by Connie Bruck
Schreiber also became fast friends with another key person in the Nixon circle, Leonard Garment, who had been Nixon’s law partner at the Mudge, Rose firm in New York. Garment became the president’s “special consultant,” a kind of freelancer involved a great deal with the arts—until everything began to disintegrate in 1973 and Garment assumed what had been John Ehrlichman’s job, counsel to the president. Especially in the early months of the Nixon presidency, Garment was the one Schreiber would contact when he wanted to get something done—whether it was promoting someone for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (“This man is young, conservative, a Constitutionalist, he happens to be Jewish, a USC graduate, and his record as a Judge is outstanding,” Schreiber wrote to Garment), or suggesting that they do things in Texas to try to stem Nixon’s losses among Jewish voters (because of Nixon’s qualified support of Israel). Schreiber and Garment shared a passion for Israel. “Taft and some other prominent Jews became part of the political effort to push the Nixon administration to give to Israel until it hurt, and to build up its defense capability,” Garment said. “I remember a lunch at Sans Souci, early on in the Nixon administration. Taft, Max Fisher [a Detroit businessman], Sam Rothberg [head of Israel Bonds in Los Angeles], Luis Boyar [the developer], and me. It was on Israel. The five of us met, and then we went our separate ways, to do what we had agreed to.” Asked what they had done, Garment demurred, saying, “I want to be careful, even though the statute of limitations has passed.”
Schreiber and Garment also shared an interest in art. Schreiber said once that he had picked up what he knew about art here and there, often from former clients—actors like Charles Laughton, Edward G. Robinson. “Taft was self-educated, yes,” Garment concurred. “But as a great agent, he was intuitive about talent—and that translated to art: is this authentic?” Both Schreiber and Garment were friends of Joseph Hirshhorn, the chairman of Callahan Mining Corporation, who was donating his vast collection of modern art to be housed in a structure, yet to be built, that would be known as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, on Washington’s National Mall. There was opposition to this plan from what Garment called “the snobbish Washington arts establishment”—and from Nixon, too. “Nixon was not at all interested in the Hirshhorn,” Garment said. “A guy who had made his money in penny stocks, uranium, a Jewish finagler—a museum on the Mall was to be named after him? But Taft wanted the museum to happen. So we cooked up a plan. The idea was to assemble a group of Republican campaign donors to Nixon (past, present, and future) who were deeply involved in museum culture, and make them the board. Taft orchestrated the whole thing—and Nixon loved it!”
Garment claims credit for having recruited Schreiber for fund-raising in the 1968 campaign—“for the implicit, unstated quid pro quo of politics: you help us, we will help your agenda.” Nixon was inclined to look favorably on Hollywood’s agenda for a number of reasons, Garment continued. Obviously, it could be a major source of money—something Nixon’s two predecessors, particularly Johnson, had appreciated full well. However, Garment, who has tended over the years to acknowledge Nixon’s weaknesses but always tried to present them in the most flattering light, insisted that it was much more than money that attracted Nixon to Hollywood. “He wanted to do things for the industry—it’s that simple,” Garment argued. “He wanted to because he was infatuated with theater, with show business—he was an actor when he was young. And he was a Californian. He had the outsider’s awe for the princes of that industry. And,” he concluded, after a pause, “it was the movie industry versus the rest of the media, which he had no love for.”
It was not until early 1971, in any event, that Schreiber was able to tap this presidential goodwill. Schreiber was very friendly with Robert Finch, who had been lieutenant governor of California, now was secretary of health, education, and welfare, and was probably Nixon’s most long-standing political friend. Schreiber was one of Finch’s great boosters; in a memo to Garment in early 1970, he had referred to Finch as “one of the great hopes of the future in our Republican Party.” Now, he had enlisted Finch’s help in persuading Nixon to meet with the leaders of the motion picture industry at the Western White House in San Clemente, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was no small thing; after all, despite pleas from Valenti, President Johnson had declined to do it until after he had decided not to run for reelection. And Nixon did not finally commit to the meeting until just a few days before it took place.
