B004YENES8 EBOK (54 page)

Subplot
: One year after his death, Cagney discovers that Charlie’s ghost does not reside in his stored possessions. She is ready to let David Keeler back into her life, but when he proposes marriage, she realizes that is not what she wants and she makes a declaration of her independence.

SCHOOL DAZE

Director: Jackie Cooper

Written by: Allison Hock

Members of the Fourteenth reluctantly return to the Police Academy for a refresher course. Cagney encounters her old nemesis, Instructor Clyde Ivan Steingrove, while Lacey runs into Detective Harry Dupnik of the One-one—nine. Both men have ulterior motives in wanting to foster friendships. After school, Cagney and Lacey practice new methods learned in class while tracking down the dreaded “meter mauler.”

Subplot
: Cagney helps Tony as he entertains his father in his home for the first time.

LAND OF THE FREE

Note: Features appearance by
Oscar
and
Golden Globe
winning actress, Mercedes McCambridge

Director: Stephen Macht

Written by: Sharon Doyle

While investigating an apparent drug/gang war murder, Cagney and Lacey discover possible connections to an El Salvadoran death squad. Time and again they are thwarted by an unknown government agency so secret it seems non—existent. During the investigation, they encounter a nun and Cagney is forced to come to grips with her Catholic upbringing.

Subplot
: Cagney meets Nick Antonucci,a plumber, in A.A., who helps her understand the difference between the practice of religion and belief in a higher power. As they become acquainted, she fights a growing attraction for him.

Subplot
: In an attempt to get more attention from his parents, Michael begins to move into Harvey Jr.’s room.

A CLASS ACT

Director: James Frawley

Written by: Wayne Powers and Donna Dottley Powers

Cagney and Lacey go undercover as buyers in the high—tone world of art when a valuable painting is stolen. It had been donated to the Children’s Hospital where it was to be auctioned to raise funds. Cagney is forced to come face—to—face with her feelings about her mother as she finds herself in what would be her mother’s uptown world.

Subplot
: Lacey and Nick Ainatucci have an unfortunate first meeting at a deli where, not knowing who each other are, they battle over the last Napoleon which they both want for Cagney’s lunch. Cagney and Lacey try to resolve Lacey’s initial dislike of Nick.

Subplot
: Cagney buys Nick the wrong birthday present in an attempt to make him fit her lifestyle.

Subplot
: Samuels’ old partner comes into town with the news that he wants to date Thelma (Samuels’ ex—wife).

FRIENDLY SMOKE

NOTE: Award winner Tyne Daly for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Director: Reza Badiyi

Written by: Shelley List & Jonathan Estrin

Cagney’s rapist, Brad Potter (DON’T I KNOW YOU) is finally brought to trial. Lacey and other squad members become involved as witnesses in his prosecution and subsequent conviction. While Lacey would like to continue to be in court to support her friend and partner, she is faced with her own crisis when she learns that Harvey Jr. is missing in a military training exercise. Some good comes out of the possible tragedy as Lacey re—establishes a relationship with her estranged father. Convinced that her son is dead, Lacey begins to mourn temporarily alienating everyone around her. Finally, a phone call from Harvey Jr. ends her grief.

BUTTON. BUTTON

Director: Al Waxman

Written by: Michelle Ashford

A suicide case begins to look like murder, but the investigation dead ends at the Justice Department when Cagney and Lacey learn the victim was in the Witness Protection Program. Cagney and Lacey race the clock to prevent another hit.

Subplot
: Harvey and Lacey face a difficult decision when they learn that a child in Alice’s day care center is carrying the AIDS virus.

Subplot
: Shopping with Tony for the ingredients of a romantic dinner with Nick triggers a frank discussion about AIDS, safe sex and current sexual mores. Armed and strengthened with the information, Cagney confronts Nick only to discover he’s way ahead of her. They fall into safe, responsible, passionate sex.

