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Al Waxman would need to undergo heart bypass surgery and be lost to us for from six to eight weeks. This called for yet another of those difficult-on-the-actors-staff and-crew block shoots, where for two weeks we shot nothing but squad room material involving the corpulent Lieutenant Samuels in order to bank enough material for several episodes.
⁷⁸
Al Waxman never performed better. It was as if he was, on some subconscious level, leaving a memorial to himself in the event he would be unable to return.
⁷⁹

Chapter 42 

CHANGE EQUALS PSYCHOLOGICAL LOSS 

Arguably our last season was our weakest, although even here we had two of our most powerful episodes: the acquaintance rape segment (“Don’t I Know You”)
⁸⁰
and our payoff to young Harvey Junior’s hero worship of Oliver North (“Friendly Smoke”).
⁸¹

The women were under contract for one more year, and the ratings were good enough for renewal if anyone was willing to fight for same. I gave Orion more than one opportunity to have me do so, and, as usual, they mishandled the situation. Tyne and Sharon were bone weary. The whole venture had been a monumental test of their endurance and their psyches. Considering only half of what they’d been through, both women had behaved admirably. This had not been a guest star format or, even with all due respect to the male members of the cast, an ensemble show. These women had carried all the weight and had done so under unbelievably difficult circumstances.

They had, for a few seasons, been paid just about as much money as anyone could reasonably want, and they were realistic enough to know that the kind of creature comforts even their housekeepers might demand were impractical at the pace we were working, or deliverable at the facility we occupied. The only thing, then, they wished for that they didn’t have was a piece of the action—a rooting interest in the afterlife of the series they had done so much to shape. There were no boycotts or work stoppages by these two. They did not put that proverbial negotiating gun to their corporate masters’ heads (as so many stars had done over the years). All they could hope for now was justice. That is in short supply in Hollywood; still, I took their case to Larry Hilford, who had just succeeded Jamie Kellner at Orion.

By this time the news from the syndication market was bleak. Orion salesmen in the field were coming up empty.

“Y’know,” I began, “I’ve sold this show not once but three times, and in New York and L.A., the toughest markets in the world. I find it hard to believe I couldn’t sell it in Des Moines.”

I pointed out that I could be like a fanatical dervish where this series was concerned, and that I was willing to supply this service gratis, since I already had a percentage of the show and it was to my benefit to see this package sold; all Orion had to do was to pay my airfare and hotel bills. Hilford wanted to know how I’d do it.

“Same as always,” I replied. “By sheer force of will.”

I thought by now I deserved to be trusted on that score. Hilford, who impressed me as a man who didn’t want anyone playing in his sandbox, said he’d think on it.

“One more thing,” I added. “I’ll need a sales tool. I want Tyne and Sharon to be involved, to make appearances all over the world, to have their photos taken with station managers and their kids.” I could, I told Hilford, deliver the two Award-winning actresses if they were given a tiny piece of the profits. “Call it sales commission if you want,” I added. His answer was no.

“Give them a bad definition of profits. Christ, you say the show isn’t worth anything, that you can’t sell it; what’s wrong with giving them each 5 percent of nothing?”

“Principle,” was his reply.

“Principle?” I shrieked. “These gals are killing themselves. The Orion management team inherited this series, has never put a speculative quarter into it, and now does nothing to sustain it while reaping a multi-million dollar bonanza and you talk to me about principle? I have to ask, Mr. Hilford, what kind of principle is that?”

Hilford pointed out that the women were paid a high salary for that.

“They are paid, Mr. Hilford, to put in twelve-hour days as actors; no more, no less. You haven’t got a clue what these women do or what they have brought to this company; you wouldn’t have a job without them, and I dare say if it weren’t for them, Orion wouldn’t have a television division.”

Hilford countered with the view that help was not needed, which I thought was curious in light of his own admissions of failure in the marketplace. He then expressed the view that it was of no particular interest to him or his company if this very expensive show continued into its seventh and final season. The 125 episodes they would have at the end of the current season were more than sufficient for their purposes, he claimed.

I believed this was rank stupidity. I pointed out that Orion was grandfathered under the old tax laws and still had the investment tax credit on
Cagney & Lacey
, that foreign sales on the series were escalating at an amazing rate, and, with our minor deficits and assuming only the bare minimum in U.S. sales, it would still pay Orion millions annually to keep the show in production.

“Forget the money,” I went on. “Are you saying your company has no use for this flagship and all that it means—or at least should—to your television division?”

Hilford had enough. The meeting was over. We never spoke again.

Months later he would make the very questionable decision to sell the
Cagney & Lacey
series to
Lifetime
Cable at a fraction of the figure we had all been talking of for some years. He had an underling call to explain that this was “a very good deal,” for it only involved “basic cable” in relatively “small markets.” That Lifetime Cable then played in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, to name only three not so-small markets, and that the cable service would run our episodes both day and night (until even the most ardent
Cagney & Lacey
fan was satiated), would not, according to the Orion mavens, “adversely affect future sales.” Hilford was new at Orion, but he was the perfect match for the management team he had joined.

Days after the
Lifetime
sale, I was asked if Sharon and Tyne would be willing to do promotional spots for this new customer. I reminded them of Hilford’s earlier statements that no help was needed from the stars. Orion came back the next day with an offer to pay the women $10,000 each for what would be no more than one hour’s work.

“Why don’t you give them a percentage of profits—which you keep saying are worthless—and save the $20,000?” I queried. No takers. To their credit, Sharon and Tyne held to their principles and refused to do the promos.

