by Connie Bruck
Ultimately, though, what most distinguished Valenti was his worship of Lyndon Johnson. It had actually begun when he first met the then senator in 1955; Valenti had offered his impressions of Johnson in a weekly column he wrote in the Houston Post. “He’s a tall man, tall in the cord-lean frame of a man used to being fit. There is a gentleness in his manner, but there is no disguising the taut, crackling energies that spill out of him even when he’s standing still. And no mistaking either the feel of strength, unbending as a mountain crag, tough as a jungle fighter.” His current proximity to Johnson had done nothing to diminish his adulation. Other Johnson aides were devoted, but none appeared as slavish as Valenti. Reporters soon noted the fatuous way Valenti spoke about LBJ, how the diminutive aide gazed up at the president as he hurried along at his side, how eagerly he leapt to perform the most menial tasks; within the first year, the press had dubbed him “the valet,” and the epithet stuck. (“I hate that Wall Street Journal,” Valenti said to the president in a phone conversation in November 1964. “They’re the ones that are always calling me ‘the valet,’ and I wouldn’t have truck with ’em. Screw ’em!”) Valenti’s reputation for servility, moreover, was only underscored by the common knowledge that Johnson heaped abuse on him. He was certainly far from the only one to receive the famous Johnson treatment; but he was thought by other aides to get the worst of it. Another White House assistant said, “Jack was a hand-in-the-fire loyalist. Many of us were doubtful about Johnson because of Vietnam, among other reasons. But I don’t know what Johnson could have done that would have driven Jack from his side.”
Much as Valenti disliked being derided for his sycophancy, he did not temper it. In June 1965, he had delivered his famous speech to the Advertising Federation of America convention, in which he declared that there is a “curious up-soaring of mind and spirit that seems, as if by Godly osmosis, to invade the veins of a man the moment he becomes President”—and that this president “has extra glands I am persuaded that give him energy that ordinary men simply don’t have.” And he had concluded with the words that will outlive him: “I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my President.” Valenti had sent a copy of his speech to LBJ before he delivered it; neither man anticipated what ridicule would be heaped on Valenti for saying what, in their shared view, was utterly appropriate. Arthur Krim recalled a night at Camp David not long after when a couple of journalists who were present made fun of Valenti’s declaration—provoking the kind of Johnson tirade Krim had not witnessed before. “He was an angry man,” Krim said, “and his anger was triggered by [this remark]. . . . I don’t think whoever it was that started this realized what a sensitive chord he or she was touching with the president. But the president lashed out at their failure to recognize loyalty.”
Wasserman knew the value of such loyalty. And if Valenti was a worshipful subordinate, always leaping to do his boss’s bidding, accepting the most harrowing abuse—well, so much the better. As he had been Johnson’s man, so he would be Wasserman’s. As Wasserman told it, he enlisted Weisl’s support, and the two of them went to see the president to tell him they wanted to hire Valenti away. “He threw us out of his office,” Wasserman claimed, “but he called me a couple days later and said, ‘You can have him.’ ” There was at the time a fairly prevalent view that it worked the other way around; that despite the voluble protests LBJ made to Valenti about his proposed departure (according to Valenti, Johnson called him “a Benedict Arnold”), Johnson had in fact “asked Lew to take care of Valenti,” as one Wasserman assistant told me. “Johnson was very pleased about Jack’s going to the MPAA,” Jim Jones, another White House aide, recalled, “either because he had engineered it, or because Lew Wasserman had convinced him that Jack Valenti could do more for him in fund-raising in the Hollywood community.”
For Valenti, it was a remarkable opportunity. He had gone into debt collecting his $30,000 White House salary, and the MPAA annual salary of $150,000, in a seven-year contract, would solve his financial problems. It seemed, in a way, almost too easy to be true. He assumed he would have to meet the MPAA board of directors (men who for years had not been able to agree on any candidate), but Wasserman told him that would not be necessary. According to Valenti, Wasserman said, “Eddie [Weisl] and I will make sure we can elect you.” At one point, someone proposed that Nizer and he be co–chief executives, Valenti continued; he called Wasserman to object, and the idea was dropped (Nizer became general counsel). “Lew was so dominant, and he was the newest member of that board,” Valenti said. “He was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He’d commanded all the stars, and he had demonstrated he could bring the industry to a halt by denying the services of his stars.” By this time, of course, Wasserman had left the talent business behind. But the fact that he no longer held that hammer didn’t seem to matter. “He was respected and feared by all these moguls,” Valenti said, and then added, “He never pushed anybody around unless he had to.”
