With all the business Howard Hughes and Kirk Kerkorian provided, Wyman-Bautzer, as it was called by everyone, quickly became one of the city’s largest and most prestigious firms. Lucrative clients such as Campbell Soup and Bank of America sought their services. Young attorneys joined the firm who would one day go on to be some of the most successful lawyers in Los Angeles: Ernest Del, Patricia Glaser, Terry Christensen, Louis “Skip” Miller, and Andrew White. Stanton “Larry” Stein, now one of today’s top entertainment litigators, joined the firm directly after earning his law degree from USC. “It was remarkable. There was no firm that could compete with what they were offering. The attraction was the political power, the Hollywood connections. Their clients were remarkable. Gene was a political guy. Kuchel was a political guy. Rothman was a great trial lawyer. Finell was a great corporate lawyer/business lawyer. But the entire entertainment practice was a result of Greg. No one else.”
Wyman-Bautzer grew to forty partners and nearly one hundred associates. By the early 1970s, the firm needed bigger offices. They moved from the United California Bank Building in Beverly Hills to Century City, the new center of power in Los Angeles. Twentieth Century-Fox had sold its backlot to real estate developers. Where Chicago had once burned and India had been flooded, steel and glass towers now stood. Wyman-Bautzer occupied three floors of the brand-new Century Plaza Towers, located at 2049 Century Park East. As Frank Rothman put it, “We were flying high.”
In 1973, the firm suffered a major blow when Gene Wyman suffered a fatal heart attack while riding in an elevator with his chauffeur at the firm’s office building. Wyman was just forty-seven, practically the same age Bautzer’s father was when he died. Frank Rothman replaced Wyman as managing partner. In tribute, the partners decided to continue using Wyman’s name on the firm.
By this time, Bautzer was an institution in Los Angeles. He was among the power elite, a socialite and fundraiser, serving as chairman for the local chapter of the American Heart Association and soliciting the money to build the Los Angeles Music Center. (The fact that the Music Center was the pet project of Dorothy Chandler, wife of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, had more than a little to do with his motivation. Courting favors from the press had always been a priority.) “It was a different time in Hollywood.” recalled Andre Morgan. “Before the total conglomeratization happened, Hollywood was a small club. If you wanted to do a deal at Universal, you had to know Lew Wasserman, who used to eat at the Bistro. If you wanted to get anything done at Paramount, it came down to what Charlie Bluhdorn wanted. And who was the guy who could get through to Lew or Charlie at any time?—Greg Bautzer.”
Attorney Ernest Del was a Bautzer protégé in the 1970s and saw the power he wielded. “Greg was on the phone a lot with Lew Wasserman and Sidney Korshak solving the problems of Hollywood. There was nothing illegal or nefarious about it that I could tell. They were the behind-the-scenes guys who knew everybody, and if there was an industry-wide problem, they were the ones who figured out how to solve it.”
In 1975, restaurateur Patrick Terrail opened Ma Maison in a small house at Melrose Avenue and King’s Road in West Hollywood. Bautzer added the trendy new place to his routine. “I owned a piece of the restaurant,” said Michael I. Levy. “Every Friday, Greg would have lunch there. He had a special table in the corner near the door. Everyone who came in or out had to stop and say hello.” While lunching with his boss at Ma Maison, Del learned things they don’t teach in law school. According to him, Bautzer would take clients to Ma Maison because it was where the most important people ate when they were in Los Angeles. “Clients would be sitting there with him and Jackie Onassis or Henry Kissinger would walk in the door. That really impressed the clients.” But it wasn’t just where you took a client that impressed them; it was how you presented yourself. “He taught me how to stand out from the pack as a lawyer. How to impress a client,” said Del. “He taught me how to talk to the maître d’, where to sit in a restaurant, how to give the waiter your order, what wine to order. Little things that have nothing to do with the practice of law, but which impress the client and make them want to sign with you over other lawyers.” Most important, he instructed Del to tip upon arrival to get good service. “What good does it do to tip when you’re leaving?” Bautzer would say.
