by Connie Bruck
HALDEMAN: It was a dirty goddam shot—but, Henry, I told him this yesterday. He came in and asked what he ought to do about it, and I said, just keep your damn mouth shut. He gave them an answer, and that gave ’em a story. [Washington Post editor] Ben Bradlee called him and said, there’s this story about your dating this girl who plays in X-rated movies, nude movies, sex movies . . . do you want us to hold it up for the time being because of your trip? Henry said yes. Then he realized he’d fallen into a trap, so he called back, and he said it’s up to you to do what you want with the story. I have nothing to say about it. That would have been fine if he just kept his mouth shut there, but then he said, But, for your own guidance, I want you to know that I only dated the girl three times, and as soon as I found out she was exploiting it for publicity purposes I dropped her, I never knew she was in dirty movies. . . . Poor guy. Some sexy dame, I guess, that was at a dinner party Taft Schreiber gave him, and he dated her.
NIXON: Oh, Jesus. He can do what he goddam pleases.
Kissinger was hardly the first political figure to dabble in seduction in Hollywood. There was a long tradition of powerful men (some in political life, some in business, some in the mob) courting its stars—Joseph Kennedy and Gloria Swanson, Sam Giancana and Phyllis McGuire, John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, to name a few. Sometimes, their respective paths intersected with the same woman. Judith Campbell Exner was not an actress but a glamorous Los Angeles divorcée who had simultaneous affairs with President Kennedy and Sam Giancana. And Kissinger was dating actress Jill St. John, who was also having an affair with Sidney Korshak, according to several people who knew them both. One of those people, longtime MCA agent Freddie Fields, who was a good friend of Korshak’s, said, “I introduced Sidney to Jill St. John—something for which he was always grateful.” Another, Andy Anderson, head of the Western Conference of Teamsters in the seventies, who was a frequent companion of Korshak’s and worked closely with him for years, said that St. John was Korshak’s “longtime mistress.” He remembered Korshak’s gifts to her—a chess set with hand-carved ivory pieces that Korshak asked Anderson to buy when he was in Hong Kong; a $50,000 diamond bracelet; and a Rolls-Royce convertible, which Korshak bought when he was in England and had shipped home. (“It was delivered to his house while he was still away, and when he got back, his wife, Bernice, said, ‘Sidney, you are a sweet husband!’ ” Anderson said.)
Korshak apparently did not mind that St. John was two-timing him with the president’s national security adviser; it seemed, in a way, only to enhance his own power. For the way Korshak told it to his friends, notwithstanding his competitor’s elevated status, it was he, Korshak, who came first with St. John. Leo Geffner, the labor lawyer, who knew Korshak well, recounted what Korshak had told him—“Often, when Kissinger invited Jill St. John to the White House, she would say, ‘Sorry, I have an invitation from someone more important.’ ” And Korshak seemed to get a vicarious kick out of the leverage St. John was able to exert over this high government official. “Jill St. John was seeing Kissinger and Sidney,” Anderson said, rolling his eyes slightly. “Sidney told me that she said to Kissinger that she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore unless he ended the Vietnam War.”
Much as Korshak seemed to relish the odd propinquity, he was careful about public appearances. Robert Evans, the Hollywood producer who called Korshak his “consigliere and closest friend,” recalled in his book, The Kid Stays in the Picture, that for the premiere of The Godfather, released by Paramount in New York in March 1972, he had called his friend Kissinger at the last moment (after the movie’s star, Marlon Brando, had said he couldn’t make it) and begged him to attend. Kissinger demurred; the Paris peace talks had just collapsed, he was leaving the country in the morning (on a secret mission to Moscow), he had a 7:30 breakfast with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and there was a blizzard in Washington. As Evans tells it, he said, “Henry, I need you tonight”—and minutes later, one of Kissinger’s assistants called back to say that the national security adviser would be there.
At the party after the showing of the movie, Evans spotted Korshak and his wife. It was Korshak who had made the filming of The Godfather possible. Evans said that he had been threatened by the mob when they tried to start shooting the picture in New York (“Get the fuck outta our town, will ya? We don’t want nothin’ to happen to you or your kid. Go to Kansas City or St. Louis if ya wanna, but New York ain’t opening up for ya.”). But, Evans continued, “One call from Korshak, suddenly, threats turned to smiles and doors, once closed, opened with an embrace.” According to Evans, Korshak had also made it possible for him to get the actor he wanted, Al Pacino, for the role of Michael Corleone. Pacino had been under contract to MGM. But Korshak had placed a call to Kirk Kerkorian, who controlled MGM, and told Kerkorian that if he wanted to obtain the financing he needed to build a hotel in Las Vegas, he had better see to it that Pacino was released from his contract. He was. Now, Evans rushed over to the Korshaks and asked them to join his table.
“Not cracking a smile, he shook his head. ‘No.’
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘And give the press a fuckin’ field day?’
“ ‘Come on, Sidney, it’s your night too.’