Wasserman and Valenti agreed that they would formally become partners at the MPAA. The MPAA’s labor-negotiating arm was the Association of Motion Picture and TV Producers (AMPTP), and its longtime chairman a Paramount executive named Y. Frank Freeman. Now, Freeman would have to resign, and Wasserman take his place. Traditionally, the chairman had represented studio management in labor negotiations. “Y. Frank Freeman would have an executive committee, made up of three or four guys, to negotiate with the unions,” Valenti said. “But here’s the way Lew operated. Lew said, ‘I will do it—I’ll come back and tell you what the deal is.’ ” He paused, then added admiringly, “Only Lew would have the audacity to do that.”
Valenti became president of the MPAA in May 1966, and in July, Wasserman became chairman. In one deft play—displacing Nizer and inserting Valenti—Wasserman had gained control of two critical Hollywood spheres, labor and politics. He could not countenance leaving labor negotiations in anyone else’s hands. Universal, the largest motion picture and television studio, relied heavily on its television production—which was even more perishable than movie production, and thus more prone to devastating damage by a strike. Wasserman was uniquely equipped to deal with labor. His relationships on the below-the-line union side, with the Teamsters’ Ralph Clare and IATSE’s Dick Walsh, went back roughly twenty years; there was no one else at the studios whom these men respected as they did Wasserman. Moreover, to deal with problems that needed special handling, Wasserman had his close friend, Sidney Korshak, on call. But contacts and experience were not enough. For the kind of autonomy Wasserman had in mind—the ability to sit opposite the union representatives at the negotiating table and strike a deal for the industry, essentially on his own—he needed an assigned portfolio. Thus, the chairmanship was key. On the political side, however, he need not be so overt; the obliging (and obligated) Valenti could be his surrogate, and his cover. This suited both men perfectly. Wasserman always preferred to wield power indirectly if possible; he rarely granted press interviews unless he had some important message he wanted to publicize, and he shunned the limelight. Valenti basked in it. His White House colleagues had ribbed him about his avidity for press exposure; Bill Moyers, another Johnson aide, had once written to a newspaper editor, “I suggest you introduce Jack Valenti as the man who took Lyndon Johnson to the Far East. It seems Jack was on the front page of every newspaper where the President went on his recent trip.” Now, however, when he preened for the press, he would be doing his job.
As Wasserman said later, Valenti turned out even better than he had anticipated. He had reason to be pleased with his choice. It did not hurt to have a Hollywood ambassador who was so close to the president. Valenti continued to accompany Johnson on trips, make contacts on his behalf abroad, make speeches for him on college campuses, and write memos on political strategy. He kept in close touch with others at the White House, too—including Bob Kintner, who after having been fired from NBC had obtained a job as a communications adviser at the White Ho
use. Kintner’s changed circumstances had not altered the deference he showed Wasserman. Shortly after Valenti left for the MPAA, Kintner wrote letters to all the major studio heads, congratulating them on having landed such a talented individual. And, in August 1966, Kintner wrote a note to Valenti, thanking him for twenty-five large Corona cigars—and mentioning, by the by, that he had just had the opportunity to spend an hour with Wasserman (“I consider him one of the brightest financial men in the country, as well as being an excellent executive”). Along with Krim, Valenti urged Johnson to appoint Wasserman to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he did. Even with Valenti at the MPAA, however, Johnson evidently wanted to keep some distance from Hollywood, as Frank Stanton had mentioned. In August 1966, a few months after going to the MPAA, Valenti sent a memo to the president, asking him to schedule a lunch with the heads of the major motion picture companies. “These movie presidents can be of great usefulness to you—and this lunch would also aid me in getting things done for you through them,” Valenti urged. But Johnson refused, appending a note to his assistant that read, “I’m afraid of this.” Two years later (by which time Johnson had decided he was not running again), he agreed to Valenti’s request, and hosted the movie men for a White House lunch.
