B004YENES8 EBOK (8 page)

“Barney, how are we going to do that?” Iannucci asked.

I snapped back, “Your problem. Work it out.”

That was probably a great mistake on my part as well. From my vantage point, the business affairs department of Filmways was to sophisticated negotiations in the television industry what the Keystone Kops were to law enforcement. They wasted little time before naively asking my former employer the equivalent of: What do we have to pay you to go away? Filmways was holding out a golden platter and saying, in effect, “Take it.” He pretty much did.

Mace Neufeld retained his lion’s share of profits and took a per episode fee. His company would be granted an “In Association With” credit, and he agreed to do nothing in return. He also understood he was to stay clear of me. He only made one mistake. He assumed I was smarter than I was, so he tied his fee structure into mine. Whatever they paid me for busting my hump, he would take half that amount for doing nothing. He probably assumed I would make a better deal for myself. If nothing else—based on his own experience with me—he should have known better.

Chapter 11 

DO YOU WANT IT GOOD OR DO YOU WANT IT TUESDAY? 

I had a show to produce. Corday was ensconced at ABC and therefore unavailable. I got Avedon on board. She would serve as my associate producer/story editor. Tyne Daly was convinced to try out starring in a TV series—something she professed she never wanted. As long as she was going to do it, she did want top billing. After all, she reasoned, she now had seniority. I couldn’t promise that. We had no idea who Cagney would be, and what if it were someone who was clearly a bigger name? The woman who held my hand on the walk from Dupar’s to the CBS office of William Self, and subsequently every evening at dailies in Toronto, understood. At Tyne’s request, written into the deal, was that “billing shall be at the sole discretion of executive producer Barney Rosenzweig.”
¹⁶

My old writer pal from
Daniel Boone
, Jack Guss, came to work, bringing with him story maven Fred Freiberger. Both were questionable casting on my part, but I could find no one else whom I knew—or could trust—that was available and interested.

The search for a Cagney began. As on the film that preceded this series work, inquiry was made as to the availability of Sharon Gless, the Avedon and Corday “discovery” of years before. Gless was unavailable, still under contract to Universal and, in fact, about to replace Lynn Redgrave in that studio’s series
House Calls
.

We began to set up meetings for actresses who might play the lead. The first actress interviewed was Meg Foster. After she left the room I said, “As far as I’m concerned, we can stop looking. She’s terrific.” Avedon concurred. Rosenbloom and Iannucci were nervous about ending the process so soon.

“We can keep looking if you want,” I said, “but let’s not lose her. She’s got something.”

My new boss at Paramount, Gary Nardino, was trying to figure out a way to take over this series. After all, he “owned” me, and I was “of the essence.” I pleaded with him to look the other way, saying that playing the kind of hardball he was contemplating might jeopardize his studio’s position with CBS. Furthermore, I argued, if I could pull this off, he was going to have a much more valuable producer under exclusive contract. I offered to suspend and extend. Gary did not want to lose me for the pilot season. I assured him I could get properly staffed up and only moonlight the
Cagney & Lacey
job.

Guss, Freiberger, and Avedon were in place, but not a lot was being accomplished. I kept pressing Avedon for progress reports, for some kind of material. I was being “shined on.”

More and more women, numbering in the hundreds, were lining up to play Christine Cagney. Actresses would tell us they had been the female lead in such and such a film, and we would screen it to see their work. They
were
on screen for all of eight minutes. It wasn’t that they were lying; they were the female lead. What that invariably meant was they were the nurse, or the wife, or the secretary. The dearth of good roles for women made it clear why we were being bombarded with applicants. Besides the hundreds of unknown or relatively obscure players, Sally Kellerman, Susan Anspach, and Jennifer Warren were vying for the role.

The estimated cost of building our squad room on a rented sound stage in Hollywood was no less than $250,000. Amortized over six episodes, that’s over $40,000 per episode for sets—and we still didn’t have a Cagney loft or a Lacey apartment.

