B004YENES8 EBOK (41 page)

I had been in business a long time with the Eye network. It was virtually an exclusive relationship from 1981 through 1995. In relationship to the network, The Rosenzweig Company was not unlike an independent family farm in Middle America. For fourteen years, I had labored in the fields, brought my produce to the main road, and waited for the big company’s truck and trailer to come along and pick up my goods. From Peter Frankovich to Bill Self, to Harvey Shephard, Bob Silberling, Tony Barr, Jeff Sagansky, Howard Stringer, David Poltrak, Tony Malara—the best collection of network executives I have ever met—to Kim LeMasters, Peter Tortorici, and Steve Werner, who (as far as I was concerned) could have just as well worked at ABC (where they might have soared), plus all the many I have not named who fall somewhere in between these two extremes, the whole CBS experience was by far the best of my professional life. Nothing, not my early days at MGM or at 20th Century Fox, or my start as Hollywood’s wunderkind on
Daniel Boone
, or all the time devoted to being a true independent out in the field, could compare with the creative and financial rewards I had during that time frame. I had risen from something of a brash upstart in Harvey Shephard’s office to (as Peter Lund had phrased it) “First Family.”

The perception of my status at CBS probably accounts for why I was able, near the end of 1994, to (months before the “First Family” meet with Lund) sit down at the Bel-Air Hotel with Peter Tortorici. He was then still very much in his job as head of programming and still, at that time, understandably impressed with the astounding numbers on the first
Cagney & Lacey
reunion film and the critical achievement and resiliency of my series
Christy
.

Peter wanted to demonstrate his enthusiasm; to do something tangible that I would appreciate. Why? Perhaps that is better understood when it is explained that this near exclusivity I had granted for so many years to CBS was done without financial remuneration. What I was being paid was for what I made and delivered. There were no holding monies exchanged, no exclusivity money paid; therefore, a little schmoozing or hand-holding by a network executive toward one of his suppliers not only couldn’t hurt, it was partially a job description.

Tortorici offered to augment the Sagansky commitment of a third
Cagney & Lacey
movie to a fourth. I shook my head. You didn’t need good lighting, which the bar in the Bel-Air Hotel did not provide in any case, to see that this offer wasn’t going to carry the day for CBS . What I wanted was something very special. What I did was to tell Mr. Tortorici the opening two minutes, beat-by-beat, shot-by-shot, of a new television series. Peter liked what he heard. He hadn’t expected a pitch meeting, but that is what he got, and I defer to no one in terms of craft at this particular aspect of the business.

What I wanted was for CBS to fund two scripts, each by a top writer, who would take the opening scene I had told Tortorici in that darkened bar and do their own take on what the series would look and sound like. I would, of course, supervise both writers and ultimately turn the scripts into no one but Mr. Tortorici, and he, in turn, would be the one to make the final decision on which of those two scripts would become the series we would make.

I pointed out that no pilot was necessary. We did not have one on
The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,
and there was no need to “audition” here either. He had approved the concept (which was not at all esoteric, but rather in the modern-day, private-eye mystery idiom), would have final say over each of the two top-tier writers I would hire, and was guaranteed that Sharon Gless would star and that I would produce. There was no one in this package that would need to audition for CBS. Tortorici agreed.

“One more thing,” I added. “Whenever Angela Lansbury’s show is over, that is the time slot I want. Sunday night at 8, right after
60 Minutes
.” (There had been rumors that Ms. Lansbury was thinking of retirement, or at least ending her tenure on this show, but I presumed that was primarily a negotiating ploy by the agency mavens at William Morris.) Peter Tortorici did not even swallow hard.

He leaned closer so as not to be overheard. “I don’t want to be known as the network executive who cancels
Murder, She Wrote
, but I also don’t want to bankrupt the network to keep it,” he whispered, going on to explain that William Morris was holding a gun to his head for a lot of money to continue on with Angela’s show. Now, he happily explained, I was giving him a gun of his own: a series in the same genre with a top producer and a genuine CBS star in the lead.

I smiled but understood that the chances were slim and none that Angela Lansbury would depart this very lucrative operation, employing not only herself, but her son and her husband as well.

“Use the gun or don’t use it,” I answered back in equally hushed tones. “Someday
Murder, She Wrote
will move from that Sunday night time slot, and, when it does—for whatever reason—I want it understood it is mine.”

Peter Tortorici shook my hand. The meeting was over. I think he picked up the check. Some months later, he also picked up
Murder, She Wrote
.

And then, he moved it, away from that coveted Sunday night slot, scheduling in its place some easily forgotten comedy programming and apparently forgetting his pledge to reward Sharon and me for years of exclusivity to CBS. He didn’t even make a phone call; that, as they say, is show business. I read about it in the trade press. He was fired ten days later. I wished at the time that I could have taken credit for his demise.