“I learned a lot from Bautzer,” said Levy. “He had an unbelievable ability to listen. Not just to hear you, but to listen. He wasn’t thinking what he was going to say next.” Bautzer also displayed a phenomenal ability to impress clients with his intelligence. “He could answer a question immediately on any subject,” said Levy. “His retention was amazing. His memory for minutiae. I believe he researched everybody before they met him. That’s how he impressed.”
As Bautzer entered his midsixties, he continued to handle scandalous legal matters that got his name in the newspapers. In 1976, Bautzer represented tennis player Renee Richards, who had undergone sex reassignment surgery a year earlier at age forty. The United States Tennis Association (USTA) was barring the transgender woman from playing in the women’s competition at the US Open. “We have examined the decision,” said Bautzer. “We find it discriminatory. It isn’t whether Renee wins purses that counts. She only asks the right to be recognized as a woman. She surely has that right. If they want to take that discriminatory action, they’re going to be faced with appropriate action, and it could go all the way to the Supreme Court.” Renee won her case and was allowed to compete professionally as a woman. In 1977, she reached the doubles final at the US Open with teammate Betty Ann Stuart, losing a close match to Martina Navratilova and Betty Stöve. She went on to coach Navratilova to two Wimbledon wins, and was inducted into the USTA Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.
Bautzer got himself into hot water representing Albert S. Ruddy and Andre Morgan in a matter that nearly broke up the law firm. The producing partners wanted Burt Reynolds to star in a movie they were making called Cannonball Run. Unfortunately, Reynolds was under an exclusive agreement with Paramount Pictures in which he had committed to do three pictures, and he still had one more left, a middling comedy titled Paternity. By this time, Robert Evans was out, and Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg were running Paramount. Ruddy and Morgan managed to get a copy of Reynolds’s contract and discovered a loophole. Under the terms of the contract, Paramount had to notify Reynolds of the start date of his next picture. He was only exclusive to Paramount commencing on the date they set for the start of the picture. As luck would have it, there was just enough time left before Reynolds’s next Paramount picture to allow him to shoot Cannonball Run. Ruddy and Morgan offered Reynolds an unbelievable $5 million for five weeks’ work on the film.
When the executives at Paramount heard that Reynolds was doing Cannonball Run before their picture, they went ballistic and ordered their lawyer, Frank Rothman, to sue the producers. The problem was, Bautzer and Rothman were law partners. Law firms are forbidden from suing their own clients without consent, so Rothman asked Ruddy and Morgan to sign a letter allowing him to sue them. “That takes balls,” Morgan said of the request. “That takes big balls. Are we really going to sign a letter so that Frank Rothman can represent Paramount to sue Greg Bautzer’s client?” Ruddy and Morgan refused to sign.
Everyone turned to Bautzer to fix it, and he turned to Paramount’s owner, Charlie Bluhdorn. Bautzer came up with the idea of having Paramount distribute Cannonball Run—that way everyone would be happy. “Listen, I’ve spoken to Charlie,” Greg told Ruddy and Morgan, “Charlie says he has no problem. You go in and sort it out with the boys [at Paramount]. You make a fair deal for you and you make a fair deal for Charlie, and this can all go away.” Diller and Eisner left the deal-making to Katzenberg. Unfortunately, Katzenberg’s idea of making a “fair deal” was not the same as Ruddy’s and Morgan’s. Katzenberg met Morgan at the Paramount lot to negotiate. It did not go well. “I’m going to do you a favor. We’re going to buy you out on this movie,” said Katzenberg. Morgan was confused. He wasn’t looking to be bought out, and he told Katzenberg this. “You don’t understand,” replied Katzenberg. “We own Burt Reynolds. I’m going to let you make this movie providing you give us all rights. We’ll give you 30 percent of the profit.”
