When Hollywood Had a King by Connie Bruck

Author:Connie Bruck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588362995
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

It was remarkable, really, how smooth Wasserman’s assumption within the movie industry had been. Remarkable that the other studio heads just gave way, that in an instant he was able to displace Nizer and substitute his own man at the MPAA, that he could usurp total control in the labor negotiations. It was almost as though his sovereignty had become so much a recognized fact of life in Hollywood that when he claimed one or another of its prerogatives, no one thought to object. No one, that is, except his primordial rival for the presidency of MCA, Taft Schreiber, and, more importantly, Jules Stein. For when MCA stumbled in the late sixties, Stein (at Schreiber’s instigation) effectively reminded Wasserman that it was he who still controlled the company, through his majority holdings—and that Wasserman could be deposed. That was the single fallacy in Wasserman’s near-perfect assumption.

When the agency business had been shut down, Wasserman was liberated; but Stein suffered, seeing what he had built—his monument—disappear. He hated the stark black glass tower Wasserman chose for their new corporate headquarters (its offices were still filled with Stein’s antiques, but they were incongruous in this ultramodern setting), and he rejected Wasserman’s plan for a second tower. The idea of the tour had excited Wasserman from the start, but not Stein; he had recoiled slightly at the idea of the public’s trooping through their private domain. Still, he assented. “Al Dorskind brought me a photograph—it showed the old Universal commissary, which stood right where this [tower] is,” Wasserman said. “People paid a quarter, and they walked to the second floor and watched the movies being made—and they were silent! It was taken in 1919. I said to Dorskind, ‘Do you think they would still do it?’ ” In Wasserman’s tour, visitors rode in trams around the property, saw movies being filmed, stopped to see Doris Day’s dressing room, and glimpsed the computer Wasserman had purchased to provide the kinds of cost-control studies that made factories run more efficiently. Bob Rains, a publicist at Universal, wrote in his memoir, Beneath the Tinsel, that on the first day of the tour, in July 1964, Stein had suddenly appeared in the doorway of Wasserman’s office. He had taken the tour, he said, and he thought it would make the company money. “ ‘But we do have a serious problem,’ Stein remarked as he took an admission ticket out of his suit coat pocket. ‘Look at this! Nobody took my ticket after I purchased it. If something is not done to correct the situation, people will be giving their tickets to others once they leave the tour grounds. Think of the money we will be losing.’ ” Wasserman said he would take care of it right away.

Notwithstanding Wasserman’s unfailing deference, there was no mistaking that Stein was more peripheral at the company than ever. He cast about for other activities, and even considered becoming a partner at the Lehman Brothers investment firm. It was Ed Weisl’s suggestion—which may well have been instigated by Weisl’s close cohort Wasserman.

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