Eager to bolster his public image, Bluhdorn agreed to establish a $39 million economic and social development set up in the Dominican Republic. He also funded construction of an elaborate replica of a historic Italian village. Called Altos de Chavón, the faux sixteenth-century town, replete with amphitheater, was designed to be a major tourist attraction, but for some years remained in obscurity because of the financial and political intrigues associated with its construction.
To the Hollywood community, Charlie Bluhdorn was an outsider—indeed an intruder—and Bluhdorn knew it. Now he was determined to close a macho deal with mainstream talent and thus persuade the town that he was indeed a player. When he learned that Howard W. Koch, the outgoing production chief at the studio, had earlier optioned the rights to Neil Simon’s hit play The Odd Couple, Bluhdorn saw his opportunity.
The Gulf & Western chairman flew to Hollywood, checked in to a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a week’s stay, and summoned Koch and his successor, Bob Evans, to a meeting. “The Odd Couple can be a big hit for us,” he declared, building excitement as he spoke. “Who is going to star in this film?”
A wary man, Koch started to respond and then halted. He didn’t want to upstage his youthful successor, Evans. “I’ve started talks with Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason,” Koch stammered. “I haven’t made any offers. No one is committed to anything.”
Evans shook his head. The task of recruiting two such famously difficult actors would be painful, he pointed out, and so would the ultimate cost of the film. Art Carney and Walter Matthau had starred in the Broadway play—perhaps that team would make more practical targets.
Bluhdorn had been taking a series of phone calls, listening to the discussion intermittently. Slamming down the phone now, he barked, “That was an agent from William Morris. Do you know a Hershman or Hirshan or something like that? He says he wants to come in tomorrow to talk about The Odd Couple. He wants to bring Jack Lemmon along with him.”
“Tell him to come,” advised a surprised Evans.
The next morning Leonard Hirshan and his client arrived promptly at the studio, and Bluhdorn was ebullient about meeting Lemmon, shaking his hand fervently, assuring him he was his favorite actor. The William Morris agent, a genial sixfooter (an exception among the mostly short and stubby functionaries of that company), thanked Bluhdorn and said that he and his client were delighted to meet with the Paramount contingent over such an important project. “The Odd Couple is a great play,” said Hirshan, “and my client is perfect for the role.”
Jack Lemmon smiled uneasily, not knowing quite what he was supposed to say in this meeting. His agent had urged him to be there to underscore his passion for the show. From what he had heard about Bluhdorn, Hirshan knew there was a deal to be made and that the star’s presence would impress the Paramount newcomer.
Bluhdorn got quickly to the point. “We all love Jack Lemmon,” the chairman declared. “But what’s his deal on this picture?”
Evans winced at Bluhdorn’s impetuous question. It was an unwritten rule, they knew, not to discuss deals in front of “talent.”
Neither Hirshan nor Lemmon seemed offended, however. “Jack’s deal is $1 million against 10 percent of the gross,” Hirshan announced calmly, as though he were giving out a telephone number.
Again, Evans sucked in his breath. This was a very rich deal, and he wanted time to find out what Lemmon had received on his previous pictures, then construct a counteroffer, but Bluhdorn had no interest in a delay. “You’ve got a deal,” he announced, placing his hand on Hirshan’s shoulder.
Lemmon beamed, but there was more on Hirshan’s agenda. “I think you all should understand that Walter Matthau is perfect for the role opposite Lemmon, and his price is $350,000 against 10 percent of the net,” he said.
“I’m not giving Matthau any fucking points,” Bluhdorn snapped.
“We need a moment,” Evans broke in, grabbing Bluhdorn’s arm and guiding him to the bedroom of his suite. “We’ve listened to their proposals,” said Evans. “Now let’s take a breath and come back to them with our counter. This is a very rich deal.”
Bluhdorn’s nostrils were flaring, however. He was a dealmaker by instinct, and there was a headline-grabbing deal to be made, with a star standing by to see it through.
“We’ve got to close this deal,” he said. “And then we need to sign a director. Billy Wilder, maybe.”
Bursting back into the room, Bluhdorn tossed out his suggestion about Wilder. Hirshan responded that he didn’t represent the great filmmaker, but promised to do some investigating about interest and availability.
