Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker

by Stephen Galloway

  After Redstone spoke (as did President Carter via video), Morgan Freeman delivered a toast, and hordes of employees milled around Lansing in disbelief that this woman who had been their leader for so long—who had broken every barrier, who had defined an era—would soon be gone.

  As the chitchat wound down, a handful asked to have their pictures taken with her; then others joined in, and an impromptu line began to form. Soon everyone was standing there. “People stood waiting to take a picture with me,” said Lansing. “Every policeman that worked there, every guard. They stayed until two in the morning. I’ll never forget it.”

  When the last shots had been snapped and the final champagne glasses clinked, she took her leave of the stragglers and stepped out into the cool of the night. There had been rain these past few weeks, and a thin oily coating covered the sidewalk. She could see her reflection in the puddles that had formed.

  She walked around the deserted studio one last time, lost in silence. The buildings were bathed in a half-light, empty and abandoned at this unholy hour; a few generators buzzed, but otherwise all was still.

  “I didn’t feel nostalgic,” she said. “I just wanted to say one last goodbye.”

  On February 17, 2005, Lansing stepped into the world newborn.

  “All of a sudden I had to recreate my life,” she said. “But I was like a kid, giddy after graduating from college. Life is an evolution. It’s about choices, about chapters. And this was the chapter I wanted to experience now.”

  After decades of accommodating moguls and movie stars, of balancing budgets and dissecting scripts, she felt liberated, as if she had shed one skin and grown another. She was eager to do the work she loved, spend time with friends and even go on vacation without feeling guilty if she lingered too long.

  “I used to think, sometimes I’d just like to go shopping on a Friday, but I realized that wasn’t in my DNA,” she said. “I was incapable of not working. Some gene pushed me, made me want to say at the end of each week, ‘What did I accomplish?’ That’s why I never cared for the word ‘retired.’ I preferred ‘rewired.’ ”

  While her peers who had left their jobs—more often than not with no choice—spoke wistfully of the corporate jets, the lackeys and the limousines that had once been at their beck and call, she missed none of those things. The perks of her old position seemed minor compared to the restrictions that had hemmed her in.

  Still, she acknowledged moments of trepidation. “My greatest fear was that I wouldn’t have enough to do,” she said. “I was apprehensive. I even wondered if I should move away from Los Angeles, and worried about feeling marginalized once I left the film business. But I enjoyed the city more than ever. I ate in the same restaurants, got together with the same friends. I could even go to a concert without having to hold a script in my lap. And it was wonderful to be learning new things.”

  Her immediate priority was to find offices for the Sherry Lansing Foundation, a nonprofit she had established as the umbrella for her activities, with a focus on education, cancer research and the aging workforce, the areas to which she was most drawn. Cancer had been a prime concern ever since her mother’s death; education since her involvement with Big Sisters (now reconstituted as Big Brothers Big Sisters); and, having turned sixty, she wanted others to have the same opportunities for change.

  When a real estate agent tried to steer her toward the kind of squat, prewar building that mirrored Paramount’s architecture, she demurred, opting for a Century City high-rise far removed from the denizens of show business, well before the area had become an entertainment industry hub. She wanted to embrace the future, not the past. So it was ironic that when she moved into her new offices and gazed out the window, she found herself looking down at the very Fox lot where she had begun her march to fame. It gave her a sense of coming full circle.

  After recruiting an executive to run the foundation and finding two assistants, Lansing at last was ready to give herself over to her new adventure. She wished to be active rather than reactive, to play offense rather than defense. “I didn’t just want to raise money and give out grants,” she said. “I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted to be at the center of things.”

  Her biggest challenge lay in adapting to the often languid pace of the nonprofit world. She was used to returning calls within minutes and having her own calls returned just as fast, but no such code of conduct applied here. Early in her post-Paramount years, she was working on EnCorps, a program she had created to retrain workers with a background in math and science to become teachers in underserved Los Angeles schools. When she called a dozen school principals to discuss it, not one called her back.

  —

  She tried to adjust to this alternative universe and slowed her tempo as much as she could, until Eli Broad, a billionaire philanthropist, set her straight. “Why should you put up with it?” he asked, advising her to do as he did and expect others to raise their standards. Emboldened, she discovered that a dose of impatience helped rather than hurt. Being gracious was all well and good, but force and conviction were necessary, too. History, she knew, was littered with well-meaning souls, but only zealots moved mountains.

  “I thought, ‘Why should we tolerate different standards? There’s an urgency to what we’re doing,’ ” she said.

  EnCorps was one of two programs she spearheaded to help older people reenter the workplace or find meaningful activities related to education. Redefining aging, as she put it, was of enormous importance to her. The other program was PrimeTime LAUSD, which helped volunteers go into Los Angeles schools and offer their services in various ways. Neither program was established without resistance.

  When Lansing told California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about EnCorps and asked for his support in getting corporations to cover the $15,000 it would cost per employee, he was skeptical—until Qualcomm, IBM, Bank of America and other giants stepped up. That convinced Lansing she was on the right track.