AMENDS

Director: Michael Caffey

Written by: Larry Barber and Paul Barber

The return of Lieutenant Jim Thornton (TRADING PLACES). Once again, Cagney finds herself taking his orders when she and Lacey are assigned to his task force. A surveillance of a stolen arms dealer turns tragic when Lieutenant Thornton shoots his second in command. Despite his claims of innocence, Thornton is hung out to dry by the Department. Cagney takes over the task force and, in spite of her antagonistic feelings toward Thornton, the process of solving the case reveals that Thornton was blameless.

Subplot
: Cagney is asked to be an A.A. sponsor. In preparation she attempts to make her amends to Donna LaMarr only to learn that she is not yet ready for any kind of relationship.

Subplot
: Lacey counsels the Isbeckis to get a second opinion when Ginger is told she must have a hysterectomy.

YUP

Director: Nancy Malone

Written by: Sharon Elizabeth Doyle

A robbery turns out to be a case of revenge for a man’s unscrupulous dealings on Wall Street. As Cagney and Lacey investigate, most of the suspects turn out to be yuppies, all of whom have motives.

Subplot
: Harvey Jr. is graduated from Boot Camp and comes home for a visit. Michael, concerned over his lack of growth and jealous of the attention his older brother is getting, begins to compete for adult status.

Subplot
: Nick wants Cagney to come to his Mother’s Sunday dinner with the family, but she is suspicious of his intentions.

A FAIR SHAKE-PARTS I & II

PART I:

Director: Reza Badiyi

Story by: Max Jack and Barney Rosenzweig

Teleplay by: Barney Rosenzweig

PART II:

Director: Reza Badiyi

Story by: Barney Rosenzweig and Max Jack

Teleplay by: Max Jack

In an atypical two-part episode, Cagney & Lacey find themselves dupes of their own department in a case of international political intrigue involving the Italian paramilitary group, P-2, the FBI, the CIA, as well as funding for the purchase of Exorcet missiles for use by the Argentine government in its dispute over the Falkand Islands with Great Britain. It’s a lot for two of NYPD’s finest to handle, especially when the very married Mary Beth Lacey finds herself physically attracted to the FBI decoy assigned to “their” case.

Subplot
: Harvey and Lacey plan a trip to Miami for a contractors’ convention, but because of Lacey’s special assignment, Harvey has to go without her.

Cagney & Lacey: The Menopause Years (1994-5)

THE RETURN

Director: James Frawley

Writer: Terry Louise Fisher & Steve Brown

The plot renews the friendship and interplay between Cagney and Lacey, but later in their lives.  Things have changed:  Mary Beth Lacey has quit the police force and is having little success in finding work and Christine Cagney is now a married lieutenant working for the DA's office ... and facing the specter of menopause.   They may have lost touch, but circumstances bring them back together again.

TOGETHER AGAIN

Director: Reza Badiyi

Writer: Terry Louise Fisher & Steve Brown

New York's toughest lady detectives re-team to solve the murder of a homeless transient who had been terrorizing the residents of a posh apartment building with screaming threats, insults and physical intimidation.  Though the cops think the culprit is another street person, Cagney and Lacey believe the real killer is one of the tenants, many of whom have ample reason to have murdered the boorish bum.

THE VIEW THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING

Director: John Patterson

Writer: Michele Gallery

Cagney and Lacey must investigate a local precinct when a murder leads to suspicion of police corruption.  When the findings of the DA's police corruption investigation turn out to be useful to Cagney's political ambitions, she makes a choice that will have a lasting impact on her life, Lacey's and the twenty-year friendship between them.

TRUE CONVICTIONS

Director: Lynne Littman

Writer: Michele Gallery

After the girlfriend of a murder victim from her building commits suicide, Chris gets romantically involved with the girl's still-married father.  Chris and Mary Beth are assigned to work New York's first capital murder case in a decade, and everyone seems to have an opinion on capital punishment.

Full-page trade ad that I purchased in 1988 to call attention to our final episode, since no one else would or did.

¹
Shmatte, a show business yiddishism, literally meaning rag, but often referring to a dress or the clothing-making business. Rhymes with lotta.

