Indecent Exposure (23 page)
- "Of course not, Sy," Hirschfield said, "but we have to deal with the facts before us. and the facts are horrendous. He can't stay in his present position. We're a public company. We'll be excoriated. If the word ever gets out about what's going on here, it's just going to be a horror show for this company. We're going to be taken apart. This is a highly visible industry."
- After an extended discussion, the group took a break and Joe Fischer cornered Hirschfield privately. "This hairsplitting has got to stop." Fischer said. "David has to go. There's no way around it. He has to be terminated. How can we possibly accept this mental-block theory? It's bullshit! If he was blocked mentally, how did he manage to
remember enough about the Groleau thing to call We
intraub, get a cashier's check, and try to cover the whole thing up, while telling us there was nothing more? How did he manage that?" - Hirschfield had no ready answer. He. Herbert Allen, and Matty Rosenhaus left the others and asked
Begelman
to join them in a private office, where he was told that he would have to resign from his corporate positions and take a leave of absence from his jobs at the studio.
Begelman
broke down.
"I
know I've betrayed you, but you just can't take everything away from me now," he said, sobbing and trembling. "I'll be finished as a man. as a husband, as a father. I'll do anything. I'll double my efforts. I'll pay it back. I'll make it up to the company. These
are
the acts of a desperately sick man. It isn't a question of business. I'm pleading for my life." - Hirschfield
stood and embraced Begelman. "David, we're not going to hurt you, we're not going to throw you in the street, we're not going to cut you off, we're not going to judge you without evidence
. But we're a public company. We
pray that this isn't another Equity Funding, but we've got to take account of the possibility that it could be. We have that responsibility. We have other employees to think about. We can't condone what you've done. Word's going to get out. It's not going to be good for you or for us. We can't whitewash it. We'll have the SEC crawling all over us. It's the most visible industry in the world. So we have to do this. You just cannot stay in place." - Begelman
agreed to give up his corporate titles but pleaded to be left in place at the studio. - Herbert Allen said, "Look, David, we just can't do it. You're going to have to take a leave. It's going to take a few weeks to conduct an inquiry and sort this out, and then we'll see what happens. You've got to cooperate. It'll be an ordeal for you and everybody else. But you'll be protected. We'll take care of you."
Begelman
finally acquiesced and composed himself. It was suggested that David seek psychiatric counseling. His misdeeds seemed irrational lo some. Perhaps they were rooted in a psychological disorder. David agreed to consult a psychiatrist when he returned to Los Angeles. - "Where's Gladyce?" Herbert Allen asked.
- "She's at the apartment."
- "How much doe
s she know?" - "She only knows that I'm in grave, terrible trouble. Her head is spinning. She can't imagine what this is all about."
"You're in no shape to tell her now. but she's
got to be told. Do you mind if I
go
see
her? Just to fill her in?" - "No. I would appreciate that very much."
"Alan, would you rather do it yourself.'"
"No. go ahead." - Herbert Allen walked the three blocks to the Carnegie House, went up to the Columbia apartment, and was admitted by the butler. "Gladyce, we have a major problem," Herbert said. "It involves David. He's over in a meeting and can't get away right now, so I came over to tell you about it."
- Gladycc Begelman, a handsome woman in her middle years, had been crying but had composed herself. Allen briefed her on the revelations, but chose to be imprecise about David's acts, calling them "offenses" instead of "embezz
lements" or "forgeries." Gladyce
wept softly, as Herbert outlined the plans for David's resignation and leave of absence. Herbert said he was sorry, wished her well, and left. - Back at the law firm, Herbert took Todd Lang and Pete
r Gruenberger aside and said: "I
don't care how many lawyers you have to use. I don't care what it costs. Just get this investigation done and get it done quickly." - Hirschfield, meanwhile, was conferring privately with Dan Melnick, Columbia's head of motion picture production. As the sec
ond-in-command at the studio, Me
lnick would become acting president while Begelman was away. Forty-three years old, Melnick looked and talked a bit like an erudite Humphrey Bogart. He had sad eyes, heavy dark brows, a persistent five-o'clock shadow, and a smoker's rasp in his baritone speaking voice. Though he had been at Columbia only seven months, he had a long background in show business—at CBS and ABC television in New York for ten years, at David Susskind's company. Talent Associates, for eight years, and at MGM as head of production for four years. While with Talent Associ
ates, he had produced the Sam Pe
ckinpah film.
Straw Dogs,
starring Dustin Hoffman. At MGM, he had supervised the production of
That's Entertainment,
Parts One and Two, and Paddy Chayevsky's
Network.
