Indecent Exposure (14 page)
Stark's ties to Columbia had been close since the studio distributed
Funny Girl,
which opened in September 1968. Columbia began losing money in 1971, and by 1973 the company's very life was threatened by three expensive box-office failures—7776,
Lost Horizon,
and
Young Winston.
Although Stark had produced none of those films, Columbia still owed him millions of dollars in deferred profits from
Funny Girl
and he feared that he might never get the money if the studio were forced into bankruptcy. Stark turned for help to his oldest and closest friends in financial circles—Charles Allen and his nephew, Herbert Allen, Jr.
Ray Stark's relationship with the Allen family began in the 1950s when he was introduced to Charlie Allen by Charlie Feldman, Hollywood's leading talent agent and Stark's boss at the time. When they met. Stark and Allen independently were already well connected in show business—Stark as an agent, and Allen on the more exalted level of financier and adviser to the mighty.
Raymond Otto Stark, after flunking out of Rutgers, went to Hollywood in the late 1930s. He worked as a florist at Forest Lawn, wrote radio scripts for Edgar Bergen, worked in the Warner Bros, publicity department, sold
Red Ryder
radio scripts, and eventually became a literary agent, representing Thomas Costain, J. P. Marquand,
James Gould Cozzens, and Ben He
cht. Later as a talent agent he handled Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, and Kirk Douglas.
Charlie Allen was first exposed to the entertainment business through his first wife, Rita, who was a Broadway producer. He later became friendly with a number of important Hollywood people. In addition to Charlie Feldman, Allen was close to Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros., to Spyros Skouras, the chairman of Twentieth Century-Fox,
and to Serge Semene
nko, the most active and innovative motion-picture financier in the nation and a top officer of the First National Bank of Boston.
Ray Stark and Charlie Allen found that they had a lot in common and became good friends. The late 1950s and early 1960s were important years for both men as their business activities moved closer and closer together. Both wanted to make substantially more money in show business. Both had innovative ideas for doing it. And both shared a business attitude, common in the hurly-burly world of Hollywood and certain sectors of Wall Street, which accommodates occasional association and conduct of business with people of questionable reputation. There was nothing wrong with dealing with rogues, the philosophy went, so long as one did not dirty one's own hands in the process. Charlie and Ray stayed clean.
Charlie Allen and banker Serge Scmenenko, as Jack Warner's principal financial advisers, joined the board of directors of Warner Bros, in 1956, purchased major blocks of stock in the company, and helped reorganize its troubled finances. Scmenenko, in addition to being celebrated for innovations in movie financing, also engaged in unorthodox banking practices which a lot of business people and certain federal agencies found objectionable. He frequently made personal investments in the stock of companies to which he was lending his bank's money. Many banks prohibited their emplo
yees from such practices, but Seme
nenko pooh-poohed the obvious potential for conflict of in
terest.
As part of its effort to raise cash in 1956, Warner Bros, sold its entire library of pre-1948 films to a company called Associated Artists Productions, which was in the business of licensing movies for showing on television. The president of Associated Artists was a man who a decade earlier had pioneered the concept of showing movies on television, Eliot Hyman. The chairman of the board of Associated Artists, and the arranger of the financing for its purchase of the Warner Bros, library, was Lou
is (Uncle Lou) Chesler, a three
-hundred-pound
Canadian stock promoter with tie
s to organized-crime boss Meyer Lansky and various gamblers and bookmakers. One of the vice presidents of Associated Artists was Morris Mac Schwebel. a Chcslcr associate then engaged in criminal activity for which he later would be indicted and convicted.
Ray Stark got to know Associated Artists President Elio
t Hyman through agent Charlie Fe
ldman, the same man who had introduced Stark to Charlie Allen. In 1957 Stark joined the Associated Artists board of direc
tors alongside Hyman. Lou Chesler, and Mac Schwe
bel. The next year. Stark and Hyman started a company called Seven Arts which began producing motion pictures
and also continued a movie-to-tele
vision licensing business similar to that of Associated Artists. Stark left in 1959 to produce his first movie.
The World of Suzie Wong,
with William Holde
n and Nancy Kwan, but in 1961 rejoined Seven Arts, by then known officially as Seve
n Arts Productions Ltd. Lou Chesle
r was board chairman. Eliot Hyman was executive vice president, and Stark was senior vice president in charge of movie production. All three were members of the board of directors. (Mac Schwebel. who was indicted for securities fraud in early 1961. had left his official position with the company but was to become its largest shareholder.)