Valenti’s most important contribution in his early days at the MPAA, however, was helping to develop a voluntary national movie ratings system; operating under the auspices of the MPAA, a ratings board would classify movies to give parents advance warning about what their children would see. It was a preemptive strike. Movies had begun to reflect the sixties’ social ferment and changing mores, pushing the boundaries in language and nudity, and in a powerful backlash, a host of municipal and state censorship boards had sprung up. The threat of government regulation seemed real. “There was a fire out there,” recalled Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, who at that time owned one of the country’s biggest theater chains. “We could have taken the constitutional defense, but this was better. It was a perfect middle ground—you don’t have to attack us. We’ll regulate ourselves.” To build support for the plan, Valenti cast a wide net—meeting with theater owners and distributors, actors, writers, directors, and producers, craft unions and religious organizations, and, not least, MPAA member companies. Most of the studio heads were opposed at first, he recalled. “I had to have a mighty force on my side to get my own companies on board—and that was Lew Wasserman. I couldn’t have gotten it off the ground without Lew!” Valenti declared. But once Wasserman made his support clear, he concluded, “the other studios fell in line.”
It always seemed to go that way. “We used to have a moguls’ retreat, at Laguna Niguel,” Valenti recalled. The famous trial lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who was the MPAA’s general counsel, and a good friend of Wasserman’s, would attend these sessions also. “A subject came up—I don’t recall what it was—but Lew didn’t agree with it, and he started to rant. ‘I am not going to listen to this—we are violating the antitrust laws!’ Ed Williams said, ‘No, Lew, it’s okay.’ Lew paid little attention to Williams. He walked to the door, put his hand on the knob—then he came back. There was a vote: Lew’s way. Ed Williams said to me later, ‘What a magnificent performance! What a trial lawyer he could have been!’ ”
With the help of Wasserman, his formidable patron, Valenti had come a long way in a short time. George Stevens, Jr., son of the famous director and chief of the Motion Picture Service of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in the early sixties, recalled that he and Edward R. Murrow, USIA head, would show films in the old mansion that was the MPAA headquarters in Washington. “I was there the night Lilith, with Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg, was shown,” Stevens said. “It was a rather perplexing picture. When it was over, there was some applause (no one liked it much), and Jack turned to me, in a low voice, and asked, ‘What do you say to somebody?’ I suggested something. He strode up to the director, with his hand extended, and said, ‘You’ve done it again, Mr. Rossen!’ [Robert] Rossen was thrilled. That was probably Jack’s first brush with show business, and he pulled it off well. He was a quick study.” Now, just a couple years later, in September 1967, Valenti and his wife, Mary Margaret, were being feted at a sumptuous black-tie party at the Wassermans’ home. Los Angeles columnist Joyce Haber reported that the event honoring the Valentis was “a glittering, galloping winner,” and that Edie Wasserman was wearing “the most knockout ruby gems you’ve ever seen.” Among the guests were Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Rock Hudson, George Stevens, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Ross Hunter, and Jill St. John. Sidney Korshak was there, too, as he often was at Wasserman’s parties. So Valenti’s initiation into Hollywood life went beyond learning the ropes at the MPAA.
And while Washington had been hard on Valenti, in Hollywood he was in his element. What had seemed off-key in Washington didn’t in the movie colony; his flamboyance fit right in, his flattery was appreciated, his verbal affectation much admired. He formed close, lasting friendships with Warren Beatty, Angie Dickinson, Charlton Heston, and Kirk Douglas (Valenti took to clenching his jaw like Douglas, and, one of Valenti’s friends said, was delighted when told that he looked like Douglas when he did so). And he was clever enough to grasp that these stars were a great resource that, properly deployed at Hollywood fund-raisers and in congressional hearings, could help his bosses’ causes on Capitol Hill in ways that had not been done before. In early 1967, he sent an article about himself in the Los Angeles Times to President Johnson, underlining these words: “Whatever else is true, it is clear what Lyndon Johnson saw in him. For president Valenti is fiercely energetic, enthusiastic, politic, realistic, perceptive and persuasive.” Valenti attached a note, saying, “Funny, how all of a sudden I am now bright, charming, delightful—when a year ago I was a valet and a clumsy Texas oaf!” While most of the article was devoted to Valenti’s role in developing the new movie ratings system, a couple of sentences, more telling, suggested that Wasserman’s grand design was very nearly realized. “Valenti notes with considerable pride that ‘for the first time in history, every major motion picture and television company is in the association,’ with Universal’s Lew Wasserman as chairman of the board.