²
Initials were for Bash (Sherwin), Neufeld (Mace), and Bernard (Harvey). They managed such artists as
The
Captain and Tennille, The Carpenters, Kansas
(the rock group not the state), Chaka Khan, Lou Rawls, Cheryl Ladd, Jim Croce, and others. In the past, they had represented even greater luminaries, including Neil Diamond and Frank Sinatra.

³
Lorimar was the brainchild of Lee Rich and Merv Adelson and had blossomed into a major television entity before being taken over by Warner Brothers in 1989. The Waltons was the company’s first bona fide hit, followed by such shows as
Dallas
,
Eight is Enough
,
Falcon Crest
, and
Knot’s Landing
.

⁴
In “desperation” because even a successful M.O.W. makes its producer relatively little money. A theatrical motion picture or a television series has almost unlimited upside potential. A miniseries could then be (maybe) profitable but was mainly prestigious. Still, in the late seventies, we even believed that certain miniseries might generate big profits, although that rarely proved to be the case. M.O.W. was a last resort for
Cagney & Lacey
, for it had potential as a theatrical film and, failing that, as a series. Unfortunately, we were, at that time, pretty much alone in that belief.

⁵
An acronym for Movie of the Week, invented by then-ABC chief, Barry Diller. Also sometimes referred to as Movie-for-Television or Made for TV movie.

⁶
Back-door, as the name might imply, refers to any kind of project that serves as a pilot for a new series without going through the traditional developmental process. It could be something begun as a movie, an episode, or a special.

⁷
“Pay or play” is a guarantee, usually to an actor, that the talent will be paid regardless of the film being made or not.

⁸
American Dream
was
Emmy
nominated for Best Teleplay of an Hour Dramatic Show (Ronald M. Cohen, with story by Barbara Corday and Ken Hecht) while
East of Eden
was nominated for best miniseries (losing to
Shogun
). Jane Seymour was nominated for Best Dramatic Performance in a miniseries by the Hollywood Foreign Press. She and the show both collected
Golden Globes
.

⁹
1975 award-winning TV flick starring Lee Remick and Jill Clayburgh. Directed by Joe Sargent and written by Fay Kanin from the novel by Gail Sheehy. Lillian Gallo was the producer.

¹⁰
Dreck
(rhymes with wreck): Yiddish for “crap” (as in junk, garbage, excrement; performances of grossly inferior quality).

¹¹
American Cinema Editors Award (Eddie) 1984–85, Geoffrey Rowland for the episode “Heat,” and Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Award (
Emmy
) Jim Gross (1985) for the episode “Who Said It’s Fair” Part II.

¹²
The episode “Heat,” directed by Karen Arthur (1985), and the episode “Parting Shots,” directed by Georg Stanford Brown (1986).

¹³
Sergei Eisenstein, Russian film director of such classics as
Battleship Potemkin
,
Alexander Nevskiy
, and author of
The Film Sense
.

¹⁴
“Evergreen”: (Love theme from
A Star Is Born
) Academy Award winner for Original Song in 1977. Music by Barbra Streisand. Lyric by Paul Williams.

¹⁵
Reference is to the DGA (Directors Guild of America), whose private theater facilities are regularly rented by filmmakers to show their work to Hollywood insiders. Seating capacity then was nearly five hundred.

¹⁶
An interesting sidebar is that, since leaving Mace, I now called myself executive producer instead of the title I’ve always preferred, which is simply producer. To me, the executive producer was the guy, a la Mace, who put the deal together. The producer, on the other hand, is the creative force who makes the film. This is still true to a great extent in theatrical features. Sometime in the early eighties, this changed in television. I became aware of it the hard way when the Television Academy initially only invited the executive producer of
East of Eden
to be honored by them. They changed the invite that year for me, but I wised up in terms of future billing for myself.

¹⁷
A recurring character is just that—one who occasionally (or even often) returns to the series in the same role, but unlike a regular, there is not the same employment guarantee of a minimum number of episodes.