- At about the same time
that Charlie Allen and Serge Semene
nko were becoming active in the affairs of Warner Bros, in the mid-l950s. Charlie Allen and some friends were purchasing a 25 percent interest
in a company formed to develop property on Grand Bahama Island, which lay eighty miles off the coast of Florida. The company was called Grand Bahama Port Authority Ltd. When they made the investment, the
Allens
were well aware that the major partner in the enterprise, with a 50 percent interest, was Wallace Groves, a convicted stock manipulator who had served time in federal prison for mail fraud and conspiracy.
- Subsequent to Charlie Allen's investment in Grand Bahama Port Authority Ltd., Ray Stark. Eliot Hyman, Lou Cheslcr, Seven Arts, and the
Allens
all invested in the Port Authority's principal subsidiary, Grand Bahama Development Co. Serge Semenenko was the development company's banker. Seven Arts purchased a 21 percent interest in Grand Bahama Development for S5 million in 1961. At the same time he was chairman of Seven Arts Productions, Lou Chesler became president of Grand Bahama Development, in effect joining forces with ex-convict Groves. Chesler and Groves proceeded to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bahamian government officials for permission
to build a gambling casino. Chesle
r then staffed the casino with associates of Meyer Lansky after meeting with Lansky and other mobsters in Miami Beach. Seven Arts Productions' reports to its stockholders, in addition to reporting on movie projects like Ray Stark's
The World of Suz
ie Wong
and
The Night of the Iguana,
also reported on Seven Arts' S5 million investment in the Bahamas. The reports did not mention the casino, the payments to the government, or the association with Lansky's henchmen. - It wasn't long, however, before dissension arose over the future course of Seven Arts Productions. Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman wanted the company to concentrate on the entertainment business. In 1964. Stark produced
The Night of the Iguana
with Ava Gardner and Richard Burton and also his first Broadway venture.
Funny Girl,
starring Barbra Streisand.
Funny Girl
had originated as a movie script in 1961. and at that time Stark had wanted Judy Garland for the role o
f Fanny Brice
. To approach Garland, he first had to approach her agent, who turned out to be David
Begelman
.
Begelman
and his partner. Freddie Fields, had just started their own talent agency. Creative Management Associates, and their first important client was Judy Garland. She was not interested in
Funny Girl,
but three years later, when Stark decided he wanted Streisand for the Broadway musical, he found h
imself again dealing with David
Begelman, who in the meantime had added Streisand to CMA's roster of clients. Because of a loophole in Stark's original contract with Streisand, Begelman managed to obtain a substantial increase in her salary for the Broadway run of
Funny Girl,
costing Stark more than half a million dollars beyond what he would have had to pay under the original deal. Although Stark was livid, he and Begelman eventually became good friends. Each recognized that the other was a skilled street fighter, with qualities they mutually admired. - By this time, David Begelman had also encountered Charlie Allen. Judy Garland had met Allen at a cocktail party and asked him to review her financial portfolio. He invited her down to his office at 30 Broad Street, and she asked
Begelman
to go along. Charlie served tea and the three had a pleasant chat, but Judy Garland decided against putting her funds in the care of Allen & Company. - Judy Garland, indeed, had already put her funds and most other facets of her chaotic life in the care, directly or indirectly, of David Begelman and Freddie Fields, who were well on their way to becoming the hottest talent agents in the country. For both men, their success was the fulfillment of dreams. For Begelman, in particular, the success had been long delayed and the path to it circuitous.
- When David
Begelman
was a Bronx teenager in the 1930s, his first important role model was a talent agent. David frequently visited his father's tailor shop in Manhattan and became acquainted with one of his father's customers, Billy Goodheart, Jr., a co-founder of MCA, whose main business then was booking dance bands and other entertainment acts. Billy Goodheart was the first man David had ever met who sported a limousine and chauffeur. "David," Goodheart would say, "if you ever need a job when you get out of
school, just come and sec me."
The idea of having a limousine and chauffeur held a strong appeal for David, but by the time he was ready for a job several years later Billy Goodhcart had sold his interest in MCA and left show business.