Thrilled, Bluhdorn clasped Lemmon and then extended his hand to Hirshan.
“You did good work here,” Bluhdorn told Hirshan. “I want you to become my head of production in London.” The William Morris agent stared down at Bluhdorn, startled. He did not reply. “Didn’t you hear me?” Bluhdorn persisted. “London, production chief.”
Hirshan saw Evans staring across the room at him, trying to figure out what his boss was offering. “I am a talent agent,” Hirshan calmly explained to Bluhdorn. “That’s what I’m good at. I intend to stay a talent agent.”
“Think about my offer,” the chairman persisted. “We’ll talk more. Meanwhile let’s get this movie going.”
Hirshan nodded. “I’ll work out the details with Bernie Donnenfeld,” he said, referring to Paramount’s chief of business affairs.
“You’ll speak only with me. I make the deals,” Bluhdorn replied sharply.
Later in the week, Hirshan saw Bluhdorn again to inform him that Billy Wilder wanted $1 million to direct The Odd Couple . When Bluhdorn became apoplectic at the price, Hirshan quickly changed the subject, advancing the name of his client Gene Saks, a stage director who he said would be acceptable to his other clients, Lemmon and Matthau.
One catch was that Bluhdorn wanted The Odd Couple to go into production in March and there was no screenplay. Further, Saks had committed to direct a play in London scheduled for June.
These seemed like serious obstacles to Evans, but not to Bluhdorn. Under prodding, Neil Simon agreed to adapt his play and prepare a script in eight weeks—for an incremental payment. And Saks agreed to compress his shooting schedule to free him for his London show.
Within one week, The Odd Couple had become a reality, but the details of the deal defied precedent. When Evans related the events to me, he was exasperated. “Bluhdorn’s so hungry to be a player that he gave away the store,” Evans said.
I tried to assuage his fears. “Lemmon’s probably worth a million,” I said. “And we need a comedy.”
“It’s not just the numbers,” Evans said. “Gene Saks is going to rush the shoot to do his cockamamie play in London, and he can walk off the movie if he runs behind schedule. Besides, the agents in this town are going to laugh at us. We’ve just committed to a pay-or-play deal with two stars and a director and we don’t even have a script.”
“Who would finish the movie? And who edits it?” I put in.
“Welcome to Bluhdorn’s Hollywood,” Evans said.
The Odd Couple was completed on schedule, and Howard W. Koch, the producer, supervised the editing. The movie went on to become a major hit. And neither Bluhdorn nor anyone else ever brought up the topic of Leonard Hirshan becoming Paramount’s head of production in London. Indeed, Hirshan was to remain at the William Morris office for three more decades before departing the agency to become Clint Eastwood’s manager.
It didn’t take me long after arriving at Paramount to realize that, while Charles Bluhdorn had a genius for trading, he had a blind spot when it came to judging people. Bluhdorn’s personality was so dominant, his presence so overwhelming, that he all but suffocated those in his company. When Bluhdorn interviewed a prospective executive, he usually did all the talking. He would pose a thoughtful question, but then deliver his own answer.
Given these traits, Bluhdorn was incapable of assembling a management staff that could i
mplement his strategic objectives and compensate for his own shortcomings. If anything, his executives exacerbated his problems rather than tempering them.
Bluhdorn’s management issues were evident across his empire, but they were especially blatant at the film studio.
If Bluhdorn had set out to find an array of executives who were unfit to work together, he could not have done a better job. Members of the team didn’t complement one another and didn’t trust one another.
There were several common denominators in the Bluhdorn picks. None of the executives he hired had ever performed the responsibilities to which they were now assigned. None had the appropriate qualifications. Educational background did not figure in; most had never progressed beyond high school.
All were impulsive hires. They were at the right place at the right time. And they were recruited by a man who prided himself on taking chances.
Stanley Jaffe was a mere twenty-eight years old and had just finished producing his first feature film, Goodbye, Columbus , when Bluhdorn anointed him president of Paramount. His closest claim to executive experience stemmed from the fact that his father, Leo, had served as president of Columbia Pictures. Leo Jaffe was a short, soft-spoken accountant, whose rise to corporate power surprised others in the industry, including himself. His son, Stanley, was well read and thoughtful but, unlike his father, had a trigger temper.
