When Hollywood Had a King
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Wyman was famous for his pledge dinners: he would assemble his major givers at his home or in a private room of a restaurant, where every guest was expected to announce what he was going to contribute. “But they’d shil it!” Cerrell declared. “Wyman would say to one of them, ahead of time, ‘You’re giving $25,000—and if you can’t do that much, we’ll help you a little.’ Then that guy would pledge $25,000. And the next one would figure, if he’s giving $25,000, I gotta pledge $30,000!”
Though Wasserman did not attend these dinners—they were not his style—he was one of Wyman’s biggest contributors, and he also raised a great deal of money from his own contacts, Cerrell said. “It was a good marriage—Wasserman would never go to party meetings, or get-out-the-vote meetings, and Gene would happily do all that stuff. And unlike so many big contributors, Wasserman never needed to sit next to the president, never needed a fancy job title. I wouldn’t exactly say he was retiring—but there was no grandstanding.”
In June 1963, the President’s Club sponsored a $1,000-a-plate dinner for Kennedy at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills. According to Cerrell, it was Wyman and Mark Boyar who came up with the novel idea of placing eleven seats at every table; ten were filled, and the president would move from one table to the next every five minutes. “And as they were being hustled, everyone was told, ‘You will be sitting with the president,’ ” Cerrell said. As head of the President’s Club, Wasserman escorted Kennedy from one table to the next, quietly reminding him of guests’ names. The day after the dinner, Wasserman received a note the president had scrawled on a few pages of the Hilton’s small message pad, asking him to go on the board of the planned National Cultural Center in Washington (Wasserman had the note framed and displayed in his home). Wasserman had come up with a fund-raising idea for the Center that President Kennedy liked: to designate one night when all parts of the entertainment industry—motion picture, ballet, theater, music, nightclub—would be asked to donate the night’s proceeds to the Cultural Center. If several million dollars were contributed, as expected, that would put the fund-raising drive over the top. Much as Wasserman was exerting himself for Kennedy, however, it was political, not personal. He had never been a Kennedy fan. In the 1960 election, Wasserman had strongly favored Johnson, not Kennedy, for the Democratic nomination. And then, of course, it was Bobby Kennedy, as attorney general, who had approved the Justice Department’s suit against MCA in 1962; and Bobby, who—because of his war on organized crime—was the bane of Moe Dalitz and Sidney Korshak, Wasserman’s close friends. So Wasserman was working for the party more than the man.
His ambivalence was cured when Johnson became president. Wasserman had been introduced to Johnson in the late fifties—Johnson was then Senate majority leader—by his good friend Ed Weisl, the New York lawyer and longtime chairman of the executive committee at Paramount, who had been a staunch ally of Johnson’s since the forties. Johnson had made it a habit to stay with the Weisls whenever he came to New York; Weisl, who was a close friend of Robert Lehman and lunched so regularly at the Lehman Brothers investment firm that he was considered almost a partner there, became the young Texas congressman’s Wall Street mentor, providing him entrée to the New York financial community. Weisl had been soliciting political contributions to Johnson from Wasserman for some time before he introduced the two men. Wasserman took to Johnson instantly. “He was my kind of guy,” Wasserman declared. “No sham about him.” When Johnson agreed to be Kennedy’s vice presidential running mate, Weisl—who had a long-standing animus for the Kennedy clan, dating back to a power struggle he’d had with Joseph Kennedy, Sr., at Paramount in the thirties—stopped speaking to Johnson for more than a year. With the rift mended, however, they were as close as before, and after Kennedy was assassinated, Weisl was among those Johnson first called. Weisl contacted his friends in the media, urging them to suggest to the public that Johnson would be a great president, and he asked Lehman to contact leading bankers around the world with similar reassurance.