The seminal meeting between President Richard M. Nixon and Hollywood representatives at the Western White House in San Clemente on April 5, 1971. Taft Schreiber, who organized the meeting, is seated to the president’s left; Jack Valenti, chin in hand, gazes from the far corner of the table. Courtesy of the National Archives
For Hollywood, this audience came not a moment too soon. Airport may have saved Wasserman’s job, and it certainly reaped staggering returns for Universal. But the landscape of the motion picture industry was as arid and bleak as it had ever been. “If the economy is in a recession, the motion picture production business—in terms of films produced here rather than abroad—is in an out-and-out depression,” declared an editorial in the Los Angeles Times in March 1971. The paper blamed Hollywood’s troubles on fiscal incentives provided by foreign governments, and called for the U.S. government to level the playing field by imposing import duties on foreign films. Schreiber certainly favored that. But he had many other ideas about how the government could help his industry as well. And the biggest, to his way of thinking, involved tax benefits (Schreiber had, after all, been trained by Jules Stein) and antitrust enforcement. Antitrust action was, of course, a government weapon MCA knew something about. This time, though, Schreiber wanted the Justice Department to set its sights on Hollywood’s current nemesis, the television networks, which had begun producing movies themselves.
On the morning of April 5, Nixon met with about two dozen industry representatives—heads of the studios, as well as unions and guilds, and a handful of independent producers, who took turns addressing the president. First, they described their predicament. Charlton Heston, president of the Screen Actors Guild, declared that he represented 23,000 film actors, of whom 76 percent made less than $3,000 in 1970. Dick Walsh, the longtime head of the IATSE, said he represented 25,000 workers in Hollywood, and that unemployment ranged from 40 to 85 percent. Schreiber, too, stressed the plight of the industry (in 1970, only three companies were in the black) and the serious threat of foreign competition. He stated that 52 percent of the gross proceeds of feature films come from abroad, for movie and TV rights. In 1950, the industry made 383 films; in 1970, 105; and in 1971, seventy-five movies were slated—while foreign producers, he claimed, were making 3,700 movies. Schreiber ticked off the remedies in a kind of shorthand: changes in tax rules for the industry, more beneficial decisions from the Justice Department antitrust division, and loans from the Export-Import Bank for movies to be exported. It fell to Ted Ashley, the president of Warner Bros., to make the most lengthy presentation about what the industry wanted—changes in specific FCC rules dealing with television and, also, cable; anti-piracy legislation; copyright protection; and a couple different forms of tax relief.
A day or two before the meeting, Schreiber had called Ashley to ask him to participate. At that time, Ashley recalled, Schreiber was organizing the meeting meticulously, assigning each speaker his subject. Ashley was not particularly friendly with Schreiber, and he was a committed Democrat, so he was hardly a natural candidate—“but Taft said that they all felt I would be the most effective spokesperson, and it would be in everyone’s best interest.” So, after first hesitating (Ashley carried no brief for Nixon), he had decided to do it. He had boned up on his subjects and made a batch of note cards, which he studied in the back of his limousine on the way down to San Clemente. Now, when Ashley’s turn came, Nixon—seated at the head of the group, with his customary yellow legal pad on the table before him—said, “ ‘I know I’m going to hear from you at some len
gth and I look forward to doing so.’ And he put his pad at arm’s length—like, ‘Look, no hands!’ ” Ashley recalled. After Ashley finished his presentation, he continued, “Nixon took up all the items, one by one”—saying they were hopeless, or he was working on them, or he had an idea how an approach should be made. “It was really a tour de force,” Ashley declared.
