When Hollywood Had a King

by Connie Bruck

  “Something must have happened in Washington,” Judge Palmieri mused aloud, “some other heads must have become enthusiastic about a case that they were not enthusiastic about some time ago.” The judge was suspicious, but the lawyers for the studios were jubilant. (Nizer had quietly been making his case to Justice lawyers for five years; now, he would continue to pay them visits, urging the government lawyers to move more expeditiously in their prosecution of this case. Interestingly, on one occasion when Nizer and other studio lawyers met with Justice lawyers—including Harry Sklarsky, Wasserman’s old friend from his antitrust case—Nizer went out of his way to make a telling point. As Sklarsky duly recorded, “In colloquy with these movie firms’ counsel it developed that they considered any production of movies by the networks as illegal. They however did not consider the relationship between Universal and NBC illegal, or subject to antitrust attack, even though, in practical effect, Universal makes all the movies that NBC uses or needs.”)

  Why the government case was brought at this moment remains a matter of speculation. Nixon had, of course, insisted that he wanted the case brought eventually, to “screw the networks.” He had also said he had promised Taft Schreiber; and he had asked Mitchell, in a suggestive aside, to “get some credit from the movie people.” Mitchell did meet with a group of them at an event organized by Schreiber in November 1971; and by December, he was newly focused on bringing the case. On December 14, Herbert Klein, Nixon’s director of communications, who dealt with the networks a great deal, wrote a memo to Ehrlichman. “As I mentioned to you this morning,” Klein began, “I am attempting to reopen with John Mitchell the question of the political merit of moving ahead at this time with the Justice Department proposal to take anti-trust action against the networks over the program production and movie production. Since this was discussed originally, there have been several events which I think would make it appear that such action lends credence to the charge of a conspiracy against the networks. . . . The proposed action against networks has been under consideration in the Justice Department for more than ten years, and even the proposal which has been drawn up is badly outdated at this time. . . . I am making one final plea for a review of this case, which I think can be gravely harmful to the President in an election year. If it has waited ten years, why not one more?”

  Perhaps it was Klein’s resistance that kept him out of the loop. The day the suit was filed, he was addressing a broadcasting convention. “Here I was, making a speech about their improved coverage,” Klein recalled. “I was out there making peace, and after the speech, I learned the suit had been filed! They did it behind my back—I was furious! I called [Attorney General Richard] Kleindienst. I learned that Taft had called Ehrlichman just before the suit was filed.” Responding to a query about Schreiber’s role, Klein said, “Yes, I believe that he exerted his influence.” And who had made the final decision? “Kleindienst told me it was Mitchell,” Klein replied. (Kleindienst had succeeded Mitchell as attorney general after Mitchell resigned to go to CREEP on March 1. But Mitchell’s authority at Justice evidently endured.)

  Whatever impact Schreiber had on the final decision, he certainly had reason to celebrate, and to demonstrate his gratitude to the Nixon administration. He planned a party at his home on June 17 to honor Kissinger and Mitchell and his wife, Martha. At nearly the last moment, however, Kissinger canceled. Nixon had made his historic trip to China in mid-February 1972 (Schreiber received a green jade elephant from the president as a memento of that trip), and now, Kissinger said, Nixon was sending him back to Peking. This created a big problem for Schreiber; in Hollywood, Kissinger was a draw, but John Mitchell (now the former attorney general) decidedly was not. Four days before the event, presidential aide Alexander Butterfield wrote a memo to Haldeman, in which he said that he had spoken to Schreiber, and Schreiber “knows that Henry will not be there, and he understands that perfectly well. But he does not believe that we are doing all we can at this end of the line to provide an adequate substitute (or two). He says that when he calls the 150 or so people to tell them that Henry will not be there, most of them will drop out then and there if he cannot go on to say that the First Lady will be there . . . or the First Lady and [the Nixons’ daughter] Julie . . . or some member of the First Family and a current member of the President’s Cabinet.”