Stanley had come of age in the sixties but was definitely not a sixties person. He was the product of an affluent and conservative Jewish background. A family man, he did not smoke pot or favor rock ’n’ roll and did not sport long hair—in fact, he had almost no hair at all. His taste in movies was somewhat literary—thus he chose a Philip Roth novella, Goodbye, Columbus, as his first film project.
I had been the first at the studio to read the screenplay, written by Arnold Schulman, and got to know Jaffe pretty well as he toiled on the picture. He was serious about his responsibilities, but was not either charismatic or imaginative. Indeed, I found his personality rather rigid. He rarely smiled. The give-and-take of a film set seemed to intimidate, not inspire him. Bob Evans liked dealing with Stanley, as did I, but no special personal link emerged. Evans was pleased, if surprised, when Bluhdorn named him president. At least Jaffe was someone he could deal with on a rational level. Or so it seemed.
Jaffe did not particularly like Martin Davis, who now held the title of president of the parent company and was almost always hovering at Bluhdorn’s side. Davis was a gruff, flintyeyed man who always seemed to be muttering one-sentence admonitions in his boss’s ear. When Bluhdorn went on one of his rants, leaving a roomful of executives in confusion or even tears, Davis would try to clean up the mess, but his idea of diplomacy was itself edgy and harsh. Davis did not approve of most of the executives his boss was appointing and made no effort to conceal his attitude. Once, when I told Bluhdorn that I disagreed with one of his decrees, Davis murmured to me, “Charlie never considered you management material.”
While Davis now stood between Jaffe and Bluhdorn, it quickly became apparent that Bluhdorn did not want Davis’s input when it came to movies. Bluhdorn looked to Jaffe to run Paramount and to his sharp young general sales manager, Frank Yablans, to move the goods. If Jaffe could keep Evans and Bart under control, he reasoned, Yablans, a fiercely ambitious thirty-two-year-old, could run the distribution and marketing machine.
A bald, short, bullet of a man, Yablans knew how to manipulate exhibitors and stoke their appetites. Yablans also understood that the movie business was unique in that every new film represented a start-up business—one that demanded its own distribution and marketing.
Yablans had cultivated his reputation for corporate ferocity. Growing up poor in Brooklyn, his first job, at age twelve, was plucking chickens at a meat market. Rivals in the distribution business enjoyed relating the story of how Yablans had once called a theater owner in Washington, DC, who had just been released from intensive care following a heart attack and yelled expletives at him because he’d been selling tickets to a Paramount movie at a two-dollar discount.
Jaffe, refined and introverted, did not like Yablans’s style. The sales manager liked to boast that he’d saved Paramount by demanding big advances for Bluhdorn’s bombs like Paint Your Wagon and Darling Lili. He’d created “event pictures” out of films that were singular nonevents. In so doing, Yablans kept rising in the distribution pecking order. As sales manager, he’d integrated the clashing advertising and distribution structures into a strong marketing unit and fired road-weary executives who had formerly ruled those divisions.
While Jaffe understood Yablans’s ambition, and distrusted his motives, he never considered Yablans a threat to become his replacement. Yablans didn’t have the politesse to be president of a public company. Or so he thought.
For his part, Yablans did not feel Evans had the tact or discipline to run a Hollywood studio, but he knew Charlie Bluhdorn admired his style. Yablans was unattractive and arch, and whereas Bluhdorn addressed Yablans crudely, as though he were a waiter in a restaurant, he treated Evans like a naughty son. To Yablans, Evans was a snobbish rich kid whose tastes were too elitist for a business that fed off the pop culture.
In Bluhdorn’s eyes, the team of Evans, Bart, Yablans, and Jaffe, though an odd mix of personalities, had the potential to pull Paramount out of its malaise. He knew his own instincts in picking movies were problematic, but now there would be a new plan, and his team was in place to implement it.
Jaffe was intensely nervous as he assumed his new presidential duties. Attired in a dark pinstripe suit, he greeted his staff with a cautious, respectful speech. This would be a new moment for Paramount. Better times were ahead.