Paramount owning the picture made no sense to Morgan. He knew how much money the picture would generate. It would earn at least $15 million just from selling the broadcast rights to ABC television. He and Ruddy had already secured production funding and in addition to Reynolds had cast Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, and Jackie Chan. Morgan felt they were entitled to the lion’s share of profits. Paramount was doing nothing other than relinquishing a potential lawsuit that Ruddy and Morgan thought they could win. The producing partners were willing to let Paramount distribute the picture and take a small distribution fee in exchange for fronting advertising costs, but allowing Paramount to own the picture outright was out of the question. Katzenberg didn’t see it the same way. He also believed that he could win a lawsuit, based on the exclusivity clause in Reynolds’s contract, and that as a result, he was holding all the aces.
The problem would not go away. A summit was held in Rothman’s office with Bautzer, Ruddy, and Morgan. Rothman was livid, literally huffing and puffing on his pipe. He started by lecturing Ruddy and Morgan on how much money Paramount paid him as a monthly retainer. “I personally drafted the extension of Burt’s deal,” said Rothman. “It’s airtight. And I’ve given my word to Michael Eisner and Barry Diller that there’s no way out of it. Now you explain to me how the fuck this law firm gets in this kind of a fucking mess!”
Everyone was tense in the room except Bautzer, who spoke up in his clients’ defense. “Now, Frank, I’ve spoken to Charlie, and, you know, we’ve been representing the boys for the last nine months, and I’ve got to tell you, they haven’t really done anything that’s out of the ordinary.” Rothman’s eyes bulged with anger. Andre Morgan still laughs about what happened next. “When he heard this, Frank Rothman literally bit through the stem of his pipe. The first thing you hear is a ‘snap’ and the next thing you see is a piece of pipe flying across the room.” Everyone in the room was sweating bullets, but Bautzer was laughing. He knew it was all a sideshow that would somehow work itself out. The meeting ended with Bautzer telling everyone he would speak to Bluhdorn and find a solution.
As it turned out, this was one that Bautzer couldn’t resolve. Unlike the days when Robert Evans was running Paramount, Bluhdorn could not intercede on Bautzer’s behalf with Diller, Eisner, and Katzenberg. They were too strong willed. But Bautzer also knew that Paramount would not interfere in the making of Cannonball Run. Before a court grants a motion for a preliminary injunction, it requires the plaintiff to post a bond to reimburse the defendant if the action turns out to be a mistake. If Paramount tried to stop production on Cannonball Run and turned out to be wrong about its interpretation of Reynolds’s contract, it would be opening itself up to millions of dollars of liability. Bautzer told Ruddy and Morgan privately, “Listen, for the sake of the law firm, I can’t be seen to be doing anything, because this thing has turned into such a giant mess. If you want my advice, go make the movie. This will never come to trial.”
Of course, Bautzer was right. Burt Reynolds met with Diller and threatened physical violence if Paramount interfered in his ability to make an easy $5 million. Cannonball Run got made and was a huge success, giving rise to an equally successful sequel. For the sake of their friends at Wyman-Bautzer who were going to lose their jobs, Ruddy and Morgan eventually signed the conflict waiver, allowing Paramount to sue the producers and the film’s distributor, Twentieth Century-Fox. Before the case came to trial, Eisner and Katzenberg left Paramount to run Disney, and Diller left to run Fox. Amazingly, when Diller joined Fox, he found himself on the same side of the lawsuit as Ruddy and Morgan. He declared that the case had merit and paid $1 million to settle the very same lawsuit that he had brought against Fox. Ruddy and Morgan never paid a dime.
Years later, Morgan realized Bautzer’s wisdom in telling him to go make the movie and not worry about a lawsuit. Bautzer knew that in time it would all work itself out. “Because to Greg, it was still all about relationships; it was all about people. He had seen them come, he had seen them rise, he had seen them fall, and he had seen some of them come back again. He understood it was all on the wheel. Keep the relationships, keep the dialogue, and never make it personal. And if you want to talk about lessons learned from that, it’s ‘We can fight in the day, but we can still drink together in the evening.’ There was a certain honor among thieves in those days. You get along, I’ll get along. I’ll win this one, you’ll win that one. We’re not going to kill each other. It’s a small town.”
