All of this is a setup for the lampshade incident, and I’ll get to that in a moment. Memory is an interesting thing. In reconstructing events from thirty years ago, there are certain dates that are important. The DDEC New Year’s Eve party is one of them. It’s the pinnacle of a time. It was when the mansion was running on full tilt.
Anyway, on New Year’s Eve 1984, they had a party up at the D&D mansion. It seemed like a bad idea. Summit Ridge Road, where DDEC was situated, is dangerous enough at noon when you’re sober. The amusing thing about the guest list was that it had both children’s TV executives and softcore adult film talent who were hoping to be in the “more spankings” film. I walked in with my girlfriend at the time, Vickie Shellin. She was elegant. Peggy and Donna thought she looked like Michelle Pfeiffer. She didn’t spend a lot of time around DDEC, mostly because I was working there and she had an actual job, so this was a relatively rare occurrence. Besides, I think she thought the place was kind of sinister. I assured her it wasn’t.
So we walked through the front door and straight into Edy Williams. She was wearing what can be best described as a doily dress with nothing under it. That didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was what she did after she said, “Look.” She took the lampshade off of the lamp, put the light on the floor, and stood over it. It was all meant in fun—probably to embarrass me, though I’m not all that easily embarrassed.
Vickie simply said, “I think it’s time to leave.”
We didn’t stay long, but I did stay long enough to see Dennis Marx, D&D showrunner and one of the most prominent animation writers in the world at that moment, hiding in the kitchen in fear of a network executive who would be a major player in the final scene of this era. Her name was Judy Price, and I’d later come to understand why Dennis was hiding.
And that gets to a fascinating point about Hollywood. Often, when the mighty fall, they really fall. One week an executive is a titan deciding the fates of whole companies, careers, and what millions of people will watch—and then they get fired. They disappear, sometimes without a trace. It happened to several network executives of the animation era. Then there were others—the survivors, like Margaret Loesch—who had comeback after comeback. I’m not sure what determines who will vanish and who will survive, but I never cease to be amazed by the rapidity and finality of some of the vanishings.
So if the weather isn’t good now, wait a beat. It will change. That also cuts the other way. Strike while the iron is hot, because you’re going to blink and your exec will be gone, a company will have folded.
It’s the fruit business.