  Schreiber’s message was heeded; Nixon’s wife, Pat, attended. And the event, at Schreiber’s elaborate Beverly Hills home—with a large Henry Moore sculpture in the garden and Picassos and Giacomettis on the walls, tents decorated with pepper-tree branches, and a modest quota of the more old-time stars (Cary Grant, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston)—appeared to be a picture-perfect Hollywood party. Mitchell was there, with a retinue of top CREEP officials—Jeb Magruder, Robert Mardian, Herbert “Bart” Porter. As the evening progressed, though, these men were increasingly distracted from the festivities—called away, one after another, to talk on a phone in the bedroom, and they remained there, consulting in low voices among themselves. Other guests, watching this surreptitious drama, were curious. “At the time, I wondered what was going on,” MCA executive Frank Price recalled. “Later, of course, I put it together.” The break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex had occurred (and the five burglars, including CREEP security chief James McCord, had been arrested) in the early hours of June 17. Mitchell had learned about it while he was having breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel late that morning. He and his men were trying to appear relaxed at Schreiber’s party—but they could not stay off the phone. “It was fascinating to me,” Price continued, “that during the Watergate hearings there was no mention of that party. I was following the coverage closely, and while there was some mention that some of the top people were out here, there was nothing saying there was a party at Taft’s.”

  In the months following the break-in, Nixon and his close aides continued, outwardly, to be focused on the campaign, as well as affairs of state, but their concern with the details of the cover-up, and its implications, overshadowed all else. The taped conversations between Nixon and Haldeman, in which they discussed using the CIA to sabotage the FBI investigation of the break-in—which would later come to be known as the “smoking gun”—occurred on June 23, just six days after the break-in. Though an outsider, Kalmbach was drafted into the cover-up by John Dean (at Mitchell’s instigation, and with Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s approval). Dean asked him to raise cash for the defense of the Watergate defendants, and for their families’ support—hush money, in effect, though Dean did not describe it that way. As Lukas wrote, Kalmbach entered what he would later describe as “a James Bond scenario”—conspiring with a New York ex-cop named Tony Ulasewicz to collect and deliver the money, communicating by using aliases, public phone booths, and code (the money was the “laundry,” the vault in which it was kept the “icebox”). It is extremely unlikely that Schreiber—for all his closeness to Kalmbach, and Mitchell, and Haldeman—would have been similarly enlisted; he was independent, rich, powerful in his own right, and far too smart to have engaged in the kinds of cloak-and-dagger operations Kalmbach was carrying out.

  Schreiber was concentrating on the campaign—especially his efforts to bring Hollywood celebrities out in force for this Republican president, for whom he felt such fealty. It was an effort on which he had collaborated closely with Mitchell. Until now, however, the results had been lackluster. Alexander Butterfield, in his June memo to Haldeman, said, “Although we are not doing very well getting his [Schreiber’s] top priority celebrities to accept our social functions, we are getting invitations out to them . . . so the gestures are being made and that’s what really counts. Of the 7 celebrities invited to the Echeverria [Mexican President Luis Echeverría Alvarez] Dinner, 5 were forced to regret.” Even with this mediocre performance, however, Schreiber was unquestionably viewed by the Nixon White House as an important resource, someone to be treated with deference. So much so, Butterfield though
t, that it was a bit overdone. In July, Butterfield wrote an “administratively confidential” memo to Gordan Strachan, a White House aide who worked for Haldeman. “The purpose of this quick note is only to suggest that you reissue to those of us who comprise the great army of Taft Schreiber liaison men your earlier instructions concerning who does what, when and to whom. . . . Mr. S. has got to be wondering what kind of an organization we have here—if, in fact, we have any organization at all. . . . In accordance with my instructions from Bob Haldeman of some 10–12 weeks ago, I talk to Taft on the telephone two or three times each week. . . . I know that Rose [Mary] Woods [Nixon’s secretary] talks to Taft now and then about a variety of general subjects, that Dwight Chapin checks in with him from time to time on the subject of celebrity appearances at the Convention, that Dave Parker [a young staffer] discusses with him the Presidential schedule, that Steve Bull [another young staffer] works out with him such things as party details, that Henry Kissinger chats with him on the odd occasion about his own personal appearances at west coast gatherings, that Bart Porter is still (as recently as yesterday) in touch, and that probably you and Bob Haldeman call him at long intervals just to see how things are coming along.”

  Schreiber had become, essentially, the Nixon White House’s all-purpose man in Hollywood. The fund-raising was his most important task, but he made himself useful however he could. It was Schreiber who arranged for the installation of a special TV line at the White House so that Nixon could view the Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier fight in March 1971. (The fight promoter, a former MCA agent named Jerry Perenchio, carried out Schreiber’s request.) And it was Schreiber who responded to a message of concern from the White House in January 1972, regarding a derogatory movie about the president being produced by the Smothers Brothers entitled Another Nice Mess. Schreiber investigated the situation, and Robert Finch relayed Schreiber’s findings to John Dean. “It is a very slapstick comedy—showing the President and Vice President as Laurel and Hardy types. There is nothing dirty and it is not pornographic or violent. The President’s supporters will not like it, but it is not vitriolic. It simply shows them as buffoons,” Finch wrote. “Schreiber plans to get a commitment from Lew Wasserman that none of the distributors will go for it—which means that only independent distributors can buy it.”