“Like a vise, he grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t ever bring me and Kissinger together in public. Ever!’ ”
This was the dicey part of the Hollywood-Washington connection that Wasserman and Schreiber were working hard to establish. Lines blurred in Hollywood in ways that outsiders might not understand. That Korshak appeared to be Wasserman’s best friend did not seem odd or inappropriate to most in that community. “They were just two powerful and important people,” offered Richard Zanuck, trying to explain why he never looked askance at their closeness. “Sidney was off-cast, he didn’t seem like a gangster—though we all understood what his connections were.” For all his nuanced understanding of global politics, Kissinger may have been naive when it came to Hollywood mores; he may have thought that it was peccadilloes with porn starlets that posed the greatest hazard, not a much too close association with Korshak through St. John. But Korshak was well aware that the social latitude—and even eminence—he enjoyed in the movie colony existed for him nowhere else, and he conducted himself accordingly.
On the evening of December 31, 1971, President Nixon called Schreiber to wish him a happy new year. After exchanging pleasantries, Nixon said, “Well, what are you going to do tonight? I’m here in the White House, sitting in the Lincoln Room, studying for a program I am going to do with Dan Rather Sunday night. So,” he concluded, with that memorable tinge of self-pity in his voice, “that’s my New Year’s Eve. What are you going to do?”
Schreiber replied that Ted Cummings and he were going to the Music Center together.
“Great! Give him my best,” Nixon said. “He’s a wonderful guy—and has a marvelous collection of art in his house.”
Referring to the coming campaign, Schreiber said, “We’ll give it all we’ve got.”
“Well, we do appreciate good friends at a time like this, believe me.”
Schreiber evidently felt he owed a great deal to Nixon, as he looked back at 1971 and forward to the election year. “Taft feels strongly that the movie/television industry is much better off now under Richard Nixon than ever before and that the top leaders in the industry, particularly those in California, are well aware of this,” a White House aide had written in a memo to John Mitchell, shortly before Mitchell met with the movie people in early November 1971. Support for Schreiber’s view, moreover, was lent by an article entitled, “It’s the Reel Thing—Motion Picture Producers Are Making a Solid Comeback,” in the January 24, 1972, issue of Barron’s. “Few of the movie executives who drove down to San Clemente for a meeting with President Nixon last spring expected anything to come of it,” writer David Loehwing began. “ ‘I guess most of us had been through the mill before,’ says Gordon Stulberg, president of 20th Century-Fox. ‘Ten years ago, I went to Washington and tried to te
ll people that the motion picture industry needed help then, but it was a dead end.’ This time, though, was different. . . . Since the San Clemente meeting, everything has been coming up roses for the industry—at least in its dealings with the government.”
Loehwing went on to cite many of the industry wins—accelerated depreciation; Export-Import Bank financing; GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiators’ driving a hard bargain with countries trying to gain better access to U.S. markets by insisting that those countries remove barriers to Hollywood films; and, greatest of all, the investment tax credit. For, as Schreiber and Wasserman had hoped, Nixon’s 1971 Revenue Act did indeed reinstate the investment credit, and the legislative history made it clear that films, as tangible property, were entitled to the credit. There would continue to be litigation over whether the movie industry was entitled to the credit for years prior to 1971, and, also, unsettled issues about the qualifying conditions for films, and the computation of the credit. But the foundation for what would ultimately become a bonanza worth more than a billion dollars to the movie industry had been laid, thanks to the Nixon administration’s efforts.
And this was the season for gratitude. There was a big push among Nixon fund-raisers to collect contributions before a new campaign finance law with stricter reporting requirements went into effect. In his book, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas wrote that the bill was made to move more slowly through committees during the fall of 1971, because that is what the Nixon people wanted. Nixon finally signed the bill into law on February 7, 1972; since it would not take effect for sixty days, and the old law would expire on March 10, it created a month-long legal limbo, during which time contributors could be promised complete anonymity. “A CREEP [Committee for the Re-election of the President] memo to John Dean made the strategy clear: seek maximum giving during the March 10–April 7 period, during which the identity of contributors could be absolutely protected,” Lukas wrote. Now, Nixon’s star fund-raisers from the 1968 campaign took their respective places. Mitchell resigned as attorney general to head CREEP. Stans resigned as commerce secretary to become chairman of CREEP’s Finance Committee. Kalmbach received the title of associate chairman of that finance committee (he would, however, resign on April 7). And Schreiber was a co-chairman.