But not immediately. On the fourth day at his new job, Bluhdorn summoned Jaffe to a screening of a first cut of The Adventurers, an adaptation of a Harold Robbins potboiler. The movie was both expensive and long (three hours). Bluhdorn had committed to the movie soon after buying the studio—who could resist a Robbins bestseller? he argued.
When the screening ended, the chairman faced his audience of twelve and demanded their opinions. First in line was his driver, an elegant and reserved black man named Owen. He said he loved the movie, then went quiet. Bluhdorn next called on the heads of advertising and foreign distribution, both of whom confirmed Owen’s positive assessment.
It was now Jaffe’s turn. This was his first week but already his moment of truth. Jaffe responded in a quiet and quavering voice: “The movie is terrible. It is un-releasable.”
The chairman didn’t blink. He continued around the room and all the other responses were positive. Jaffe anticipated a screaming denunciation behind closed doors, but none was forthcoming. The atmosphere was tense but restrained.
Upon its release, The Adventurers was uniformly panned by critics. One columnist wrote that “Bluhdorn’s bombs” were still in evidence. Filmgoers stayed away in droves.
When Jaffe first visited us in Hollywood, he requested time for a leisurely “think session.” He still seemed a bit shaken by his experience with The Adventurers. “I love Charlie,” Jaffe told me. “He’s a catalyst. But he can also be a catalyst for chaos.”
Bluhdorn may not be able to fully restrain his dealmaking impulses, Jaffe said, but in any case our mandate was clear. Paramount should aim high. The studio must make quality movies. We should go after the big stories, not the big deal or the big name. We should make “people pictures.”
The meeting ended on a positive note. Here we were, three young guys, somewhat miscast for our new roles, both excited and daunted by the power that had been put in our hands. Problems and pitfalls loomed all around us, but still the moment was ours.
The first potential movie from our new team already showed promise, at least on paper, and it was a project we all seemed to agree on. Stanley Jaffe’s first movie, Goodbye, Columbus , had starred a young actress named Ali MacGraw, and she now was interested in a screenplay titled Love Story. Also circling it was Larry Peerce, wh
o had directed Goodbye, Columbus and who was friendly with Jaffe.
I liked Love Story, despite its blatant sentimentality—or maybe because of it. In a sense it represented the culmination of our earlier discussion: it was a “people picture,” eminently accessible to ordinary filmgoers.
It was hardly a reflection of a new cinematic sensibility, but for a new regime, indeed for a “new” company, it was a safe bet. Even its title seemed right—on-the-nose, but oddly appealing.
Love Story would be our big shot. But first, there would be some serious road hazards for the new team to survive.
CHAPTER 3
The Salon
It was a salon, albeit an idiosyncratic one. Bob Evans presided over it with baronial panache. Even though the estate was modest in size, it reflected, in his mind, an aura of grandeur and elegance. Evans worshipped the traditions of Old Hollywood, and his French Regency home was positioned within walking distance of the residences of movie stars of old like Jimmy Stewart and Fred Astaire, north of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. A loan from Paramount helped Evans acquire the spread for some $290,000 from James Pendleton, an elderly decorator, and he quickly set about to embellish the structure and grounds—it would turn out to be a $500,000 renovation. Evans liked the stately elegance of the main house and hired craftsmen to enhance its features. The small living room exuded a paneled formality. A dining room seated twelve. There were only two bedrooms, but adjoining the master bedroom was a dressing room of equal size. The requisite hot tub, enclosed by tall hedges, adjoined the master suite. Stand-alone structures containing an office suite and two guest bedrooms huddled at the south end of the grounds, all but hidden beneath the tall eucalyptus trees.
Though he greatly admired the property, Evans felt it had been ill-planned. His first stroke was to close the main entrance on traffic-heavy Beverly Drive, building a gated entrance off secluded Woodland Drive at his eastern boundary. This meant that visitors would drive along the full length of the grounds before pulling into a circular driveway at the front of the house. Along the way, they would journey past a tennis court, a screening room (also built with studio subsidy), and a swimming pool and lawn before finally arriving at the newly installed driveway. Hence, guests felt they were arriving at a vast estate rather than facing the usual facade of a garage tucked in behind the house.
Peter Bart Page 4