MGM, however, had chosen to make relatively few films through the 1970s as it committed itself heavily to the gambling and hotel businesses. In early 1977, David
Begelman
. an old and close friend of Melnick's, had wooed him to Columbia, where he had handled the final editing of
The Deep
prior to its highly successful summer run, and then had gone on to supervise the final stages of production of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
which was scheduled for release late in the year, and which Columbia had billed as "unquestionably the most spectacular undertaking i
n its history." By September, Me
lnick was devoting most of his time to
Close Encounters. - In New York for a few days the last week of the month, he had felt the tension and noticed the frequent comings and goings of board members at the Columbia executive offices. No one would tell him anything specific. On Wednesday, however, Hirschfield asked him to postpone his return to
Los Angeles until Friday, and Me
lnick suddenly remembered the phone call
Begelman
had received in the projection room on the Burbank lot and his sudden departure for New York the week before. Although he was stunned when
Hirschfield
finally broke the news, Melnick was a bit less incredulous than others who did not know
Begelman
so well. He had never suspected
Begelman
of being a criminal, but he had always known him to live high—perhaps beyond his means—and with a pronounced sense of abandon. "Sailing close to the wind" was the phrase that suggested itself to
Melnick
, who immediately saw the problem as two issues: how should Columbia treat
Begelman
the person, and how should it treat
Begelman
the corporate officer. As a close friend, Melnick urged that
Begelman
personally be protected in every possible way. "Alan, the position we must take is that this is aberrational behavior, David is very
sick, and we must help him," Me
lnick said. "Of course,"
Hirschfield
replied, mentioning that
Begelman
planned to sec a psychiatrist.
Melnick
recognized immediately, however, that the circumstances required Begelman to leave the company. He assumed that the leave of absence was nothing more than a polite interim step toward permanent severance. Though Hirschfield confirmed that that would be the likely result, he was vague, and as he talked, it occurred to
Melnick
that
Hirschfield
himself could use a couple of sessions with a good psychiatrist. He had never seen Hirschfield so frazzled, so overwhelmed, and without the solid grip one might have hoped for.
"A lot of people will lose because of this."
Hirschfield
declared. "Nobody will win.'
Even Hirschfield did not know precisely what he meant by that statement, and in the heat of the moment. Melnick did not press him. - At 9:30 that morning at The Burbank Studios. Jim Johnson stood again on the steps of the Columbia building where he had waited for the locksmith the night before. This time he was waiting for
Begelman
's secretary, Connie Danielson. Someone had to tell her that the president's suite had been sealed and that her boss probably would not be co
ming to work for a while. As sh
e was parking her car, Johnson intercepted her and they drove to a coffee shop off the lot. - "David is in a lot of trouble," Johnson began. "I've been directed by Joe Fischer, who has been directed by Alan Hirschfield, to keep everybody out of the office, including you. The locks have been changed. I'm sorry, but it's very serious." Danielson tried to pump Johnson. "I can't say any more," he replied, "only that it's very, very serious and there is a distinct possibility that David will no longer work for the company."
- Johnson added that he had been ordered to inspect the desks in the office and make sure that no business-related material was removed. Connie could drop by later in the day, he said, and pick up any personal
items that might be there. Danie
lson was especially concerned about a personal diary which she kept in her desk, and also mentioned some tap-dancing paraphernalia. (She taught tap-dancing classes in the evenings.) Johnson assured her that he would set her things aside for her.
Connie Danie
lson drove home, and a few minutes later Johnson was gingerly searching the desks in
Begelman
's suite. The
diary was precisely where Danie
lson had said it would be. but it did not look much like Jim Johnson's image of a woman's diary. I
t was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleve
n loose-leaf binder filled with entries that were typed rather than handwritten. Flipping through the pages quickly to ensure that the diary was personal. Johnson was shocked to see the word
Mafia
and several references to the Los Angeles Police Department. He closed the diary and froze. The events of the past several days had unnerved and exhausted him. Only hours ago at home he had lost his composure. And now this. He hesitated to read the diary carefully for fear of being accused of invading Connie Danielson's privacy. He hesitated to ignore it because he feared he might be accused of covering up for
Begelman
. - Johnson called Joe Fischer, whom he found in the boardroom in New York. Fischer asked him to make a photocopy of the diary and return the original to Danielson.
- "Wait a fucking minute. Joe. Is that legal? I can't do that."
- As Johnson talked. Fischer relayed the
news of the diary to Leo Jaffe,
who was with him in the boa
rdroom. Finally Fischer said to
Johnson:
"I
have just been ordered by the chairman of the board of this company to tell you to make a copy of that fucking diary." - Johnson obeyed. So that there would be witnesses, he summoned his secretary and also controller Lou Phillips, and the three of them went into a room where a copying machine was located. They asked another secretary to leave, locked the door, and copied the diary. Johnson sealed the copy in an envelope and instructed Phillips to place it in a safe-deposit box at a nearby bank. Later in the day, Johnson retur
ned the original to Connie Danie
lson, along with her tap-dancing gear and other personal effects from the office. - The copyi
ng of the diary infuriated Danie
lson, who telephoned several people close to
Begelman
and complained. Within hours in New York, Herbert Allen and Matty Rosenhaus were accusing Hirschfield and Fischer of using "Gestapo tactics" against
Begelman
. After a lengthy shouting match in the boardroom, the group agreed that before turning the diary over to the investigators, lawyers would be consulted on the legality of seizing it. - In his office just after five, Hirschfield returned a phone call from William Thompson of the First National Bank of Boston. Thompson wanted him to come to Boston on Saturday. He had very important and very good news which he could not discuss on the telephone. Hirschfield naturally was intrigued. Grasping at a glimmer of hope after the worst two weeks of his business career, he agreed to go. He would fly up in the late morning. Thompson would meet him and they would have lunch.
- After Thompson's call, Hirschfield ignored dozens of other phone messages that had accumulated through the week and began making arrangements to fly to Los Angeles on Sunday morning to brief the senior people at the studio on David Begelman's suspension and its ramifications. By telephone and teletype, secretaries passed the word to California that Hirschfield would expect the staff at his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow on Sunday afternoon.
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