“Indeed, there are indications that the association is on the way to becoming a forum and unifying force in the American film industry such as has not existed in recent times.”
At the same time that Wasserman was working to bridge the gap between Hollywood and Washington, he was reaching across another divide, within Los Angeles itself. Every major city has diverse communities, but Los Angeles, because of its gigantic sprawl, was more like a collection of insular enclaves than a real metropolis. With its opulence and glamour, Hollywood naturally tended to overshadow the others in the public eye, but the entrenched power and old money were elsewhere, in the downtown business community. Many of its members lived in places like Pasadena, Hancock Park, and San Marino, and tended to view Hollywood, and its resident communities on the Westside, like Beverly Hills and Bel Air, as nouveau outposts. The two societies rarely mixed. Doris and Jules tried to break through these barriers, entertaining Norman Chandler, chairman of the Times Mirror Company, which owned the Los Angeles Times, with Samuel Goldwyn and Jack Benny; but the Stein parties were unusually eclectic affairs. And Wasserman, along with other MCA executives, was generally not invited.
It was Wasserman, however, whom Dorothy Buffum Chandler, Norman’s wife, invited to join the board of the new Music Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Los Angeles. Dorothy, known as Buff, was determined to transform Los Angeles, long seen as a rough outpost and San Francisco’s poor relation, into a city with vibrant and beautiful cultural institutions. She conceived of the Music Center—a graceful, white-columned building, designed by architect Welton Becket, on a rise above downtown L.A.—and she, almost singlehandedly, raised the money to build it. Through her fund-raising drives, she raised $18.5 million, and a county bond issue provided another $13.7 million. When the M
usic Center’s Pavilion (later named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion) opened in December 1964, Chandler was featured on the cover of Time magazine, and the accompanying story described her achievement as “perhaps the most impressive display of virtuoso money-raising and civic citizenship in the history of U.S. womanhood.”
“The first time I ever met Buffy Chandler was when she walked into my office—I think it was in 1961—and asked for a check for $25,000,” Wasserman recalled. It was a surprisingly modest request for her. Charlton Heston is said to have recalled an incident in which “a very wealthy man gave her a check for $20,000 [for the Music Center], and she tore it up, said it was ridiculous, that she needed more than that.” Indeed, she did not hesitate to ask friends like oilmen Edwin Pauley and Samuel Mosher for gifts of $125,000 (which she received). But Chandler evidently decided to go in easy with Wasserman, whom she did not know. And she realized, too, that he could offer her more than just money—for by bringing him onto the board of the Music Center, she was opening a door to the Hollywood community.
Wasserman, for his part, made a gesture that was sure to impress his new Music Center colleagues. Al Casey, the chief financial officer of the Times Mirror Company, recounted in his book, Casey’s Law, that by the fall of 1963 the Center had run through the more than $30 million that had been raised, leaving no funds for pre-opening operations. It had already borrowed $350,000 from the Bank of America against advance ticket sales; now, that money was spent, and it had asked the bank for another $150,000. The bank was refusing that loan, and threatening to demand immediate repayment of the earlier $350,000. Casey convened an emergency board meeting. As he began to make his presentation to the assembled directors, Wasserman cut him short. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Before you go on with your sad tale, let me just say that, following your call, I stopped in at the Bank of America on my way down to this meeting and put my personal signature on a note for a half million dollars. Your $350,000 loan has been resecured and you have $150,000 available right now.” Four years later, the Music Center paid off the note.