Wasserman, too, stood ready to help, in ways large and small. Jack Valenti, who joined President Johnson as one of his special assistants the day Kennedy was assassinated, recalled that Johnson was planning a trip to Los Angeles early in his 1964 campaign, and he wanted to have a trailer at a certain location. He told Valenti to call Wasserman. Wasserman recounted this story in the course of his oral history interview for the LBJ Library, conducted in December 1973. He had received a call from one of Johnson’s security men the day before Johnson was to make an appearance at Los Angeles’s City Hall, who said that the president needed a place to freshen up after coming in the motorcade from Long Beach. “And I said, ‘Well, why are you calling me?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I talked to Jack Valenti, and he said if we had any problems to call you and you’d take care of them.’ I said, ‘All right . . . call me back in an hour.’
“I rang back to the production officer and said, ‘Do we have a new dressing room?’ And he said, ‘We have one we’re finishing.’ And I think it was for Doris Day or Cary Grant, one or the other. I said, ‘Where is it?’ He said, ‘It’s back in the paint shop.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll be back to see it.’ And never having been back to the paint shop before, I got in the car and went back to the paint shop. We had [these] beautiful what we now call huge mobile homes which we use on the premises for stars, with washroom facilities, sitting rooms, et cetera. So I said to this man, ‘What do you need to connect this?’ And he said, ‘A four- or six-inch sewer pipe and a hundred feet of electric cord. We carry everything else.’ I said, ‘Well, get it ready, and I’ll have it picked up in an hour.’ And I left. By the time I left, the heads of production had arrived. It was quite an event for me to be in that particular department.
“I went back to my office, and the phone rang, and it was the security man. And I said, ‘Get ready.’ And this man came storming in, the head of the department, said, ‘You don’t understand, Mr. Wasserman. We can’t take this off the premises. It’s too wide; it’s too heavy; we haven’t got a license, because it’s only used on the premises.’ The premises are about four hundred acres. And I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. How heavy is it? . . . What do you need to pull it?’ He said, ‘But you can’t take it out, you can’t go out on the streets with it.’
“Well, this chap called me back. And I said, ‘Have a couple of security men here, and we’ll give you the rig to take it down, but I want you to know it’s against the law. It’s too wide and the freeway . . .’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about that.’ I couldn’t tell this department head what it was going to be used for, for security reasons.
“So the next day I decided to go down and see what was going on. And, sure enough, this motorcade arrived with President and Mrs. Johnson and Governor and Mrs. [Pat] Brown. There must have been a quarter of a million people in the area; and they got out and went into this trailer, and everything was fine. The president got up and made a speech. And when it was over, I went up and said hello, and he turned to me and said, ‘I understand you arranged all this.’ And I said, ‘Well, I helped a bit.’ He turned to Jack Valenti and said, ‘I want one of these at every stop’ ” (laughter).
But the real proof of Wasserman’s resourcefulness and his wholehearted commitment to Johnson was the money he raised. Kennedy had been scheduled to appear at a President’s Club dinner in Los Angeles in early 1964; now Johnson came in his stead, and that kicked off Wasserman’s campaign on his behalf. His labors evoked some praise even from his sometime adversary Jack Warner, who was a Republican. In a note to Wasserman in June 1964, Warner wrote, “I am most delighted that you are heading the fund-raising for our esteemed President Johnson’s re-election campaign.” Warner said he was about to leave for Europe, and thus regretted that he would not be able to visit the president with Wasserman. However, he continued, “I would like to furnish you, when I return from Europe, with a list of the big money-makers in the motion picture business who give nothing politically and a very minute am
ount charity-wise, and some of them give nothing.” It seemed he could not resist a mild gibe: “I recollect several years back that Jules was a Republican. He being the Chairman of the Board of your company, while you are just the President, trust that you will have good fortune in receiving donations from Jules for the important task that I know you will accomplish.” Wasserman—along with Wyman’s and others’ help—did indeed accomplish it. When the results in the November presidential election were tallied, Wasserman had recruited so many new members to the President’s Club that its California roster was over five hundred, second only to Krim’s New York organization. Moreover, Wasserman, Wyman, and other Democratic players had raised more money for Johnson than California had ever contributed to a Democrat.