Someone else who benefited from Bautzer’s wisdom was rising litigation protégé Patricia Glaser, who joined the firm in 1973 after graduating from Rutgers University Law School. She thrived under Bautzer’s philosophy of absolute devotion and loyalty to the client. Partner Allan Goldman described their symbiotic relationship: “She was the one on whom he relied the most as someone who understood him and would be loyal to his clients.”
It was Glaser to whom Bautzer turned when tragedy struck at Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. On November 21, 1980, a massive fire broke out at the hotel, caused by an electrical ground fault inside a wall. Eighty-five people were killed, most through smoke inhalation. It is still the worst disaster in Nevada history. Bautzer called on Glaser to handle the volumes of legal work required. She tenaciously defended Kerkorian in the legal battles that ensued, suing the insurance companies who “stiffed” Kerkorian and obtaining a $76 million settlement. While the matter was a catastrophe for all it touched, it was a financial boon for the firm, earning tremendous fees from the mountain of legal work. Bautzer received the largest share, some say as high as 15 percent of the firm’s total profit. As for Glaser, she soon became one of the top female lawyers in Los Angeles.
Bautzer continued to shake up the motion picture business when he represented producer Mitsuhara Ishii in the making of the 1982 Korean war film Inchon! The film, which starred Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazarra, and Laurence Olivier, received unfavorable publicity when it became known that it was funded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the controversial Unification Church. At the time, Moon was on trial for tax evasion; he would eventually be sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Greg was quoted as saying, “I don’t care whether it’s a Unification Church project or Christian Science project. The film shows America in the best possible light. It’s one hundred percent factual in showing the magnificence of the American fighting forces.” Greg employed his Washington connections for the production after the government turned down the producer’s request for five thousand US troops as extras in South Korea, which they needed for a scene. Greg made some calls, and shortly thereafter the Pentagon contacted the production, saying that the troop request had been reconsidered and approved.* When Ishii could not find a studio to distribute the picture, Bautzer arranged a “rent-a-system” deal at MGM, by which Ishii advanced the advertising budget and the studio deducted a fee before remitting the remaining proceeds back to Ishii.
As he entered his seventies, Bautzer worked less. Afternoons were reserved for playing cards, not legal battles. Still, in 1985, Bautzer renewed his reputation as the master of scandal when he represented Farrah Fawcett. She was being sued by an actress who claimed that Fawcett had her blackballed after a rumored affair with actor Lee Majors, Fawcett’s husband. “Farrah never knew this lady and never met this lady, and she would like to leave it that way,” said Bautzer. “These are totally unfounded claims.” The court granted Fawcett’s motion to toss out the suit for failing to properly state an actionable claim.
In 1986, Bautzer represented televangelist Gene Scott in a lawsuit seeking to void his pending purchase of the Church of the Open Door on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. Bautzer’s association with Scott was strange. Although Scott had been a minister for decades, he was a controversial figure. Scott hated the “televangelist” label, but he had raised millions through television appearances, in which he preached Bible interpretation while writing illegible and overlapping notes on a chalkboard. White-haired, bearded, and sporting aviator sunglasses, he never failed to remind viewers that he held a doctoral degree from Stanford University. For unknown reasons, he would also show viewers videos of his wife’s dancing show horses. Sometimes, he would simply appear on television sitting in a folding lawn chair, refusing to preach until he received a certain amount of money in phoned contributions.
The basis for Scott’s case seemed to be Scott’s inability or unwillingness to go through with the deal he made to buy the church. A woman named Lehua May Garcia allegedly uncovered a long-forgotten deed that dedicated the church to “the promulgation of the eternal trusts of God’s Holy Word.” The deed pledged that the buildings could not be used as a monument to any man but only to God. She interpreted this to mean that the church could not be sold to a televangelist. On behalf of Scott’s Wescott Christian Center, Bautzer filed a lawsuit, seeking to rescind the sale. According to Bautzer, Scott believed his purchase might have been illegal, and on that basis, he refused to pay the purchase price. Claiming a contract was illegal was a similar tactic to the one Bautzer had employed decades earlier against actress Jean Simmons on behalf of Howard Hughes. Observers contended that the entire suit was a ploy to stave off pending foreclosure, and Garcia was later revealed to be in Scott’s employ. The suit was rendered pointless when the city revealed that the church had suffered irreparable earthquake damage, which killed the deal.