Tyne and Sharon were appreciative of my efforts but were genuinely pissed at Hilford’s turndown. Tyne begged me to end the show. It was not within my power to do so. What I could do was promise that for the first time I would do nothing to promote or sell the idea of a pickup with CBS and that I would let Kim LeMasters know of my decision to leave. The absence of a key creative element would probably provide the network chief with more than enough of an excuse to end the life of a series he never cared for in the first place.

I had finally had it with Orion. Larry Hilford was probably as big a factor in my decision to depart at season’s end as was Jerry Weintraub’s persistent offer for me to leave production and join him as executive vice president and chairman of the television division of the Weintraub Entertainment Group.

“I’m going to make you very rich, very fast,” said Weintraub. The charismatic dynamo had my attention.

The decision to join Weintraub—leaving production to become a suit—was, in fact, as motivated by Kim LeMasters’ actions as it was by Hilford’s or Weintraub’s.

Georgia Jeffries had left
Cagney & Lacey
at the end of the previous season. She then accepted my offer to join The Rosenzweig Company as its senior development VP. Her job was to find or write the series that would fulfill the six-show commitment I had with ABC and to creatively develop other writers and material for future projects to be produced by the company.

A screenplay came our way:
Sisters
by Jill Gordon. It was one of those rare finds: a script fully realized that required little or no input from either Ms. Jeffries or myself. We liked it just the way it was. It had been developed by ABC; they had passed on the property and put it in turnaround to the supplier, Columbia Pictures Television. It had nearly gotten made, but another so-called non-franchise property developed at the same time at ABC got the nod instead. That show was called
thirtysomething
.

The Columbia executives had done their homework. With ABC no longer a possibility and with no chance of selling anything to NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff that had not originated with him, it left—in that pre-cable era—only CBS. Although Columbia’s deal with The Rosenzweig Company was then in hiatus, it wouldn’t hurt, they reasoned, to run the project by two such hot CBS properties as Ms. Jeffries and myself. After all, CBS was our home network.

Leaving even less to chance, Columbia executive Steve Berman got the script to actresses Marilu Henner and Kristy McNichol. They agreed to come on board, subject to having the man who produced
Cagney & Lacey
as executive producer.

There I was, the only CBS
Emmy
Award-winning drama producer of that decade, sitting in LeMasters’ office, script in hand; Jill Gordon, the writer of that script, contractually committed to stay with the show for the life of the series, and WGA Award–winning writer Georgia Jeffries, enthusiastically agreeing to supervise Ms. Gordon and the writing staff under my direction. In addition we had Marilu Henner, making her first commitment to a television series since
Taxi
, and Kristy McNichol, obligating herself to series television for the first time since the very successful Spelling/Goldberg series
Family
.

“In a more perfect world,” I said, “
Cagney & Lacey
would have worked in the post office. This is that show, that possibility. This transcends
Cagney & Lacey
; it is its logical successor.”

LeMasters turned it down. The man who would lead CBS to the ratings cellar was unmoved by the material, the assembled team, or my spiel. I became reflective. This was not my script. I had not influenced even one comma. Jill Gordon was not my discovery. Kristy McNichol and Marilu Henner were not even my idea. All I had been asked to do was be the “iron man” running back and punch it in from the three. Someone else had slugged it out for the previous ninety-seven yards; all I had to do was get it into the end-zone and score the touchdown.

Instead, I found myself on the one-yard line with eleven guys piled on top of me and lye invading my nostrils. I speculated that I was getting too old for this; perhaps I should try coaching. Enter Jerry Weintraub.

I was grateful for his giving me the opportunity to move gracefully to the relative safety of the sidelines but also could not get over how sad the whole thing was. I was caught in a dilemma. I loved making a show but could no longer go through what was necessary to get there. It had all been rather like crawling naked over razor blades: once you’ve done it, you can’t forget the experience, and you are not likely to willingly go through it again.

Artists like to think of themselves as victims, according to author Joseph Epstein. He claims that best-selling novelists are driven in limousines to give lectures whose main message is that the artist in America has no place to rest his head; that painters with serious real estate holdings rant against a vile and philistine country. H.L. Menken’s solution for the complaints of writers about the loneliness of their work was to prescribe a few days on the assembly line. Menken may have been right about a lot of things, but I don’t think that was my problem.

I had succeeded in a way few of my generation could imagine. It was more than a hit television show—it was the cancellation and the subsequent renewal. It was the monolithic CBS having to say to
The New York Times
and the world, “We have made a mistake. We were wrong. Barney Rosenzweig was right.” It was the vindication of all those years of rejection and rebuff that enlarged my ego to the point that my skin had to be metaphorically stretched thin to provide cover for a goiter-sized, self-important lump, located very close to the surface of my persona.

Larry Hilford and Kim LeMasters merely reminded me of what I already knew: that I was powerless. After all I had been through, I no longer had the energy to argue the point or the ability to summon the strength to fight back. I would close down The Rosenzweig Company.

Overwhelming all of this was the decision to move out of my home, to end my nearly ten-year marriage to Barbara Corday, and to effectively change nearly every aspect of my life.

I once wrote a line for Christine Cagney to say to her partner (then in a slight depression over the move from her apartment of over fifteen years). “Change,” Cagney pontificated, “equals psychological loss.” For me, at that moment, the truth of my own dialogue was profound.

Hollywood divorces are legendary, in their abundance if nothing else. Somehow, this one was a shocker. It wasn’t the breakup of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, but it tore at the fabric of our tiny community nonetheless. Corday and I were a most visible power couple; she, then arguably, one of the most popular women in all of Hollywood, I—at the time—the producer of a show that everyone in our town admired, if for no other reason than its sensitivity to women.