David
Begelman
spent much of World War II in the Air Force, including a brief period in a technical training program on the campus of Yale University. After the war he attended New York - University briefly and then drifted rather aimlessly into the insurance business. Through an Air Force buddy, Eddie Fcldman, David met several people who worked in entertainment. One of them was Eddie Feldman's sister, Esther, who was the secretary to Jack Cohn, a co-founder and the executive vice president of Colum
bia Pictures. David also met She
p Fields, the band leader. In 1950, David
Begelman
and Esther Feldman were married, and Shep Fields was the best man at their wedding. David got to know other members of the Fields family, as well, including Shep's younger brother, Freddie, who was an agent at MCA. - A few years later, David finally realized his long-term professional ambition when he left his insurance employer and went to work for MCA as a talent agent. He did well professionally but suffered the personal tragedy of losing his wife to cancer. However, he met and married Lee Reynolds, a television producer and top aide to Jackie Gleason, who was then at the peak of his success on television.
Over the next several years David Begelman became a force to be reckoned with in show business. Bright, charming, and effective as an agent, he loved the rough-and-tumble of the business, and also relished the accoutrements of his position—the limousines, the first-class travel and dining, the expense account, the association with stars. He enjoyed grabbing dinner checks for parties of six or eight at Danny's Hideaway and "21" and the Colony. He gained a reputation as a man who lived high, and also as a man who lived on the edge—the edge of his financial capacity and, occasionally, the edge of truth about himself and his background. In the years since the war, David had allowed his brief Air Force training at Yale to be gradually transformed, in the minds of many people who met him, into the notion that he had attended Yale as a student, that he had graduated from Yale, and even that he had graduated from the Yale Law School. Yale, in one inflated form or another, appeared on his resumes, and he was so urbane and articulate that almost no one questioned his credentials, certainly never overtly. David liked his new image. He liked having people think he had gone to Yale and come from a privileged background. And he hated having people say, as old friends did occasionally upon stepping into his rented limousine. "Well. David, this sure beats the Bronx."* - "
Begelm
an's reputation
as a
ma
n who
occasioanally
stretched
the
t
ruth later prompted agent Sam Co
hn. when he became Begelman
's
partner, to
exact
a
promise that David would nev
er lie to Sam. "Don't lie to me." Cohn said. "You
can
lie to anybody you want, but not to me and everything will be very
pleasant." - Begelman
was flamboyant. Upon going to work for MCA, he was confronted with its rigid dress code for agents—black suits, white shirts, and plain black neckties. Determined to twit the code, if only in a small way. David commissioned the manufacture of exactly one hundred black ties, each carrying a tiny number from one through a hundred, and displayed them proudly in his closet full of fashionable clothes.
As a prank, client Milton Berle
o
nce grabbed a handful of the tie
s from the closet, stuffed them into his jacket, and started to leave the apartment. A meticulous dresser and organizer of clothes, David was dumbstruck. - David
Begelman
was zealous in the service of his clients. According to Sid Luft, Judy Garland's husband,
Begelman
gave fresh and literal pungency to the term "starfuckcr," which usually is applied to representatives—agents, lawyers, and financial managers—who keep constant company with their famous clients. When Garland's multifarious needs required it—and they often did—Begelman spent day and night with her. In a sworn deposition taken in furtherance of a lawsuit against
Begelman
, Luft alleged that David had an "affair" with Judy, and that Judy "lived with" David at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas while she was establishing residence in Nevada so that she could divorce Luft and marry Begelman. - Garland and Luft eventually were divorced, but Judy did not marry Begelman and he denied ever having an affair with her. Their relationship, however, was avidly talked about and speculated upon by friends and acquaintances of David and his wife, Lee Reynolds, who included author Jacqueline Susann. David, Lee, and Judy thus became important models for the characters that Jackie Susann later created in
Valley of the Dolls.
There was some of David in the character of Lyon Burke, the agent; there was a good deal of Lee in the character of Anne Welles, Lyon's wife; there was a lot of Judy Garland in the character of Neely O'Hara, the demanding, pill-addicted singer and actress; and there was a lot of what Jackie Susann imagined to be the relationship between David
Begelman
and Ju
dy Garland in Lyon Burke and Nee
ly O'Hara's fictional relationship, which included everything from career counseling to sex.* - "Judy Garland's demands
upon
David
Begelman
at
the very
least
put
a
st
rain
on
Da
vid's own
marriage to Lee Reynolds. That marriage did not end until several years later, however,
when David began seeing Gladyce Rudin. the wife of Lew Rudin, a wealthy New York real-estat
e man
. - David's professional zeal occasionally got him into scrapes. On the night of February 11, 1960—the night Jack Paar walked off the
Tonight
show because NBC had excised a "water closet" joke from his monologue of the previous night—David Begelman, as one of Jack Paar's agents, was standing nearby as a weeping Paar left the NBC studios. After Paar had disappeared into an elevator, an NBC functionary muttered, "That asshole!"