For those who knew Bautzer over the years, it seemed that he represented Scott merely to keep his name in the headlines in the twilight of his career. Scott was hardly on the level of clients like Hughes, Kerkorian, or Davies. It was embarrassing to other members of the law firm, who thought it beneath their dignity. Still, Bautzer professed a friendship with Scott and refused any criticism for taking him on as a client.
Although the Scott case was an unusual fit for Bautzer, he did have other clients who were not celebrities or multimillionaires. Unbeknownst to the public or to his star clients, he did work pro bono. Willie Brown, a former state assemblyman and mayor of San Francisco, discovered this one night when leaving a restaurant with Bautzer. A parking valet asked Bautzer a question about something other than his car. Brown was curious about their connection. Bautzer reluctantly admitted that he was representing the young man. “They’re all my friends,” he said, trying to downplay his philanthropy.
Bautzer sometimes “forgot” to bill friends for legal services. Herbert Maass, a friend and client for over thirty years, told of the time Bautzer refused to charge him for his divorce. “You’re such a good friend of mine,” said Bautzer, “that if I telephoned you in the middle of the night, told you that I was in jail and asked you to come down and bail me out for $50,000, I know you would do it. And I would do that for you. You know that, don’t you?” Maass had to agree. Bautzer never billed actress Jayne Mansfield. Some inferred that he received another form of payment. He denied it, saying he didn’t find her attractive.
Bautzer still represented friends and clients from his early days. “I met a lot of his older clients, many of whom were his former girlfriends,” said Ernest Del. “If he was tied up and couldn’t take them to dinner, he would ask me to have dinner with them as his surrogate. I took out Ginger Rogers, Rosemary Clooney, and James Mason’s ex-wife, Pamela Mason. They would swoon and get a starry look in their eye as they talked about him. They were never sore that he had broken up with them. They were still in love.” Del thinks he knows the secret to Bautzer’s magic. “He had the romance, the elegance, the champagne, the diamonds, but he also had the ‘bad boy’ quality. The women went nuts for it. If he had been just one or the other, it wouldn’t have been the same.”
For years Bautzer had cultivated the image of the most generous man in town. At Christmas, Bautzer bought costly gifts for friends and coworkers. Jean Parker, who worked for both Bautzer and Joe Schenck, once received a porcelain jewelry box from Tiffany’s. She assumed that his secretary bought multiple pieces of the same item, but she eventually learned that he took the time to go to stores and select individual gifts himself. His thoughtfulness was extraordinary. Billy Wilder’s wife Audrey had dated Bautzer years before she met Wilder. Bautzer sent her mother a bouquet of flowers on Mother’s Day for ten years after they stopped dating. Giving gifts had won him clients, friends, and lovers. The element of surprise and the appropriateness of the gift usually achieved the desired result. The gifts grew more costly, even extravagant—and, of course, they imposed an obligation on the recipient.
But as Bautzer aged and times changed, bestowing baubles began to look manipulative, grandiose, or just plain silly. The most deadly word in Los Angeles is “yesterday.” Bautzer’s gestures were becoming dated. One time in the 1970s, Bautzer and a colleague went to pick up a client at the airport. Maybe Tucker, Bautzer’s chauffeur, held the car door open. “What a lovely watch,” said the client.
“Tucker, give him your watch.”
“But Mr. Bautzer—”
“Just take off the watch and give it to the gentleman.”
The client was embarrassed. Bautzer forced him to take it. The next day Bautzer bought Tucker another watch.
“I once made the mistake of admiring the tie Greg was wearing,” recalled a colleague. “In what seemed to be a fraction of a second, he had untied his tie, torn my tie off, put his on me, and then spent the rest of the day tie-less, telling everyone he had given me his tie because I liked it. I didn’t like it that much.”