Johnson was not the only beneficiary. Wasserman had established his credentials: within the motion picture industry, Krim was the acknowledged political power in the East, and now Wasserman was in the West. But they had achieved their political status for different reasons—and they treated it differently. Krim, a policy-minded individual with a strong interest in education and civil rights, had co-founded a prestigious law firm before going into the movie business, and, in 1951, acquiring United Artists. He had supported Adlai Stevenson at the 1960 Democratic convention; then he’d turned to helping Kennedy. He was so devastated when Kennedy was killed that he thought of leaving politics altogether, Krim’s wife, Mathilde, said. Krim suggested to Johnson that he might want someone else to take over the running of the President’s Club in New York (Krim was thinking of Weisl, who was known as Johnson’s man in New York, and whom Johnson, in fact, named to the powerful post of Democratic national committeeman). But Johnson’s aides prevailed upon Krim to continue, and soon he was working as hard for Johnson as he had for Kennedy. In May 1964, for example, he organized another hugely successful extravaganza at Madison Square Garden—preceded by a dinner at which Johnson followed Kennedy’s lead, going around the room to spend some time with all of his major New York contributors, many for the first time. Johnson appreciated what Krim was accomplishing for him. Krim recalled that, at a later rally at Madison Square Garden, he was motioned to come to the stage, where the president “lifted me up and embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks.”
top: Wasserman with the president he most admired. Courtesy of the LBJ Library
bottom: One of Lew Wasserman’s signature President’s Club dinners. This one was held at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on June 23, 1967. From left to right: Lynda Bird Johnson, Arthur Krim, Mathilde Krim, Wasserman, President Johnson, Edie Wasserman. Courtesy of the LBJ Library
And the more Johnson saw of Krim and his wife, Mathilde (an elegant, ethereal-looking scientist at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York), the more he wanted to see of them. Soon, the Krims were aloft in the Johnson whirlwind. Krim recalled that one evening in July 1965, a distinguished group of scientists (including Mathilde’s boss at Sloan-Kettering, Frank Horsfall), were at the Krims’ home, watching a film on Mathilde’s research on cell structure. “The phone rang, and I got on, and it was the president. He said he wanted Mathilde to leave that night to go to Paris with the astronauts.” (It had just been announced that the Russian astronauts were to attend the air show in Paris; Johnson decided the American astronauts should be there, too. And why Mathilde? “He was very blunt about it,” Krim recalled. “He said, ‘These ladies, they don’t know how to dress, they don’t know how to act, and Mathilde with her sophistication and her knowledge of French would be able to shepherd them.’ ”) “I said, ‘Well, you know, she’s here with the president of Sloan-Kettering—’ He said, ‘Put him on the phone.’ Mathilde went downstairs where we were showing the film and said to Horsfall, ‘The president wants to talk to you.’ He said, ‘President of what?’ She said, ‘The president of the United States.’ The guy got so flustered, and he went upstairs, and Johnson twisted his arm—it didn’t take much twisting. He said he wanted Mathilde to leave right away, and Horsfall said, ‘But certainly, of course.’ ” While Mathilde packed, Johnson put Tom Dewey, the former governor of New York, on the phone with Krim, and then Hubert Humphrey. “The whole thing became a half-hour conversation on the phone between all of us. It was a very jovial night for him,” Krim said. Shortly after that, Johnson invited the Krims for a weekend at Camp David in early August; and from then on, nearly every weekend that the Johnsons were able to leave Washington for their Texas ranch, Johnson invited the Krims to accompany them. Before long, Johnson had persuaded the Krims to buy a ranch, too, just a short helicopter ride from his. Johnson also asked Krim, as his personal representative, to oversee the administrative affairs at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. So Krim began to spend a great deal of time in Washington; he stayed overnight at the White House so often that he was given his own bedroom, Room 303. According to Krim, Johnson pressed him to join his cabinet repeatedly, but Krim always said, “I’d like to serve you the way I am, let’s leave things as they are.” Krim said he also declined Johnson’s offers of the posts of ambassador to France and ambassador to the United Nations (the one job that tempted him).