  “Philanthropy isn’t about money, it’s about good ideas,” she said. “If you have a good idea, you’ll find a way to execute it.”

  She believed everything in her past had led to this, that her experiences as an actress, producer and executive had all prepared her for the third act of her life. “Creating a nonprofit is like producing a movie,” she said. “You have to have passion for an idea. You have to get others to share it. And you have to find the funding to bring it to life. You can never give up, you can never give in. You need to use every drop of talent you’ve been given to make things work. And that’s what I intended to do.”

  She did not have billions to lavish, unlike some leading philanthropists, but she had something of her own. “I had a voice,” she said, “and that voice could be heard.”

  —

  Weeks before leaving Paramount, she had been contacted by Steve Westly, California’s state controller and chief financial officer. Assuming he was seeking her endorsement, like so many politicians (including a Senate hopeful named Barack Obama), she diverted the call to corporate communications.

  In fact, he was reaching out to tell her she was on his short list to join a new board that would oversee billions of dollars that California voters had just authorized for the burgeoning field of embryonic stem cell research. If he selected her, Lansing would be one of the board’s patient advocates, representing those with cancer.

  Defying conventional wisdom, the state had voted in favor of Proposition 71, a 2004 ballot measure approving the sale of $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research, federal funding for which had been restricted by the George W. Bush administration on the grounds that human embryos would be destroyed.

  “Parts of the Christian right were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe the U.S. shouldn’t even be allowed to do research in this area,’ ” recalled Westly. “The basic thrust was, not only should California lead the way to try and find cures for diabetes, blindness and heart disease, but this was also a huge job [creator] and stimulus for the Californ
ia economy.”

  Only a few years earlier, scientists had reported a breakthrough in culturing embryonic stem cells—cells in the embryo that possess an almost magical ability to grow into other types of cells. Their work offered untold hope for regenerating damaged limbs and curing diseases, though it also left Lansing with a pang of sorrow when she thought how it might have saved her mother. Over lunch, she urged Westly to name her to the board.

  “It was humbling to have to audition,” she said. “I told Billy, ‘I’ll never get it, but it’s a good experience.’ ”

  She was “a no-brainer,” said Westly, “an obvious first pick. She was brilliant, she was driven, she got things done. I was interested in people with high EQs [emotional quotients] who could navigate very difficult situations and get to winning.”

  Two weeks after their lunch, he appointed her to the Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee (ICOC), the freshman board overseeing the newly created California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

  In December 2004, Lansing was sworn in. She was as nervous that day as she had been on her first day at Fox. Gathered at the San Francisco swearing-in were some of the most brilliant minds in the country, all members of the stem cell committee.

  “I wasn’t used to sitting at government tables, with the flag and the state seal,” she said. “I was used to being in meetings where everybody was always screaming. I had to dress a certain way and behave a certain way. I told myself, ‘You’re not in Hollywood anymore.’ ”

  After the board secretary introduced David Baltimore, the president of Caltech and a Nobel Prize winner for medicine, and David Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, it was Lansing’s turn. “I thought, ‘If he introduces me as ‘movie executive Sherry Lansing,’ I’m just going to crawl under the table,’ ” she said. Instead, she was introduced as the chairman of Stop Cancer.

  Wittingly or not, her post-Hollywood career had begun.

  —

  She was immediately flung into a court battle as Prop 71’s opponents tried to have it declared illegal.

  The opposition, led by the Life Legal Defense Foundation, chose to attack the legality of the board itself, rather than the ethics of embryonic stem cell research.

  “Our lawsuit focused on a feature of Prop 71 that many people, from all points of view, had noted, commented on and criticized,” said its vice president for legal affairs, Catherine Short. “This feature was that the governing board of CIRM, the semi-appointed, semi-ex-officio body that was going to be handing out $3 billion in taxpayer money, was riddled with conflicts of interest and, once established, was outside the ‘exclusive management and control of the State,’ as constitutionally required.”

  Two lawsuits were filed in California courts, arguing that the proposition was unconstitutional, each likely to wend through the system for years. (Later, they were merged into one.)

  “The board members of the initiative didn’t think there would be litigation,” said Bob Klein, a real estate developer who had spent millions backing the initiative, “but I was convinced that there would be, because of the extreme positions taken during the initiative. With the kind of rhetoric that had been used during the campaign, it was pretty clear. Since they had already tried court battles to block us, they would continue. My concern was how long this would take. I looked at [another ballot measure favoring] early childhood education. That was tied up in court for years.”

  “The brilliance of the opposition was just to wear everyone down,” said Lansing. “We were only allowed to take out a tiny amount of money for overhead, and they knew if they kept the lawsuits going, we’d have to shut our doors.”

  Many of her fellow board members had family members who were sick or had health issues themselves, and they clung to the research as their last best hope. The patient advocates often had the disease they represented, whether Parkinson’s or AIDS, and one was terminally ill, which made her fierce commitment all the more heartbreaking as far as Lansing was concerned.

