, would unfold in strictest secrecy. If the company had its way, only the result would become known. Either Begelman's suspension would be made permanent, or he would be reinstated as president of the studio. Outside of a small group of people, no one would ever know what he had done, or be privy to the trauma that his crimes had caused the company. - Thus, the most gratifying event and the most dismaying event of Alan
Hirschfield
's business career marched inexorab
ly toward him, almost in lockste
p. - * * *
- "I have something I want to tell you this morning," Rona Barrett confided to her millions of viewers early Wednesday. "Yesterday I saw a movie which was both an experience and a revelation. The film is Steven Spielberg's
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and although I'll review the film this Friday, there are a few thoughts I'd like to share with you now. Since the film was put into production a few years ago, we've reported on its escalating budget that propelled the final cost of
Close Encounters
to almost twenty million dollars. Because we were, of course, not privy to the film's dailies, we questioned Columbia's rationale for okaying the cost. Now, however, having seen the film, it is clear those dollars were well spent. But the sad truth is that Columbia executives did not approve the additional money because they had faith in Spielberg's genius, but because they felt they were already in way over their corporate heads. I know that over the next few weeks those same studio executives that damned the picture in production will be saying they believed all along that
Close Encounters
was a winner. However, the truth is that even after its first sneak in Dallas just last week, Alan
Hirschfield
, president of Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., told associates that
Close Encounters
was no
Jaws
or
Star Wars.
Well, I say to Mr. Hirschfield that any executive who cannot recognize the power and excellence of a film like
Close Encounters
has no business making movies. - "Furthermore, it's ironic that David
Begelman
, the one executive at Columbia who did believe in
Close Encounters
from day one, is now under a cloud of mistrust because of reported financial irregularities. While
I
do not condone whatever alleged misdeeds
Begelman
may have done, the fact is that an executive with the vision to nurture
Close Encounters
should be guaranteed a place in our industry. . . ." - On Thursday,
Hirschfield
found it necessary to rise to another public occasion—the annual meeting of Columbia Pictures Industries' stockholders. He was particularly eager in the circumstances to give a good performance. "Do your best, boy," Matty Rosenhaus had implored. The meeting, which was attended by more than two hundred people was held in a large auditorium on the second floor of the new Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company skyscraper in lower Manhattan.
Hirschfield
. Leo Jaffe
, Joe Fischer, and Victor Kaufman sat on the stage, while the rest of the officers and directors, except for Herbert Allen and Irwin Kramer, sat in the first few rows of the audience. Allen and Kramer sat together in the last row.
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