B004YENES8 EBOK (17 page)

Chapter 20 

FILM NOIR, MARY POPPINS, AND THE U.S. POSTAL OFFICE 

Peter Lefcourt, with whom I had happily worked on
American Dream
, actively pursued work on
Cagney & Lacey
. He did not ordinarily hire out as a freelance writer of episodes but made an exception as an avowed fan of the show. “Jane Doe #37” was the first script he created for us and could well have been the last, as he was driven almost as crazy as I over Sharon’s not getting the empathic possibilities between a character such as Cagney and a common bag lady. No amount of “there but for the grace of God” arguments could win this one. Ultimately, Sharon bit the bullet and did it, but totally without conviction. I remember putting the picture and the performance together frames at a time.

Lefcourt’s next script, “Let Them Eat Pretzels,” was an even worse experience. Everyone loved it; hardly a note from the network, and nary a reason to suspect a problem with this tongue-in-cheek effort. It wasn’t the fact that once it aired we would offend millions of Arab Americans with our descent to stereotype, but rather that days before the commencement of production, Tyne would announce, vis-à-vis the subplot of the piece (which made up perhaps 30 percent of the script), that she would not do mother-in-law jokes, as she found them cheap, sexist, and offensive. Neither Chris Abbott, Terry Louise Fisher, nor Barbara Corday had prepared me for that one, but I felt Tyne might be right, so Lefcourt was brought back for yet another eleventh-hour rewrite.

It’s a comment about something that, despite all this Sturm und Drang, Lefcourt leaped at the opportunity to head up development of six scripts, commissioned in the hope of a pickup for the following fall season. I had been told Steve and Terry did not want to work together in the future, so my thought was to keep the present team working on the back nine, while Peter prepared for the hoped-for fall pickup.

Chris and Terry indicated they wished to stay on, working under Lefcourt. Scripts, being worked on by Peter Lefcourt for a season that might never happen, were the least of my problems.

The Nielsen numbers on
Cagney & Lacey
were now worse than ever. Football season was over, and, to replace their Monday night game and as if to go after what remained of the
Cagney & Lacey
audience, ABC delivered more and more strong exploitation films aimed at the female viewer.

February sweeps saw us battered by a made-for-TV film showing Ann-Margret giving away her children from her deathbed (the ultimate “crip” movie),
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as well as an ABC exploitation film dramatizing the sweeps scare of the year: herpes. I was quoted as criticizing the viewing public, who, when given a choice between this film and
Cagney & Lacey
, “chose to watch a running sore”.

The specter of the show dying hovered over all of us. I had come to love this project more than anything I’d ever done—Tyne and Sharon more than anyone I’ve ever worked with. And why was that? What was it about my two stars? They were constantly challenging, brilliant beyond my experience, talented, and magical together and separately. I had often said, before meeting them, that one of the frustrations for a filmmaker is that you never get to hear the words as good as you did in your head. No matter how good the actor—even if it were Laurence Olivier—the words on the page were somehow clearer and better when you first read them and imagined their sound and delivery. In my experience that had always been true. That is until I met Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless. For the first time in my life, they said the words in a way that was better than I had imagined.

The closeness of the company was palpable. There were still some minor kinks to work out, but, by early March, everyone was proud of what they were doing and aware of what was expected of them. It was truly a great gig, and the very real prospect of its premature demise was devastating to us all.

On
This Girl for Hire
, the financial news was getting worse. I had, at my request, gotten approved as being fiscally responsible for this project, meaning that all dollars spent over the license fee came out of my personal pocket and not some studio or major corporate entity. Of course, the opposite was also true; any profits or production savings would be mine to keep. Being “at risk” is the only way to make any real money in this business, but it can also be frightening.

Lee Rosenberg was now, once again, my agent. I had come to have a personal affection for attorney Stu Glickman, and an old intern of mine, Tom Kane, was functioning as production manager on the M.O.W. I liked all these men, yet I found myself second-guessing the choices and alliances I had made. I used to accuse one-time father-in-law and mentor “Rosy” Rosenberg of misguided loyalties; now I began to wonder if I, too, was guilty of hiring people I liked rather than those who might be best for the job.

Despite the gloom-and-doom prognosis on
Cagney & Lacey
, we kept fighting. Rosenbloom and I took Sharon and Tyne to a convention of CBS affiliates in Vegas and put them on the road to plead our case through the regional media. Shephard was getting plenty of support mail when he called to say, “Don’t convince me. Convince the audience.” Our ratings picked up a bit, but they were so dismal against
The
Thorn Birds
and other major ABC blockbusters that we were all feeling buffeted.

Now, a blast from the past: Farrah Fawcett responded to my sending her the script on
This Girl for Hire
. She liked it and wanted to play the role. There were, of course, problems, such as availability and money. The latter was being spent by me as if we were going into production in a matter of weeks. Farrah was talking about waiting months.

Meanwhile, not one of the town’s A-list directors would agree to, or was available for, the film. The turndowns had me in a funk. I was now down to such ordinary choices that I considered directing myself but realized I was too tired, too otherwise occupied, and (truth to tell) too cowardly to do so. I had to face that it was a lot easier saving these films in the editing room (while cursing the silly SOB who actually did the directing) than taking on the responsibility myself.

Nardino and I journeyed to Farrah Fawcett’s hilltop home for an incredible meeting. Nardino couldn’t help himself; he was salivating at the prospect of tying up Fawcett for the series of
This Girl for Hire
. He described the meeting as a “ten.” Well, the house certainly was; the California ranch-style manse included, among other amenities, a built-in, sunken racquetball court and a studio for her rather extraordinary work as a sculptress. Farrah’s live-in fella, Ryan O’Neal, joined us and was exuberant in his support of the material. He was pushing (along with us) for Farrah to close. She asked for twenty-four more hours to think it over.