Looking back on the meeting, Ashley would always think of it as Schreiber’s set-piece. Schreiber had lobbied for it, he had cast its players, he had assigned them their parts—and when it was over, those parts were finished. At the time, Ashley was certain that Schreiber would be carrying out the follow-up with the administration behind-the-scenes. “Taft was not looking for me and the others to do anything but show up for this meeting, for stage purposes. I’m only speculating, but I think it was partly a display on Taft’s part of his standing in the motion picture industry. Whatever his private strategic plan, it would be fostered if the president saw that importance was placed on it by the community.”
At the press conference following the meeting, Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, was his florid self. “As one who has had some meager knowledge about presidential meetings,” began Valenti, who rarely let any group he addressed forget his stint in the Johnson White House, “I must tell you that I was quite surprised and pleased by the amount of time that the president gave to this delegation of motion picture executives. . . . We cited for him a whole catalogue of terror that is plaguing the motion picture industry today, and . . . [detailed] these problems which threaten to disfigure, if not to totally collapse, this motion picture industry as we Americans have known it for so long.” Schreiber said he was impressed by the president’s interest, sympathy, and grasp of the problems. Heston added a theatrical flourish. “For the first time in history,” he declared, “an American chief executive has decided to take a direct personal interest in the welfare of the American film industry.”
The meeting at San Clemente would turn out to be a watershed event for the motion picture industry, and, over time, it assumed an almost legendary quality, luminous and well etched, in the memories of some involved. Schreiber, the proud progenitor, would often recall it as something from which great benefits had come. Ashley never tired of regaling friends with stories of his role, his impressions of Nixon, and Nixon’s “tour de force.” Garment, who was not present but could deliver Ashley’s rendition almost verbatim, and who prided himself on seeing a side of Nixon that many did not, insisted that what Nixon demonstrated that day was “as great a business performance as some political performances are.” And there were other Democrats in the group, besides Ashley, who were surprised at the Nixon they had somewhat unwillingly come to San Clemente to see. David Picker, then a young producer at United Artists, still recalled how torn he felt. “I would’ve taken up arms against Nixon!” declared Picker, who would later see a copy of a Nixon enemies’ list on which his uncle, United Artists principal Arnold Picker, was number one. “But that meeting was extraordinary. It appeared to have been scheduled as a thirty-five- to forty-minute meeting. It lasted almost two hours. People kept coming in and saying to the president, we’ve gotta move—and he’d say, ‘I’m not finished.’ He had done his homework, he was so well prepared, he gave specific answers, he was amazing. Yes, he sweated, yes, he needed a shave—but he got it. And he delivered things to the industry.” Picker paused, then added, “It killed me that I was so impressed.”
Nixon’s dealings with Hollywood loomed large, of course, only to members of the motion picture industry; the aperture they provide, through which to glimpse the man, is narrow. Still, the view is slightly disarming—an image at once familiar in all its negative aspects, and yet with a couple unexpected positives as well; on balance, a somewhat more engaging Nixon than we thought we knew. Hollywood was, in a way, a kind of Rorschach for Nixon, highlighting conflicting strands of his personality. It aroused his visceral distrust, because it was made up of a great many Jews and liberal Democrats—the very people he counted his enemies, whom he felt he had to guard against and combat. But it also drew him—because of its potential for financial contributions, certainly, and celebrities’ support in his 1972 campaign, too, but perhaps also for reasons more inchoate. Nixon appeared delighted on occasion to be consorting with stars, some of whom he’d first gazed at on theater screens in his dusty hometown of Yorba Linda, California; and this singularly graceless president even seemed, at these odd moments, to catch and reflect back a little of their charm. The chemistry between Nixon and Hollywood, therefore, was both delicate and volatile—and Schreiber’s task was to manipulate it to his industry’s best advantage.
