Indecent Exposure (3 page)

Therefore, he was surprised and annoyed on the morning of Friday, June 3, when Lou Phillips presented him with the Cliff Robertson problem. As Phillips's predecessor as studio controller and more recently as his boss. Johnson had handled the occasional snafus that inevitably arose in the dispatch and receipt of tens of millions of dollars in checks of all sizes. But he had never seen anything like the Robertson inquiry.

"Fuckin' weird." Johnson muttered as Phi
llips watched him ex
amine the file.
"Somebody
sure cashed the fuckin' thing. No doubt about that."

Johnson and Phillips had never been close and Phillips was obsessively discreet in his conduct of studio business. So he didn't tell Johnson of Dick Caud
illo's suspicion that David Bege
lman had forged the check. He merely indicated that Cliff Robertson's people seemed intent on getting to the bottom of the matter. Still, Johnson' didn't have to be prompted to the possibility of embezz
lement. He thought first of Bege
lman's long
-time secretary, Constance Danie
lson, who had borrowed several thousand dollars from Columbia a couple of years earlier to make a down payment on a house. Jim had had qualms about the loan at the time, not because he didn't trust Connie but because the company normally didn't make loans to secretaries. But Connie had been with David Beg
elman for more than a decade. Bege
lman had brought her west with him when he had moved from the New York office of his talent agency to the Los Angeles office, and he had brought her with him to Columbia when he was made president of the studio in 1973. Thus, the loan had been approved as the exception to a rule. Could Connie later have mismanaged her finances and desperately needed money? Johnson doubted it, but it was conceivable.

It was inconceivable, however, that Begelman himself had embezzled funds. Jim was very fond of David, who had always treated him well and whom Jim credited with transforming a nearly moribund movie studio over the past four years into a lively, spirited place to work. With his huge salary and lavish expense account, David couldn't have needed $10,000. And even if he had, he easily could have obtained it in any number of legitimate ways. Presidents could borrow from their companies more easily than secretaries could.

But how could Johnson be absolutely sure of anyone, even Begelman? He decided he would have to take the problem to the next level of the company bureaucracy. Normally that would have been
Begelman
, to whom Johnson reported directly on most matters. But he naturally felt uncomfortable going to David with this, and luckily someone else was readily available.

Joseph A. Fischer, the balding, mustachioed senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Columbia studio's parent company, Columbia Pictures Industries, was in town from New York with other members of the corporate high command for quarterly budget meetings. Joe Fischer and Jim Johnson were friendly. Fischer had lured Johnson to Columbia from a New York CPA firm in 1968 and had made him controller of the film studio in 1972. Even though Begelman technically was Johnson's boss, Jim dealt directly and closely with Joe Fischer on many financial and administrative matters.

After listening to Johnson and Phillips's account of the Cliff Robertson problem, Fischer, an impassive and blunt man, exa
mined the check through his steel-rimme
d glasses, puffed on his slim Monte Cruz cigar, and looked up at Johnson:

"That's David's signature."

"What?"

"That looks very much like David's handwriting." "You're outta your fuckin' mind," said Johnson, laughing derisively.

Fischer handed the check to Lou Phillips. "Doesn't that look like David's handwriting?"

"I
suppose there's some resemblance," Phillips said cautiously.

"You're outta your fuckin' minds. You guys
are
fuckin' crazy," Johnson repeated. "It might be Connie copying David but it can't be David. What would he do something like that for?"

"Goddamned if I know—I'm just saying it looks to me exactly like David's handwriting." replied Fischer, who had never sha
red Johnson's affection for Bege
lman. Fischer agreed that it seemed most unlikely that David
Begelman
would embezzle $10,000 from the company. He thought perhaps someone in the Robertson camp had intercepted the check and managed to cash it before it could be entered on the books. But even that seemed farfetched. There had to be an innocent explanation. The three men discussed various possibilities. Finally. Fischer instructed Johnson to ask David
Begelman
if he recalled anything about the check.

After lunch. Johnson crossed the hall to
Begelman
's suite.

"David. I'm sorry to bother you with such a small and silly question, but do you remember requisitioning a check for ten thousand dollars for Cliff Robertson last September?"

"Yes, I recall it distinctly. Why do you ask?"

"Oh. Jesus. I'm so glad to hear that. I was afraid somebody might have done it without your knowledge. Robertson's people have been writing us letters claiming he never got the money." Johnson showed him the correspondence and check.

"Let me keep this file for a while. I'll handle it. I'll have to refresh my memory, but I'll take care of it."

"If there's anything I can do—"

"No thanks, Jim, I'll handle it myself."

Johnson reported back to Fischer and Phillips that Begelman remembered the Robertson check and would handle the inquiry himself. David hadn't recalled the details on the spot, but he had not seemed disturbed, and Connie obviously was not involved. Johnson was very relieved. Fischer and Phillips accepted the news with little comment.

That afternoon, during a break in a budget meeting, Joe Fischer was going over a list of minor business matters with his and Begelman's boss, Alan Hirschfield, the president and chief executive officer of Columbia Pictures Industries. Even though the Robertson matter was not on the list, Fischer mentioned there was some confusion in the studio accounting department over a check made out to Cliff Robertson that someone else might have cashed. Begelman and Johnson were handling it. Nothing to worry about. Hirschfield shrugged.