  Knowing the fight could last years, she met with Klein, and the two came up with a plan to generate millions of dollars to keep the board going, even as the courts froze state funding until the legal battle could be resolved. They began to call everybody they knew, with Lansing flying from one city to another to win over wealthy donors.

  “I remember being on a plane with [entrepreneurs] Richard Blum and John Moores, coming back from the Carter Center,” she said. “I was on the phone, begging for help—‘We’re running out of money!’—when they overheard me, and each one wrote a check for $1 million, then and there. It’s one of the most generous things I ever saw.”

  Her efforts took place even as critics griped about the board’s ineffectiveness, unaware of the counteroffensive being waged behind the scenes.

  “The September 9, 2005, meeting of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) governing board had the markings of a Hollywood script—but whether it was one written by Frank Capra or Samuel Beckett remains to be seen,” noted The Sacramento News & Review. “On that day, the lead actors in California’s $3 billion stem-cell enterprise announced the first grants of $40 million to 16 research universities and institutes. The plot twist was that they didn’t actually have a single cent to hand out, as the monies remain tied down by lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the venture.”

  Lansing was summoned to give a deposition. Meeting the plaintiffs’ lawyers, she found a pleasant young woman preparing to depose her. The other side was just as sincere as hers, she realized, however misguided she might consider them.

  “This beautiful, freckled girl took my testimony,” she recalled. “I looked at her and thought, ‘How can you hate stem cell research? It might save you one day.’ ”

  After weeks of fundraising, she and Klein cobbled together enough money to keep the board functioning. They explored ways to raise more.

  One of the political insiders Lansing had gotten to know suggested a path through an arcane procedure that was perfectly legal but would need Schwarzenegger’s approval. If the governor consented, he could sign off on a $150 million loan.

  “With the money we’d raised,” said Klein, “the governor was in a position where he could make a bold move and say, ‘Look, these are civic leaders from throughout the state and from every major business community, and the state needs to stand behind the people.’ He could make a $150 million gap loan to us after we placed the initial bonds and got through the court of appeals. The question was, who was going to convince him to take this critical step? The pivotal person was Sherry.”

  Knowing that Schwarzenegger had broken ranks with his party to support Prop 71, Lansing did everything to persuade him. It worked.

  In November 2006, CIRM announced: “It will have $181 million available by the end of the year to fund research, training, and facilities development grants. The funding comes through a $150 million General Fund loan, ordered by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this year, and $31 million from the sale of bond anticipation notes (BANs) to private individuals and philanthropic foundations. The funds will support stem cell research in California, until litigation challenging the voters’ right to fund it through general obligation bonds concludes.”

  Lansing was so grateful that she subsequently hosted a fundraiser for Schwarzenegger, giving him cover among Hollywood’s liberal contingent when he ran for reelection.

  The legal assault, said Klein, was overwhelming—though from Short’s point of view, her organization was handicapped by having far less money than his. “We had very little,” she said.

  In December 2005, the plaintiffs “unloaded on us 150 or 200 ‘interrogatories,’ asking for every document that had ever seen the light of day from the beginning of the initiative,” said Klein. “This was ten days before Christmas and we had to have it all in by January 10. The staff worked through Christmas, through New Year’s, and all 150 interrogatories and all the discovery
motions were fully filed, much to their shock.”

  In an initial ruling in April 2006, Alameda County Superior Court judge Bonnie Sabraw decided in the board’s favor, rejecting the argument that Prop 71 was unconstitutional.

  An appellate court supported that decision, leaving only one hurdle: the California Supreme Court. Lansing knew the lawsuit would have to end there, because there was no constitutional issue that would merit taking it further. “This was a states’ rights issue,” said Klein. “That was the case under the constitutional laws.”

  On May 16, 2007, the California Supreme Court announced it would not review People’s Advocate and National Tax Limitation Foundation v. Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, meaning that the appellate court ruling stood.

  “This is the end of the road,” Dana Cody, Life Legal Defense Foundation’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times.

  Days later, the bond sale moved forward, and the board started its real work. “Overnight,” said Westly, “résumés came in from the best universities in the world—Oxford, Cambridge, Tsinghua. Every major scientist on the planet was sending their résumé to UCLA, Stanford, USC, saying, ‘I want to do research in your state.’ ”

  “I was ecstatic,” said Lansing. “It was a validation of everything I’d hoped for but was afraid to believe.”

  —

  That battle marked the beginning of a wholesale reconfiguration of her life as she waded waist-deep into the world of philanthropy. If her fights at Paramount had been with individuals, her struggles now were with the establishment itself.

  “It wasn’t so much an [individual] opponent,” said her friend Barry Munitz, the man who had overseen her appointment as a regent while running Governor Davis’s transition team. “It was that the system was slow, conservative. There’s an old saying about change in academic life: it’s like dancing a ballet in molasses.”

  One would never have known that from her schedule, as she crisscrossed California for regents’ meetings; maintained her activities on the boards of Stop Cancer, the Lasker Foundation and the Carter Center, among others; and even went to Benin with the Red Cross and to Myanmar with the former president. Much of this came to her through happenstance rather than planning. “You don’t find the cause,” she said, “the cause finds you.”