Two days after meeting with the movie people at San Clemente, Nixon delivered a nationally televised speech in which he promised that American involvement in the Vietnam War was coming to an end—and, specifically, announced that another 100,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam by December 1, 1971. At the close of his speech, he mentioned a ceremony at the White House several weeks earlier when he had awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier’s widow, and the soldier’s four-year-old son had suddenly stood at attention and saluted him. He said he wanted to end the war in a way worthy of the sacrifice of that soldier, and all the others, and their families. Shortly after the speech, he returned a call to Freeman Gosden, whose Amos ’n’ Andy was one of the most popular radio programs of all time, and also played on TV for many years. Gosden, a longtime Nixon supporter, had phoned the president to compliment him on his speech. (When Nixon became president in 1969, he ordered the removal of President Johnson’s taping system. In February 1971, however, he and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, had the system replaced; for a long time, only the president, Haldeman, and an aide to Haldeman, Alexander Butterfield, knew it existed.) Now, in this taped conversation, Gosden—after telling the president that “it was the most sincere job that you’ve ever done”—added, “At the end of that thing, I found myself, truthfully, Mr. President, crying.”
NIXON: Well, actually, as a matter of fact, Freeman, I wanna tell you a little secret—you keep this between you and me?
GOSDEN: Right.
NIXON: When I presented this, I presented twelve medals of honor to next of kin, to a father, to a mother, and then to this little woman, you know—and when that little boy saluted me, that four-year-old, I broke up. Nobody saw it, because there was no press there . . .
GOSDEN: . . . You did a helluva job.
NIXON: Well, coming from a pro like you, I appreciate it. . . . Incidentally, have you got a minute?
GOSDEN: Sure, any time you want.
NIXON: I thought it was good that I met with the movie people and tried to say, by God, we’re for you kids, but . . . they need to clean their own house, though. Huh?
GOSDEN: I was going to say that to you but I didn’t want to get in trouble with Taft Schreiber, or any of the boys—
NIXON: I know.
GOSDEN: But here’s the thing. They have got to—you say, you want something, you control this whole industry, why don’t you clean your own place and get these dirty pictures off?
NIXON: That’s right. Get the dirty pictures off and also get the goddam costs down, so they can compete.
GOSDEN: That’s right.
NIXON: . . . I couldn’t agree more. That’s why, when I went out to see [Sam] Goldwyn, you know, I praised him for the fact that he didn’t produce any dirty pictures. Of course, he would’ve, if it hadn’t been in that period, but at least he didn’t while he was there.
GOSDEN: Yeah, that’s right. I tell you, the picture business is something else, and when you get in that, I hope you got your eyes open with what you’re doing there—because that is a real tricky business.
NIXON: I know it is, I know it is.
When Nixon finished a televised speech, he had a hunger for praise that his associates tried hard to satisfy. Alexander Butterfield, Nixon’s special assistant, recalled that before each speech Nixon would direct him to contact cabinet membe
rs and others to find out where they could be reached later; then, after the speech, Butterfield would call them, write down their remarks, and report them to Nixon. Those who did not report in promptly aroused the suspicion that was always at the ready in Nixon, that people were against him—even those in his inner circle. On the night of April 7, Nixon spoke to his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, by phone.
NIXON: Henry [Kissinger] just told me that [Clark] MacGregor [White House chief of congressional liaison] was disappointed in the speech because we didn’t announce more withdrawals. Now if he’s going to be that kind of guy, we have to check him off goddam fast, if he can’t see this. Is that what he told you?
HALDEMAN: No, what he told me was he was very enthusiastic on presentation and that he had hoped we could withdraw a larger amount, but he’s said that all along—
NIXON: He’s shown he doesn’t have much guts. Well, you haven’t heard from [Donald] Rumsfeld [then head of the Office of Economic Opportunity], haven’t heard from Finch, and this is all you’ve heard from MacGregor, so we’ve now found out who’s who, haven’t we? . . . It seems to me MacGregor, Finch, Rumsfeld, they’ve been under great pressures, I know, but goddam it, if they don’t stand up now, I ain’t gonna talk to ’em. Screw ’em! I am not gonna do it! They’re not gonna come suckin’ around, after they read the polls, understand?