¹⁸
The Academy Award–winning writer of
Bird
(the Charlie Parker story),
The Competition
with Richard Dreyfuss, the groundbreaking TV series
The Law
, and the very successful TV miniseries
Masada
, to name some of his very prestigious projects.

¹⁹
The television equivalent of point-of-sale advertising.

²⁰
Just as there are Sweep Weeks of hyper importance to the purveyors and subscribers of the television rating system, so, too, are there times when the ratings don’t count. Of course, like all absolutes, this is only partially true. Ratings are still taken, still read, and still used and abused. They are just not supposed to count in terms of advertising rates during the dead weeks, and the opposite is true during sweeps … that’s where the amounts to be charged advertisers are most often set.

²¹
Years later Ms. Foster was to play a recurring role for me, opposite Sharon Gless, in our television series
The Trials of Rosie O’Neill
, with the most interesting aspect of that being we never spoke of that time in the long-ago.

²²
William Smithers v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., 139 Cal. App.3d 643, 189 Cal. Rptr. 20 [1983] and also Smithers v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., 696 P.2d 82, 211 Cal. Rptr. 690 (1985). .

²³
“To the left and lower” is considered slightly better billing than “to the right and higher,” since most people read from left to right. Still, the higher position is coveted as well, hence the fairly even status this method of billing enjoys.

²⁴
The negative aspect of praising Ms. Smith, with whom I had no rapport, is that inevitably it must be done at the expense of others who were more loyal and with whom I had a better working relationship.

²⁵
The company formed by Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband Grant Tinker. Besides
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, their writers delivered such series as
Rhoda
,
Lou Grant
,
Hill Street Blues
,
St. Elsewhere,
White Shadow
, and
Remington Steele
.

²⁶
Or
shul
. Yiddishism, rhymes with tool, and means the same as synagogue … a place of worship and learning.

²⁷
These four words, deeper, richer, fuller, better, came to me by way of Tyne Daly, who quoted her mother, Hope Newell Daly, as the source. It became our slogan on the show.

²⁸
Neil McCarthy, the one-time ultimate entertainment lawyer, had been the attorney for Cecil B. DeMille, Howard Hughes, and Spencer Tracey to name a few. He was one of Hollywood’s major luminaries when Hollywood was really Hollywood, and he was Sharon’s maternal grandfather, partially responsible for making her a fifth-generation Angelino and, therefore, among Southern California’s blue bloods.

²⁹
“Open and Shut Case,” written by Terry Louise Fisher & Steve Brown; directed by Nicholas Sgarro.

³⁰
The ultimate “C” word. A vulgarism referring to female genitalia.

³¹
The term
comfort squad
is generally applied to those members of the crew most closely associated with the actors: makeup, hair dressing, wardrobe. Added to this group, in our case, were fan mail coordinator Toni Graphia and general helper/assistant to the stars, Ms. Beverley Faverty
.

³²
“Crip” movie: slang for cripple, aka, “Disease of the Week.”

³³
For more than a generation, so-called Q scores have provided the clients of Madison Avenue advertising agencies with data to aid in their marketing, advertising, and media efforts. TVQ references the industry standard for measuring familiarity and appeal of a particular performer or fictional character or a program that one or both might be on. It can also be used to summarize the perceptions and feelings that consumers have over such things as familiarity or likability.

³⁴
In those days, the parent company of Paramount Pictures Corporation.

³⁵
Press agent pals Gene Schwam and Julian Myers volunteered to help out, even after Rosenbloom had turned down my request for some sort of payment for them.

³⁶
The IA (International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees) and the AMPTP (The Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers) are two of the primary adversaries in Hollywood’s labor-management disputes. The IA represents motion picture and television crews; the Association speaks for the major companies in the industry.

³⁷
Nardino had left his presidency at Paramount Television in 1983 to become an independent producer on that lot. His biggest success was as executive producer of the Showtime series
Brothers
. Ironically, years later, he went on to become chairman and CEO of Orion Television, a welcome addition to that organization, but too late an arrival to really help
Cagney & Lacey
. He died at far too young an age, just after the turn of the century.