Begelman
whirled on the NBC man and shouted, "He's not the asshole! You guys are the assholes for bleeping the goddamned silly joke!"
Begelman
was barred from NBC for a period of time thereafter. A few years later, he was barred from NBC again when a network official accused him of—and David denied—"dealing in bad faith" by arranging a television contract for Barbra Streisand with CBS when negotiations with NBC were faltering. - Begelman
was too powerful to be barred from anyplace for long, however. His career flourished. His client list grew to include Paul
Newman, Steve McQueen, Robert Re
dford, and Cliff Robertson, as well as Streisand and Garland, indeed, he did business regularly with all of the top people in show business, including, with increasing frequency, Ray Stark and Seven Arts Productions. - Durin
g the time that Canadian Lou Che
sler dominated Seven Arts Productions, its shares were traded only on the small Toronto Stock Exchange. But Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman wanted the company to have the growth opportunities it could only achieve if its se
curities were listed and traded
in a much bigger marketplace—a major stock exchange in the United States. The company decided to apply for listing on the American Stock Exchange, the nation's second largest. In order to obtain access to the American exchange, however. Seven Arts had to pass the inspection of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, enforcing securities laws that were stricter than those in Canada. Thus. Seven Arts had to rid itself of its unsavory ele
ments, personified by Lou Chesle
r. In a series of maneuvers
that Charlie Allen and Serge Semenenko orchestrated. Chesle
r was removed from Seven Arts and purchased its interest in the tainted Bahama development company. The Seven Arts board of directors was reorganized in 1964. The new directors included Charlie Allen's brother. Her
bert Allen. Sr., and a bright twe
nty-eight-year-old Allen & Company vice president who
had become the firm's entertain
ment industry expert. Alan J. Hirschfield.- ELEVEN
- When Alan
Hirschfield
joined Allen & Company upon graduating from the Harvard Business School in the spring of 1959, it represented the deepening of a business and personal relationship of Charlie Allen's that was considerably older than—and just as important as—his relationship with Ray Stark, Jack Warner, and most of his other cronies. Charlie Allen and Alan Hirschfield's father, Norman, had been friends since the late 1920s when they began doing business with each other in Wall Street. - Born in 1903 and reared in a cold-water flat on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Charlie quit school when he was fifteen and became a "runner" (messenger) for the brokerage firm of Sartorius & S
mith. Four years later, in 1922,
he had saved enough money to start his own firm—consisting of a desk, two chairs, and two telephones. Norman, seven years younger than Charlie, grew up on 116th Street in what later became Harlem. When the divorce of his parents depleted the family's finances. Norman, then fourteen, took a summer job as an office boy at the Wall Street firm of A. M. Lamport & Compan
y. For the next few years until
he finished high school, he worked part-time at the firm, learning to be a bond trader, while attending school in the afternoon. Charlie and Norman, whose offices were only two blocks apart, got to know each other in the course of business. Norman would kid Charlie about having his own office but negligible capital—whenever Lamport & Company sold Allen & Company a block of bonds, payment by certified c
heck would be demanded. In 1931,
at age twenty-one. Norman became a partner and vice president of Lamport, and Charlie took him out to dinner to celebrate. They dined together over the years at speakeasies from one end of Manhattan to another. - Lamport & Company sent Norm
an Hirschfield to Oklahoma City
in 1938 to manage a large natural-gas company which it had financed. Finding even more opportunities to prosper in Oklahoma than in Wall Street. Norman, together with his wife, Betty, and Alan, then three years old, became a permanent resident. Norman stayed in close touch with Charlie Allen, however. Through the forties, fifties and sixties. Norman visited New York often, and rarely failed to see Charlie and
his brother, Herbert Allen. Sr.
who had joined the firm a few years after Charlie founded it. - "It's noon; let's go play golf." Charlie would say, and he, Norman, a
nd Herbert would head for the Deepdale
Golf Club on the north shore of Long Island in Herbert's Rolls-Royce convertible. - More than just social and business friends, they actually participated in each other's lives. When one of Charlie's sons was bitten by a dog. Norman and Charlie searched for twelve hours until they found the animal so that it could be checked for rabies. Norman and Charlie, and frequently their wives, spent time together not only in New York but also in the Bahamas. Paris, and Palm Springs, where they were guests in the home of Jack Warner. When Norman and Betty were in New York, Herbert senior sometimes would lend them his apartment if he was traveling or staying at his country place.