The next day Gary called to tell me super agent Sue Mengers was now negotiating for Farrah. This was the agent who represented many major stars, from Jane Fonda to Barbra Streisand. None of us could recall if Ms. Mengers had ever negotiated anything as puny as a star deal for a mere television series.

Mengers gave Nardino the news that the star’s availability might be delayed another six months or more. I told Gary I couldn’t afford to postpone, and he countered that he just might pay me to do so. This, I speculated, could be my dream come true: being paid to do nothing.

In the days that followed, Farrah was in and out of the project so many times it became silly. Ms. Mengers was driving everyone crazy, as she inappropriately tried to apply her motion picture style of negotiating to television. They really are very different businesses. In the 1980s, that was even truer than it is today.

First Nardino, then Shephard, gave up on her. Mengers, having no luck negotiating with anyone else, then came after me.

“Look, Sue. The picture starts in a matter of weeks. You keep telling us Farrah is not available for six months. Why are we having this conversation?”

“You will wait for the star,” said Mengers, sounding like something out of Billy Wilder ’s
Sunset Boulevard
.

“Sue, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’m not Ray Fucking Stark, and this is not one of your multi-million dollar features. This is a movie-for-television, and I will hit the ignition switch and it will start on schedule if I have to shave, put on a wig, and play the part myself.”

More than once I’ve felt we would have been better off if I’d done just that.

For over a decade I had, with irregularity, nurtured
This Girl for Hire
from its beginnings as the Cliff and Jean Hoelscher project,
The Malachite Kachina
.

Their script became a treatment for a television series by Barbara Avedon & Barbara Corday at least a year before I would challenge the distaff writing team to create Hollywood’s first female buddy movie. It would then serve as my introduction to the writing talents of Steve Brown & Terry Louise Fisher, who came on board to adapt the Avedon & Corday treatment to screenplay form. This treatment (or presentation) did more than break down the plot. It carefully illustrated, in both stage directions and dialogue, how the characters talked, how they related to one another, how they dressed, what the key sets were to look like, and the cinematic style of the piece in terms of art design and photography. It even gave a strong indication of the humor to come in the two or three short scenes that Avedon & Corday had included. I mean no disparagement at all of Steve and Terry’s considerable talents when I say that never could any writer(s) have had an easier assignment than to follow this blueprint.

This Girl for Hire
provided me the opportunity to jump-start cinematographer Robbie Greenberg’s career in Hollywood. He went on to do excellent photographic work in films and television, including Robert Redford’s
The Milagro Beanfield War
and
Free Willy
. It also afforded me the opportunity to work with a cast of prestigious performers, many of whom I had admired most of my life, including Jose Ferrar, Howard Duff, Celeste Holm, Elisha Cook Jr., and Ray Walston. Jerry Jameson’s directing was uninspired, but acceptable; Robbie Greenberg’s work, outstanding. The script worked beautifully, and the sets, costumes, and music were near perfection. Why then is the movie such a colossal bore?

The girl “for hire” is Barbara Brady, a private-eye who is a child of Hollywood. Brady lives with her mother (played perfectly by Celeste Holm), a former Hollywood bit actress, and her mother’s live-in lover, who runs a film memorabilia shop on Hollywood Boulevard (Howard Duff).

Though the action takes place in modern day, Barbara Brady dresses in the style of the forties, because it goes with her hairdo and the cherry 1948 Chrysler convertible she drives. She carries a snub-nose .38 revolver, which, when coupled with all those capers with which she gets involved, makes her mother very nervous. Mother Brady blames herself:

“I knew I should never have let you go to all those Humphrey Bogart movies,” she laments.

It’s a vehicle for a star.

As Barbara Brady, Bess Armstrong acted the part nicely. She comported herself like the pro she is. If she is a star, however, it’s from the fairly antiseptic school that Julie Andrews attended. Following my first-time meeting with Ms. Armstrong, I remember noting in my diary: “
What’s Mary Poppins doing in
The Maltese Falcon
?
”

It was too late for such a lamentation; she was already mine. The battle to get CBS to approve someone, especially someone with some individuality and star power, was long and arduous. Ultimately, I failed.

I continued to have Harvey Shephard’s ear; it wasn’t enough. Farrah Fawcett would have done the project; she needed a commitment to series from CBS . Shephard would commit to a fortune in holding money for Ms. Fawcett (to keep her off the market until he could see the film), but Farrah felt she was being asked to audition, and neither she nor Ms. Mengers would, understandably, allow that.

My original choice was Bernadette Peters, who, I was told at the time by her agent, was at that place in her career where this vehicle would be most welcome. I could not persuade Shephard, and, throughout the four months this debilitating process took, he remained adamantly opposed to my choice. By the time we settled on someone, I believe Ms. Peters was cast as the lead in Stephen Sondheim’s then-new Broadway smash,
Sunday in the Park
with George
. Next case.

I sold relative unknown Madolyn Smith to Shephard three weeks after I first auditioned her in my office. I convinced Shephard of the efficacy of the idea of going with a relative unknown and assured him that the money saved would go into a supporting cast, actors with TVQ.
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CBS casting head Jean Guest once again pronounced that I couldn’t get her for a series. I had, of course, heard that before from Ms. Guest in reference to Sharon Gless, and so I am sure I demonstrated some impatience in relating that young Ms. Smith had read for the role in my office only weeks before. I had only waited this long because the mandate from Ms. Guest’s office was for a recognizable name.