Schreiber and Kalmbach had of course worked closely together in Nixon’s 1968 campaign; and, according to Spencer, Schreiber had been Stans’s key fund-raising contact in California. In January 1969, Stans had requested that Kalmbach take control of some surplus funds from the 1968 election—about $1,098,000 of which was in cash, in safe-deposit boxes in Washington and New York; over the next several years, much of it would be moved to safe-deposit boxes in Southern California. Kalmbach then raised about $2.8 million for the 1970 congressional campaign, where, he would later say, Haldeman had urged him to get cash whenever it was possible. (Cash contributions, in themselves, were not illegal at this time; but the law required that certain disclosures be made.) Now, before the April 7 deadline, Kalmbach raised over $8.8 million in contributions; and, after that deadline, another $1.8 million. Kalmbach said that he emphasized to potential contributors that their contributions would remain confidential if they made them before April 7. Ultimately, however, the identities of individuals solicited by him, and the size of their contributions, would be disclosed during the Watergate investigations. According to Kalmbach’s list, Taft Schreiber made a pledge of $100,000, and contributed $66,101 before April 7; Jules Stein, a pledge of $150,000, and $117,822 before April 7. Other familiar names on Kalmbach’s list were Ted Cummings, who pledged $50,000 to $100,000 and gave $46,406; and Jack Warner, who pledged and gave $100,000. Wasserman’s name did not appear. Some additional information about Hollywood donors came to light after Common Cause successfully sued to have the identity of Nixon campaign contributors made public in 1973. Bob Hope gave $50,000; and several other studio executives and producers, $5,000 to $10,000. Considering Nixon’s beneficence, one would expect to see much more flowing from the motion picture industry, but perhaps some contributions always remained undisclosed. Many records of the pre–April 7 contributions were destroyed.
It is also possible that the movie industry contributed in completely unrecorded ways. One person, then a studio executive, told me that one of his industry colleagues met with Mitchell in the months after San Clemente, and told Mitchell that the movie people realized what the administration was doing for the industry was not easy, and that they would be happy to show their gratitude by making contributions to various congressional campaigns. Mitchell was said to have replied that it would be better if this emissary were to bring him cash, since he, Mitchell, could then direct it wherever it was most needed. And he is said to have suggested that when his visitor returned for their next meeting, he should leave $300,000 to $400,000 in cash in a briefcase, checked at the coatroom.
The emissary followed Mitchell’s instructions, according to this former studio executive.
Certainly, in this frenetic period, Schreiber was working hard to make good on his earlier promises to Nixon and to Flanigan. Betty Breithaupt, who became Schreiber’s secretary at the start of 1972, recalled that he was mainly involved in politics at this time, “on the phone, raising money from morning to night.” One person from whom he solicited a contribution was Ted Ashley, the Warner Bros. studio head whom Schreiber had tapped for the San Clemente presentation. Since Ashley was a lifelong Democrat, who even after San Clemente had had virtually no relationship with the Nixon administration, it was surprising that he would make a contribution of such size—$138,487. He made the contribution in mid-March 1972, in the period of supposedly guaranteed anonymity. Another person Schreiber solicited in this period was Joseph Hirshhorn. As Schreiber would later recount, he told Hirshhorn that “if it were not for President Nixon, his museum would not be built on the Mall and that he owed respect to this, the courage of the President, even though he, Hirshhorn, was a Democrat.” Hirshhorn contributed $25,000 in cash—something that he, too, preferred not be disclosed. Schreiber said he picked up the cash and delivered it to Kalmbach, who delivered it to Stans. Evidently, this transaction was just a small part of an enormous pick-up-and-delivery operation being carried out in the last few weeks before April 7. J. Anthony Lukas quoted Hugh Sloan, treasurer of CREEP’s Finance Committee, saying that the committee had a squad of four to six men collecting cash around the country, but that evidently wasn’t enough manpower; the flow of cash was so abundant, Sloan said, that in one city, “we couldn’t even pick up a $50,000 contribution.”
On April 14, 1972—one week after the magical April 7 deadline, and the torrential flow of cash—the Justice Department filed its long-awaited answer to Hollywood’s prayers: civil antitrust suits against the TV networks. These suits sought to bar the networks from either producing their own entertainment programs or participating financially in programs produced by others. Certain peculiarities about the suits were noted in the press at the time. There were reports that they had been approved many months before by Richard McLaren, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, and sent to Attorney General John Mitchell—where, for mysterious reasons, they had languished. Another oddity was that the suits relied on five-year-old data about the networks. “These [suits] strike us as being peculiar,” a Washington Post editorial stated, “partly because the facts on which the complaints are based are outdated, partly because the cases have been dormant since 1970, and partly because the complaints seem to ignore some of the realities of the television business.” A New York Times editorial framed the issue a little differently: “One question in particular need of an answer is why the Justice Department chose now to move on long ignored staff proposals that it challenge network financial control over TV entertainment programs. It seems clear that for more than a dozen years Democratic and Republican attorneys general have been rejecting recommendations by their aides to initiate such a challenge. .
. . If resentment against past shows of independence by the networks had not been so manifest and its vigor in applying the antitrust laws had not been so erratic, the cloud over the present suit would not be so ominous.” And Federal District Court Judge Edmund Palmieri, who was presiding over pretrial hearings in the motion picture studios’ suit against the TV networks, told the assembled lawyers in his New York courtroom, “Now, about this prospective antitrust suit by the government, this comes as something of a bombshell to me. I had thought that the government, which knew all about this case for a long time, had decided it was going to wait and see, and then possibly get into this case by an amicus procedure in the appellate stage, and this comes to me as a surprise.