- Norman participated in some of Allen & Company's business deals, and the
Allens
invested in some of Norman's ventures in Oklahoma. Norman, in fact, became a sort of informal, untitled Allen & Company representative in the Southwest, always thinking first of the
Allens
(after himself) if a good business opportunity came along. In the late 1950s and early 1960s. at the request of the
Allens
. Norman spent a lot of time away from Oklahoma running two Allen-controlled corporations that were in financial
trouble. One of them was Teleregiste
r Corpo
ration, which later became Bunke
r-Ramo Corporation. When Charlie Alle
n ordered the firing of a top Teleregiste
r executive,
he told Norman: "Get rid of him,
but be nice to him. Don't hurt his feelings." - Naturally. Alan Hirschfield heard a lot about Charlie Allen and Allen & Company as he was growing up in Oklahoma City in the forties and fifties. Except for a brief flirtation with the idea of becoming a physician, he never seriously considered any career other than working for Allen & Company as an investment banker. Alan attended the University of Oklahoma (where he directed "Sooner Scandals." the annual variety show, and was named one of the ten outstanding senior men) and th
en went off to Harvard Business
School. His initial assignment at Allen & Company was arranging the first public sale of the stock of Random House, the publishing company, which until then had been wholly owned by Bennett Cer
f and his partner, Donald Klopfe
r. Hirschfield subsequently handled Warner Bros.'s purchase of a major portion of Frank Sinatra's interest in Warner's record company, and in the course of that transaction formed a lasting friendship with Sinatra's lawyer, Mickey Rudin, and with Sinatra himself. - In 1966, while representing Allen & Company on the board of Seven Arts Productions,
Hirschfield
attempted to promote a merger of Seven Arts and Filmways, a small but growing entertainment conglomerate that was controlled by Martin Ransohoff, the producer of
The Beverly Hillbillies
television show and several movies including
The Americanization of Emily.
In theory, the Seven Arts-Filmways deal made sense to all concerned. But there was one problem: Marty Ransohoff and Ray Stark, who was still a power at Seven Arts, detested each other. Hirschfield, however, convinced them that a merger would be wise and arranged a dinner at "21" where he, Ransohoff, and Stark were to settle the final terms of the deal.
Hirschfield
, who was savoring the hefty investment banking fee he would earn, urged both men to control their feelings toward each other during the meal and concentrate on the substantial advantages to be derived from the merger. But the three had hardly ordered drinks before Ray Stark launched a withering commentary on Ransohoff's recent picture projects at Filmways. Hirschfield rolled his eyes and sank a bit in his chair. Stark was especially critical of Ransohoff's purchase of the
movie rights to the James Clave
ll novel
Tai-Pan.
Hirschfield
sank further in his chair. As the first course was being served, Marty Ransohoff had had enough and said to Stark: - "Ray, you've been producing shit for so long you wouldn't know a real picture if you saw one."
- Hirschfield
was so low in his chair that he was in danger of slipping beneath the table. The dinner was concluded in tense silence, and the merger of Seven Arts Productions and Filmways never occurred.
Later that year, however. Jack Warner, who had reached his seventies and was thinking of retiring, told Charlie Allen that he wanted to sell his stock in Warner Bros. Pictures. Hirschfield and Allen arranged for Seven Arts to buy Jack Warner's stock for $32 million, and early in 1967, Warner Bros, and Seven Arts merged. Hirschfield took a leave of absence from Allen & Company to serve as vice president for finance of the new corporation, known as Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Ltd., and spearheaded its purchase of Atlantic Records, a rhythm and blues label. Since Warner Bros.-Seven Arts already owned two other record labels, buying Atlantic enabled the corporation to become one of the world's largest record concerns, while maintaining its rank as a major motion-picture maker. But
Hirschfield
's career as a line officer lasted only a year. He clashed repeatedly with Eliot Hyman. the chairman of the new company, and found himself competing for Hyman's car with Kenneth Hyman, Eliot's son, who had become head of motion-picture production. (Ray Stark, with a big block of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts stock in his possession, as well as a lucrative consulting agreement with the company, had left to produce the film version of
Funny Girl.)