Johnson was probably drawn to Krim for many reasons (“He was such a complete man within himself—the president loved to be around him,” Valenti commented), but one was surely that Johnson believed Krim had no personal or business agenda. Indeed, in his oral history, Krim emphasized his sensitivity on this score. “Since a lot of people knew that I was able to see [Johnson] one-on-one, I had to carry a lot of messages to him and also get things done. I must say that of the group that came into the money aspect of politics through me, the things they wanted the president to do almost without exception had nothing to do with them or their business. It had to do with broader issues of importance, in their view, to the country. But not small, petty things. It’d have to do with health legislation, with Israel, with tax legislation. For instance, Andre Meyer would be giving me messages on the financial community, Mary Lasker would be giving them to me on health legislation, Abe Feinberg on what to do about Israel.”
Krim, notably, did not mention Wasserman. And his wife, Mathilde, interviewed after Krim’s death, said that while he and Wasserman collaborated, particularly in politics, Wasserman operated at a different level. “Arthur always told me that Lew was more of a lobbyist for the industry.” Johnson seems to have viewed him that way, too. In January 1965, Universal Studios was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and President Johnson sent Wasserman a congratulatory letter, praising the studio for its “many enduring contributions to our national goals.” However, Johnson’s letter was accompanied by a cautionary note from his aide, Valenti.
Dear Lew:
Enclosed you will find a letter which the President was happy to send in connection with the Fiftieth Anniversary of Universal City Studios. I hope you can use it effectively in observing this milestone.
However, we do frankly have some doubts as to the wisdom of using it in the advertising supplement which you are publishing in the Sunday New York Times. It would be a marked departure from past practice to have a Presidential message of this sort used in paid company advertising.
Johnson saw Wasserman’s agenda—it was plain as day—but he treated him with the solicitude appropriate to such an important fund-raiser. Wasserman was invited to White House meetings—sometimes with other business leaders, sometimes with political strategists. Wasserman recalled a meeting he had attended during the 1964 campaign—either at the White House or Camp David, he couldn’t recall which. When he joined the meeting, others were discussing Proposition 14, a ballot initiative in California that would repeal a statute barring discrimination in housing. “Someone was making a speech pointing out that the president was going to lose California. I walked in at that moment, and he [Johnson] turned to me and said, ‘What is this Proposition 14?’ I said, ‘It’s a very emotional issue. It’s unconstitutional, according to the advice we’ve all had.’ And he said, ‘What’s going to happen with it?’
And I said, ‘I think it’ll carry by two million votes.’ At which point someone jumped up and said, ‘See, you’re doomed—your whole thing.’ And he finally turned to me and said, ‘Lew, what do you think will happen to me in California?’ And I said, ‘I think you’ll carry by 750,000 votes.’
“At which point, someone else got up and allowed how that was ludicrous, [that] there was no way the president who was the champion of civil rights and the whole issue, [that] it was doomed, and [that] if Proposition 14 was going to carry [by] two million votes, they were going to lose California and the overflow would hit Arizona and Oregon. We were just doomed.
“So I listened to this rap patiently for about five minutes, and then stood up, which, as you know, one does not do in the company of the president, and started to leave. He said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going back to California.’ He said, ‘What do you mean, you’re going back to California? I thought we were going to have dinner, and you’re staying for the weekend.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to stay here.’ And he said, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re getting me confused. I’m a very simple man.’ He said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I live in California. I have the responsibility of some of your activity there. The only place I’ve heard you identified with Proposition 14 is in this room. Before you get me confused and get me thinking along those lines, I’m going to get out of here.’ He laughed.