It was all blood under the bridge. After all, why should I worry? The New York meeting with Lund had gone well; I would contact Moonves, get him the two scripts commissioned by Tortorici (
McQue
by Ann Donahue, later of CSI fame, and
Maguire for Hire
, by Chris Abbott, who had headed up
Magnum
,
P.I
., both for CBS). I referred to these as
Whatever Happened to Nancy Drew
?—since Sharon would be playing a private-eye some forty years older than the famed teenage sleuth and could, I thought, have had an audience imagining what might have happened to the Carolyn Keene creation if life had occurred in a realistic, albeit less than idyllic, fashion. If nothing else, I hoped to walk away with what I really wanted: the commitment for two
Cagney & Lacey
reunion movies per annum into the foreseeable future.

The women get their stars on Hollywood Boulevard. A well-deserved tribute.

Photo: Rosenzweig Personal Collection

Helping Tyne and Sharon celebrate the announcement of their stars on Hollywood Boulevard are from left: Ed Asner (Sharon’s costar in
The Trials of Rosie O’Neill
, to mention one of his myriad of credits), Michele Lee (a close friend of both women and a near miss for the role of Mary Beth Lacey), Eddie Albert (like Asner, too many credits to mention except that he starred with Sharon and RJ Wagner in
Switch
long before
C&L
), Sharon, Hollywood’s honorary mayor, Johnny Grant, John Karlen, Tyne, Tyne’s brother, Tim Daly, and Tyne’s
Christy
costar, Tess Harper.

Photo: Rosenzweig Personal Collection

Postproduction and delivery of both
Menopause Years
movies 3 and 4 happened that summer in Los Angeles; still there was no indication as to when I might meet Moonves. Word was all over town that the new CBS chief was in a buying mode, and I wasn’t getting even an appointment to be introduced. I had to face a very significant fact: Les Moonves had attained incredible success in the television business, and he had done so with absolutely no help from me. I was, in other words, not on his list of good guys or people to whom he might be indebted or could depend on, and, because of my relative exclusivity to CBS for over a decade, I was not strongly connected anywhere else.

The sale of CBS to Westinghouse hurt even more. I had finally had a lovely social dinner with an owner of a network, and, within weeks of that meal, the guy sells the company! The sale of Cap-Cities (ABC) to Disney was another clincher. ABC was tough before, but now they would be so vertically integrated as to preclude any action for an independent.

All this and more was on my mind as I finally sat in the CBS waiting room that August morning in 1995, awaiting my summons to the inner sanctum, anticipating my first appointment and my first meeting with the new CBS chief.

Moonves must have smelled my pique at being asked to cool my heels, not only for the minutes outside his office, but for the weeks I had waited since his ascension to that powerful throne. Possibly it was the adrenalin or my clenched fists on entering his office, as—only moments before hearing “Mr. Moonves will see you now”—I had had a hostile encounter (one of many) with CBS mini-exec Steve Werner.

The very bright son of a pal of Larry Tisch, Mr. Werner was the only network executive I had ever met who gave nepotism a bad name. The kid had an unfortunate way of dealing with what little power he was given by his superiors, coupled with (at best) a modicum of communication skills. It all came together in him as my model for a nightmare network executive.

“
I have scheduled
the next
Cagney
for October,” he said, almost gratuitously, as he passed me sitting at Television City’s second floor reception area.

“What happened to November?” I asked, as if I gave a shit (or as if it were my business, but this pipsqueak saying “I
have scheduled
” simply took my pre-Moonves meeting nerves over the top).

“We were the second highest-rated movie of the year last November on a Sunday and with little or no help from CBS!” I had to project a bit as he had not paused before or after his opening salvo. “Yeah,” he countered over his departing shoulder, “but your next outing was a flop.”

That did it. I was out of my chair and would have tackled him in the hall had not the summons to the Moonves meeting intervened.

It is hard to quarrel with the success of Leslie Moonves since his anointment by the CBS powers of yore. I suppose, if one were to be negative, the case could be made that he has reached the pinnacle he is on during a very different era with smaller, more fractionalized audiences, that standards of success are lower than they were, and that the vertical integration of the entire industry has changed the relationship between talent and network, but I won’t do that. I give this devil his due, and it is only right that I do so. I never thought he would make it this far, or for this long, if for no other reason than I have always believed there is a difference between what it takes to be a studio head as opposed to being a network chief that transcends even the divergence between seller and buyer.

You can be a tough guy and a bully and a control freak as a studio head (as was my personal favorite, Gary Nardino), but as a network topper, I think it is advantageous to be a nurturer and a diplomat. A good-guy, cheerleading, Sagansky-type Moonves is not. That was immediately apparent as he sat with his back to a large window in that familiar CBS corner office, totally back-lit by the California haze that streamed through the glass. I commented that I could not see his face; he made no effort to correct that situation. My mind wandered as we spoke. Is this Bob Daly? Is it Bud Grant? Harvey Shephard? Kim LeMasters? Jeff Sagansky? Peter Tortorici? What difference did it really make? It was another forty-year-old white guy. “Nothing ever happens at the Grand Hotel.”