I suggested we do what we did in Toronto and find an old brick building in downtown or industrial Los Angeles and use that. The search was on. Ron Hawkins, a New York actor who had played Harvey Lacey in the Toronto movie, was holding out for more money. We decided to recast. Carl Lumbly, who played Petrie, Al Waxman, who was Samuels, and Harvey Atkin, who played the desk sergeant, all returned for the series from the Toronto production. We elected to look for a new Isbecki and create a character for my friend—and Avedon pal as well—Sidney Clute . The other change was that Cagney’s father, who had only been referred to in dialogue in the movie, would now become at least a recurring character, if not a regular.
¹⁷

We assigned my old
Senior Year
pal Brian McKay the job of writing the script that introduced Charlie Cagney on screen. Dick O’Neill was cast—our first and only choice. We had two guys we liked for Isbecki. Martin Kove was by far the least expensive. He had the job.

The location manager made a find: near Dodger Stadium, a 50,000-squarefoot, all-brick erstwhile furniture/mattress factory, now abandoned and five minutes away from those parts of Los Angeles we would use to double New York. The clincher: it was on Lacy Street .

Instead of the $250,000 estimated cost for the squad room set, we got that, the Cagney loft, the Lacey apartment, miscellaneous looks (interiors and exteriors), and office space for a grand total of $70,000, less than $12,000 per episode. It was a huge savings, even if the city fathers had misspelled Lacey.

Avedon was still hanging out with me in casting meetings and still not getting the job done with “her” writing staff. We would be shooting in a matter of weeks. Our sets were being painted and decorated; we were virtually cast—waiting only final network approval on a Cagney. We did not have page one of anything.

Avedon was to write at least the first script. Over two months had passed since her deal had been made, and all I had was three pages of an incomplete outline. I began to push very hard. My story maven was not in very good shape; her mother was dying, and none too gracefully at that. Corday’s one-time partner could not cope with the pressure, and, without consulting me, she would attempt a solution of her own. Ms. Avedon phoned Harvey Shephard to tell him the delivery date was ludicrous and asked, “Do you want it good or do you want it Tuesday?” We would deliver in June, she told him.

This was a kind of naive madness. There is no first-run network television in June. Our whole project was happening because of my promise to deliver. Rosenbloom was furious that Avedon would make such a call. We had to go on without her. I fired her, dug out the original theatrical movie script by Avedon & Corday, and—with Corday’s help—cut and pasted a new script from the old with new material by me bridging the narrative gaps. It took a weekend.

I brought it to the office and declared it a model of what we were doing and a fix on where we should be going with the series. I felt like Moses bringing down the Tablets from Mount Sinai. Basically it was a direction, a formula, to be broken only for a better idea. We had to get started somewhere, and I was now prepared to say we start with this:

(A) A cop story with a beginning, middle, and an end.

(B) A personal story of nearly equal length with the cop story and (ideally) tying in with the cop story in some thematic way. This story should feature either Lacey or Cagney.

(C) A personal story of perhaps half the length and importance of the other personal story featuring the lead not featured in the longer personal story.

(D) Comic runners, or running gags, involving the squad room, the other detectives, the booking area, or the Lacey household.

We had been narrowing our choice of actresses down to under a dozen. Tyne Daly was now being included in the process. We would have her sit and chat with the candidate and see how the chemistry worked. We did readings with Tyne and the Cagney wannabes. We did the same with our two finalists for Harvey Lacey. Tyne and I wanted John Karlen (whom I had featured in
American Dream
); Iannucci and Rosenbloom wanted the other guy. To Shephard it was a toss-up until I told him Karlen was Tyne’s preference.

“Well, then, no question. It should be the man she prefers. They’ve a lot of work to do together.” Harvey Shephard had spoken, and so John Karlen was cast.

It wasn’t so smooth with Cagney. We had reduced our selections to seven women, including Meg Foster. She won the roll on merit. It was unanimous, although everyone did wait for Shephard to speak first. “Who do you prefer?” he asked, turning to me.

“Meg Foster,” I said. I knew she was the least known of our candidates, but I had liked her from the first. Shephard nodded, and then everyone concurred.

It wasn’t until the next day that Shephard had second thoughts. He had learned that
Emmy
Award–winning actress Susan Clark was available and just might be interested in doing what then would have been her first television series. I was determined to be open-minded. Susan Clark was, after all, a major television name. She had, at that time, never before done a television series. Signing her would be a coup.