Bautzer’s aggressive approach to his work was also becoming old-fashioned. There was a well-known refrain among Los Angeles legal circles: “In a fight, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side than Greg Bautzer.” Herbert Maass witnessed his combative style. “There was a time when his temper—or feigned temper—worked to his advantage and mine,” said Maass. “With my divorce came a custody battle involving our six children. Bautzer called Mr. Stroock, of the New York law firm of Stroock, Stroock & Lavan, and used a string of four-letter words that Mr. Stroock had never heard in such volume before, proceeded to call him a lot of names which included more four-letter words, and finally said, ‘Mr. Stroock, we’ll see you in court.’” The suit was settled in two days. It was an act, a tactic he used to make the other side uncomfortable. “The opposing team would settle because they didn’t want to contend with his screaming,” said his son, Mark.
Attorney Bobby Schwartz, son of producer Bernie Schwartz, learned one of Bautzer’s tricks of the trade when he was just a law student: “I started seeing an eye doctor in Century City when I was in law school in the early 1980s. Sometime after 1984, I was getting my glasses from the technician in the office, and I was discussing what I did, etc. The guy asked if I knew Greg Bautzer. I said I did. He said that every year Greg would come in for his eye exam and order a dozen pairs of eyeglasses. ‘A dozen?’ I asked. ‘A dozen,’ he said with a big smile. He said that Greg liked to use them as props to snap in half in court or in a meeting to scare the person on the other side and make sure he—or the judge—knew how angry Greg had become about the issue.”
But in the 1980s, practicing law became less about personality and more about caution. Malpractice was a new concept, and a worrisome one. One way to avoid it was research, but this became a process in itself—first researching and then writing long, technical legal briefs. It was tedious and expensive. It certainly was not glamorous, whereas Bautzer still carried the glamour of old Hollywood.
There was little glamour to be found elsewhere at Wyman-Bautzer. His law partners were accomplished, but they were not stars. They were not legends; he was. Old-fashioned or not, he was the rain-maker, the partner who brought the big clients such as Hughes and Kerkorian. When Bautzer was dealing with legends like himself, he had no patience for legal minutiae.
Ernest Del thought Bautzer was above the rest. “Greg was brilliant. Right up to his last day, he had the sharpest mind of anyone I ever knew. He didn’t get hung up on complicated legal issues, but rather what was practical. Often lawyers are answering the wrong questions. They’re lost in technical legal battles. He saw the big picture. He taught me that it was important to understand what the client wants you to accomplish and if you can do it, do it.”
“He didn’t want to hear about administrative problems,” recalled one of his colleagues. “He cut people off when they started.” Bautzer did not suffer fools gladly, and he made sure his partners and associates were perpetually conscious of his top-dog standing. With so many years of experience, he had little patience for young partners’ transgressions. They would quake in their boots as they walked down the hall to his office and would leave his office after a meeting like children coming out of the principal’s office. Another colleague witnessed a number of these meetings. “I would be in Greg’s office when he gave someone a tongue-lashing. He would then turn and wink at me, after making sure, of course, that they were leaving.”
Near the end of his career, Bautzer sensed the shift in the legal profession. Although his share of the firm’s profits was 15 percent, he thought that money was corrupting the practice of law. At a certain point, he could no longer contain his feelings. The firm was throwing a Christmas party at the Hillcrest Country Club. “Anyone who had anything to say could step up to the microphone and say it,” recalled Lori Weintraub Ferrer, a lawyer at the firm who went on to become a studio executive. “The speeches were usually humorous and festive, conducive to the holiday spirit. Greg walked in, and it was obvious that he had been drinking.” Bautzer grabbed the microphone and a hush came over the room. He looked out at the partners in the firm.
“He told them that they no longer cared for their clients in the great tradition of the legal profession,” said Weintraub Ferrer. “They cared only about billable hours. They were in a rat race to see how many hours they could bill their clients every month. Billing was more important than doing a credible job. An angry rumble went around the room. When he finished, no one applauded. Evidently, everyone was angry with him. Either they didn’t believe him, or he came too close to telling them the truth, which they didn’t want to hear.”
*Bautzer most likely called his good friend and tennis partner General Alexander Haig, who was President Reagan’s secretary of state.