Kenneth Hyman accused Hirschfield of plotting to overthrow Eliot and take the helm of the company himself. Hirschfield denied the charge but found he could no longer work with the Hymans and left the company. - Only a few months after its debut as a combined enterprise, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts became a target of takeover moves by others. The late sixties was a time of scrambling for corporate power throughout the entertainment industry, and although it was neither the first nor the last such scramble, it was among the most significant bec
ause it resulted in the conglome
ratization of much of show business in America. United Artists, which was founded in 1919 as an effort to afford filmmakers artistic freedom, and evolved in the early 1950s into a company run by lawyers who still permitted more artistic flexibility than most moguls, was swallowed up by the Transamerica Corporation, a huge and diversified insurance company. Unlike other corporate suitors, Transamerica left United Artists' management in place, and the studio for the time being continued to offer more creative freedom than any other. - Control of MGM was sought by Phil Levin, a real-estate magnate, then by Time Incorporated and Seagram's Edgar Bronfman, and finally was grabbed by Kirk Kerkorian, who was in the airline and gambling businesses and had been the largest stockholder of Transamerica until he sold that interest in order to make his run at MGM.
- Columbia Pictures caught the eye of two suitors, a Paris bank and the Lee National Corporation, a diversified U.S. company. Neither bid was successful, and Columbia came under the control of a pharmaceuticals tycoon, Matthew Roscnhaus, who was bro
ught into Columbia by Serge Semene
nko. Rosenhaus was friendly to the incumbent Columbia management, which had been in place since the company's cofounder, Harry Cohn, died in 1958. - Herbert Siege
l, an ex-agent and would-be movie mogul who headed Chris-Craft Industries, bought a major interest in Paramount Pictures, but only succeeded in driving it into the arms of Charles Bluhdorn's Gulf & Wes
tern Industries. Sie
gel then made a move for Warner-Seven Arts, again unsuccessful. National General Corporation, which owned movie theaters and publishing interests, also tried to buy Warner-Seven, as did Commonwealth United Corporation, a company with interests in movies, juke boxes, vending machines, recording, real estate, and insurance. - The eventual victor in the Warner-Seven contest was Steven J. Ross, the savvy president of Kinney National Service Incorporated, whose varied interests dated back to the nineteenth century and included such prosaic components as funeral parlors, termite and pest control, building maintenance, and parking lots. Warner-Seven's investment banker in the deal with Kinney again was Allen & Company. The combined corporation was called Warner Communications and went on to become one of the largest and most powerful entertainment concerns in the nation. Among those who profited handsomely from the deal or the steps leading to it were the
Allens
, Alan Hirschfield, Ray Stark, Frank Sinatra, and Mickey Rudin. - The only major motion-picture companies whose structures were untouched by the turmoil of the late sixties were MCA and Twentieth Century-Fox, although each endured painful internal power struggles during the period. Lew Wasserman consolidated his power at MCA, whose form had not changed drastically since it acquired Universal Pictures and a record company and sold off its talent agency business, in a sequence of moves several years earlier. At Fox. the Zanuck era ended when Darryl, and later his son. Richard, left the company after a period of bitter internecine, and even intrafamily, strife. Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment banking house that had played a major role in the affairs of Twentieth Century-Fox for decades, installed one of its former partners,
- Dennis Stanfill, as Fox's chief executive. (Warburg Pincus, another New York investment concern with a big interest in Fox, also was instrumental in Stanfill's elevation.)
- During the fifties and sixties, of course, the seven major motion-picture companies were joined in the Hollywood power elite by the three major television networks. To a large extent, television had replaced "B" movies in the entertainment universe. Instead of making a limited number of "A" pictures and a lot of "B's," as it had done in decades past, Hollywood was making a limited number of "A" pictures and a lot of television shows.
- Between 1950 and 1970 the number of American homes with television sets rose from less than 10 percent to more than 95 percent. Movie-theater audiences dropped from sixty million people a week, going to see more than six hundred movies, to fewer than twenty million people weekly leaving their homes to see fewer than four hundred movies. But the shifting statistics tended to obscure the remarkable consistency and durability of the way Americans were entertained. The flickering images of film, whether they emanated from theater or television screens, remained the primary entertainment medium in 1970 just as they had been in 1950. There were only a few excellent movies in 1950—e.g..
All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard,
The Third Man, Born Yesterday,
and
The Asphalt Jungle
—and hundreds of less distinguished efforts. There were only a few excellent movies in 1970—e.g.,
M*A*S*H. Patton, Five Easy Pieces.
and
I
Never Sang for My Father
in the theaters.
The Price
and
The Andersonville Trial
on television—and hundreds of less distinguished efforts in both media.
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