After Jim Johnson left his office,
Begelman
studied the Robertson file for a few minutes and then asked Connie Daniclson to get Cliff Robertson on the telephone. Robertson wasn't at his United Nations Plaza
apartment in New York, so Danie
lson left word for him to call. An hour later, and again two hours later, Begelman himself dialed Robertson's number and left messages for the actor to phone him at the office or over the weekend at home.

Columbia Pictures threw a splashy reception and dinner that Friday evening for its regional executives from the forty-seven nations and territories outside the United States where the studio exhibited its movies. The party, held in the private Chestnut Room of Chasen's, was the prime social event of an unprecedented four-day convention. Never before had Columbia convened and feted its foreign managers, who came from as far away as India, Egypt, and Finland. Many had never been to America before and hardly realized that they were part of a corporation which made phonograph records and pinball machines as well as motion pictures and television shows. Corporate camaraderie, however, was an integral part of the management style of Alan Hirschfield, the spirited forty-one-year-old show business maven from Wall Street who had taken command of Columbia Pictures Industries four years earlier. "Let's have a convention" seemed to be Hirschfield's answer to a gamut of corporate problems. While some of his colleagues worried that it sometimes seemed to be his
primary
answer—an insufficient one in view of the complexity of some of the problems—no one could deny that morale in the management rank
s of the company under Hirschfie
ld's regime had improved dramatically and had contributed substantially to Columbia's return to prosperity from the brink of financial disaster.

When Herbert Allen, Jr.,*
scion of the New York investment firm of Allen & Company, had bought control of Columbia Pictures in the summer of 1973 and recruited his friend Alan Hirschfield to run it, Columbia's management was a collection of weary cliques with barely enough money left to fight each other, let alone make profits. The company had lost $50 million that year and its bankers were considering forcing it into bankruptcy. But Herbert Allen and Alan
Hirschfield,
together with David
Begelman
, the agent whom they hired to run the ailing movie studio, had turned the corporation around. It had become consistently profitable again and in 1977 was poised for new levels of prosperity. Perhaps more than at any time in its fifty-seven-year history, people enjoyed working at Columbia. Alan Hirschfield was very skilled at making people feel that they weren't just employees of a company but were valued members of a large, happy family. No single event signaled the new spirit more than the party for
the foreign executives at Chase
n's. It was a stellar evening.

*
Herbert Allen
.
Jr..
whose full name is Herbert Anthony Allen, technically is not a junior: his father has no middle name. For the sake
of
convenience, however, the two men have been known for decades as Herbert junior and senior. And unless otherwise specified, the man known as Herbert Allen throughout this book is Herbert
junior
.
In addition, it should be noted that the investment firm of Allen & Company actually comprises two entities: Allen & Company, a family partnership founded in
1922
.
and Allen & Company Incorporated, a corporation founded in th
e 1960’s
that performs investment banking services for clients. Distinctions between the entities, which share offices, commonly blur in practice. Herbert Allen. Jr. is both the president of the corporation and a general partner of the family partnership. Most references to the firm in this book are to the corporation
.

Huge posters and color slides of scenes from
The Deep
and
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
pictures scheduled to be released later in the year, and from
Police Woman.
Columbia's hit television series, adorned the paneled walls. Large stereo speakers bl
ared the music of Barry Manilow,
the Grateful Dead, and other artists whose records had made Columbia's Arista subsidiary the fastest growing record label in the nation. The music was punctuated by the jangle of four pinball machines installed for the occasion by Gottlieb, the large pinball machine manufacturer that Columbia had acquired for $50 million just six months earlier.

As Alan Hirschfield sipped a glass of wine and kibitzed Joe Fischer, who was playing pinball, David Begelman sidled over:

"Oh, Alan, by the way, did Joe mention the matter of the Cliff Robertson check?"

"Yes, he said something in passing. What's up?"

"Well, I just wanted to be sure you knew it was being taken care of and you needn't be concerned about it."

"What's being taken care of? What's the problem?"

"It apparently is just a minor misunderstanding. I'm not even sure myself yet of all the details, but I do know that it's nothing to worry about."

"Fine, if you say so, David, I'm not concerned."

The moment passed, swept away in the hubbub of the party, as three of the foreign guests approached to pay their respects to Hirschfield and Begelman, who then gradually separated and began working the room, greeting each of the guests individually.

FOUR

In East Hampton for the weekend, Cliff Robertson received David Begelman's three phone messages and telephoned him at home in Beverly Hills the next morning, Saturday, June 4.

"Cliff, I appreciate your calling me back. The reason I phoned is that I'm interested in knowing what you know about this ten thousand dollars."

"You're speaking of the ten-ninety-nine form?"

"Yes."

"I know only that I didn't get the money, and that I wasn't owed any money because I didn't work for Columbia in 1976." "I'm very interested in following this up because apparently there's been some mistake or misunderstanding somewhere along the line. Will you do me a favor?" "Okay."

"Let me know personally if you hear anything further about this."

"Sure, David, I certainly will."

"And I'll keep you posted. I'm sure we'll have it clarified soon." "Fine."

"Are you coming to California any time soon?"
Begelman
asked. "I have no immediate plans."