It has to be obvious by now that every production had its bumps in the road. We usually overcame the obstacles that were thrown in our way, but not always—twice we were fired. There were also those projects that came tantalizingly close to actually happening, but not close enough.
We spoke to Cary Grant, who gave us a somewhat back-handed blessing to produce a profile of him, but made it clear he wouldn’t appear in it. “I never do television,” he said. “But I can’t stop you.”
We replied, “We think you know that you control the use of clips from many of your films. So you actually can stop us.”
“That won’t be a problem,” he said. “I know you won’t choose any that make me look silly. Call me any time. Here’s my home number.” Then, to our dismay, PBS would not fund the project.
Marlene Dietrich was living as a recluse in Paris when we approached her. Her response was terse—and unprintable. We also pursued shows about Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Esther Williams, Jack Benny, George Burns, Johnny Cash, Sol Hurok, and Irving Berlin, but could not get over the final hurdle with any of them. A profile of George and Ira Gershwin, to coincide with George’s 100th birthday, had the full co-operation of their estates, but fell apart when the owner of their music publishing rights, Warner/Chappell, would not even consider negotiating an affordable deal. Barbra Streisand requested copies of every show we did; we met with her manager and then with her. She’s well-known for taking years to decide on a project—and we’re still waiting. Dick Cavett agreed to let us do a retrospective of The Dick Cavett Show, and narrated a sample reel we’d put together, but the residual payments to the guests, directors, writers, and musicians, made the budget prohibitive.
While we made a name for ourselves in the non-fiction world of television, we always wanted to produce a feature film. Michelle Pfeiffer became our partner to produce, and play the lead in, an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, with a script by Academy Award-winning writer, Christopher Hampton. We had it set up at TriStar, but “development hell” and the ever-changing powers at the studio put an end to that. And Pulitzer Prize-winner, Charles Fuller, wrote a script for us based on Paula Fox’s book, The Slave Dancer, which had been the recipient of the Newberry Prize. We had a deal for it at Disney, but eventually that too collapsed. Joanne Woodward agreed to co-produce and star in several dramatizations of novels we all thought could be turned into movies for television, including Kinds of Love by May Sarton, and three mysteries that Gore Vidal had written under the pseudonym Edgar Box. Vidal was an old friend of Joanne’s and the agreement she made with him was that we’d produce them as a trilogy. A&E was interested in the concept, but refused to commit to all three up-front, and that became the stumbling block that derailed the entire project.
In the documentary arena, the list of those we did work with still astounds us. Most belong to the era in Hollywood that blossomed after the introduction of “the talkies,” when the industry was reinventing itself. They were products of the studio system, which closely protected its most valuable assets by controlling every ounce of publicity about them and the pictures they made. Little was known about the stars’ real lives, and many of the stories released about them were manufactured to nurture their public images. As a result, there was a mystique and mystery surrounding them. They existed on the big silver screen in movie palaces, and not in our living rooms, which is perhaps what gave them a special aura—the feeling that they were just out of reach. And even though there was no shortage of fan magazines, there wasn’t the daily barrage that feeds today’s celebrity-obsessed culture, in which we’re told more than we really need to know about everyone from performers to politicians.
Some thirty years ago, we brought back to life a dormant form of programming and perhaps can take credit—or blame—for the abundance of movie star profiles that have sprung up as a result. When we happened to luck into this niche that others were ignoring, the field was wide open, so we had our choice of the biggest and the best. By establishing relationships with these icons from the “Golden Age of Hollywood” and their families, we had the chance to shine a new spotlight on them. Or did we? After all, they were damn good actors.
In retrospect, we realize that each of our shows was a stepping stone to the next; each star who allowed us to pierce his or her wall of privacy effectively told the next ones that we could be trusted, that we wouldn’t hurt or exploit them, that our goal was to present their stories as accurately and completely as we could.
So who do we want to do next?
After we completed our profile of Errol Flynn, we felt that the time had come to stop. We met some remarkable people, and we’ll never see their likes again.
Now it’s time for new challenges. Writing this book is one of them.
Authors’ collection.