Ms. Clark had refused to read for the part. Shephard acknowledged this was to her detriment, especially in light of the obvious chemistry of Meg Foster’s reading with Tyne Daly. Nevertheless, the network chief asked me to consider the insurance of some kind of name to replace the not-insubstantial loss of Loretta Swit .

A meeting was set for Rosenbloom, Daly, and me at the home of Ms. Clark and her then-husband Alex Karras. As the producer of
Daniel Boone
I had, some years before, given Mr. Karras his first acting role in Hollywood (“in Hollywood”, in that all he had done on screen before that was to play a cameo as himself—a Detroit Lions footballer in the filmization of the George Plimpton tome
Paper Lion
). The evening was therefore off to a warm and nostalgic start.

Without trying to be too obvious about it, we worked out the evening’s seating arrangement so that Ms. Clark and Ms. Daly sat next to each other on the couch. We were all affable and friendly, but I concentrated on watching and listening to the two women rather than making, or contributing very much to, the conversation myself.

Clark and Daly seemed to get on famously and, so far as I could tell, had a fair amount of respect for each other. The conversations were pretty much of a general nature, primarily centering on their craft but not focusing at all specifically on our series or our production plan. A little over an hour later, the conference was over, and we bid Ms. Clark and Mr. Karras goodnight.

I was in Shephard’s office the next morning. “It’s OK with me,” I said, and then added, “Provided we set the show in Kansas instead of New York and change the title to
Lacey & Lacey
.”

The CBS chief was not big on sarcasm. I clarified my
Lacey & Lacey
remark by telling him my feeling that Tyne Daly and Susan Clark might be a viable duo as sisters, but that there wasn’t enough contrast between the two of them to make for an interesting team. I also ventured the opinion that no one would believe Ms. Clark as the hard-bitten
New Yorker
we had written for Cagney. Harvey Shephard wasn’t used to being disagreed with, and he did not take to my being cute about it. We argued. He pointed out the virtue of a star and the fine creative credentials of his candidate. I countered with my nominee’s chemistry, sex appeal, and physical imagery. We were at a standstill. Neither was convincing the other. Shephard was adamant, and I wasn’t blinking.

There was what seemed an inordinately long period of time where he simply stared at me. I stared back. Finally, I asked, “So what do we do now?”

He punched a button on his intercom. The voice of CBS casting director Jean Guest came over the speaker. Over the phone, and in as even-handed a fashion as he could, Shephard asked for Ms. Guest to choose between Meg Foster and Susan Clark for the role of Christine Cagney.

This blatantly self-serving setup had my eyes midway in their roll heavenward when the disembodied voice of Ms. Guest most unequivocally stated, “Meg Foster.” I ceased my upward glance and smiled.

Ms. Guest received a cursory thank-you from her employer, who then punched some more buttons. CBS executive Bob Silberling’s voice came over the speaker. Shephard’s tone had somewhat changed, I thought. This time he indicated I was with him in the room and that we were having a “discussion” about the merits of who would be the best choice between the
known
Ms. Clark and the relatively unfamous Ms. Foster. Silberling equivocated and took a long time in doing so. Too many “on the other hands” later, Shephard bid farewell and punched the intercom again, summoning the new callee to his office. In less than ninety seconds, junior executive Gary Barton was there.

“Mr. Rosenzweig here and I are having a disagreement,” Shephard began. I thought his bias was showing, but I said nothing. Shephard, at last, posed his question.

Barton did not hesitate. “Meg Foster.” He then added, “Without a doubt.”

Shephard turned to me. “All right, I guess we’re cast.” That was it. I quickly flashed to those days at ABC and the awful experiences and endless waiting for executive decisions: Tahiti versus the Gulag.

Tony Barr was the CBS vice president in charge of current programming. I invited him and his assistants to my office at Paramount. Anyone who visited me there had to be impressed. It was very grand. I moved to the club chair nearer the couch Mr. Barr occupied. The distance from my desk to the chair was substantive. It allowed me time to notice the number of dog-eared pages on the scripts held by the CBS trio. These turned-down corners presumably indicated the pages containing notes on ways to improve what I was breaking my hump to produce.