  Schreiber had worked hard on the kickoff event for the fall campaign, held at San Clemente on August 27, just a couple days after the close of the Republican National Convention. Guests making their way along the path to the Spanish-style estate, La Casa Pacifica, were greeted by Mexican musicians, margaritas, and a king-size elephant (party symbolism) made of flowers. The industry’s major Republicans—Jules Stein, Jack Warner, Richard Zanuck, and, of course, Schreiber—were there. There were also some Democrats. Producer David Brown, Zanuck’s partner (the two were now at MCA/Universal) was a confirmed Democrat, but Zanuck had prevailed upon him to come. (“I got into what was almost mortal combat with Lillian Hellman when I got back to Martha’s Vineyard,” Brown recalled. “She wanted to kill me for having shown up there.”) When it came to the stars, Schreiber had been intent on getting a younger crowd—the New Hollywood—rather than the stodgy old-timers who were Republican regulars. In this, he was only moderately successful. “This looks like a cocktail party at the Hollywood Wax Museum,” one guest commented. Among the stars were Jack Benny, John Wayne, James Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, George Burns, Merv Griffin, Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor, June Allyson, Desi Arnaz, Virginia Mayo, and Dorothy Lamour. There were also some young television actors and actresses there, probably from the MCA stable. In any event, Nixon wasn’t complaining. As though to repudiate any suggestion that he had not gotten an A-list crowd, he told the assembled guests, “You are Hollywood’s 400.”

  Frank Sinatra, who because of his mob associations had been banished from White House events by Bobby Kennedy during JFK’s presidency, had made a comeback now; he flew in from his Palm Springs home with Vice President Spiro Agnew. As he shook Sinatra’s hand, Rev. Billy Graham told him, “I’ve always admired you although we’ve never met.” Nixon, getting into the swing of things, told the Hollywood Reporter that he had a movie idea. “He feels there is a film in the second volume of Carl Sandburg’s work on Lincoln, about Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman,” wrote Marvene Jones, “whom he describes as ‘a man who had contempt for death and contempt for fame. He was a silent leader of men.” One guest remarked to Governor Reagan that, although he was a Democrat, he was going to vote for Nixon. Reagan replied, “Don’t forget, I was a Democrat for thirty years. You’ve got to go the way you believe.” Kissinger was there, too, with Jill St. John. According to Marvene Jones, Kissinger told her that he’d gotten his suntan in Honolulu, where “a strange girl, bikini-clad, came up to him on the beach and flung out, ‘I hear you’re supposed to be a fascinating man, so fascinate me!’ ” St. John, perhaps tired of hearing about how many women were fascinated by her beau, offered that she had just heard that Kissinger told Nixon she was “one of the smartest girls he’d ever met.” St. John also confided in Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times that she had finally become a Democrat for Nixon. “I’ve never accepted Henry’s invitations to the White House, either here or in Washington,” she told Haber, “because I figured it was wrong if I wasn’t for the President.” (A different explanation from her having “an invitation from someone more important.”)

  Nixon gave a brief speech. He said that he had remembered very well, as some of his guests came through the receiving line, that they had been at events for him in “1946, 1950, ’52, ’56, ’60, ’62, ’68, and here it is ’72 and you are still with us.” He thanked them, and also those who had come to the convention for him. He said he enjoyed watching movies, especially on the White House projection set. Some might consider it jingoistic, he said, “But I like my movies made in Hollywood, made in America, and I don’t mean that I can’t appreciate a good foreign movie, or a foreign movie star or starlet, or whatever the case may be, but I think the motion picture industry, it started here, it has grown up here, this is something that is typically American and it means a lot in presenting America to the world.” When he and his wife traveled, he said, “We go along streets in the cities of Africa and Asia and Latin America, and every place, on that marquee you will see the Hollywood names that we are so familiar with. It makes us feel at home as we see those names.” These movies had an enormous influence both here and abroad, he continued, and he believed Hollywood had been, and would continue to be, “an influence for good.”

  In conclusion, Nixon told a story about how the Democratic congressman from New York, Charles Rangel, had asked him to do something about the production and export of the heroin poppy from Turkey to the United States. He worked out an agreement with Turkey where the production would be stopped within a year, Nixon continued, and he called Rangel to tell him. Rangel was appreciative, and after they spoke for a while, he said, “ ‘You know, Mr. President, when I was growing up in Harlem, if I had told my old man that some day I would be talking to the President of the United States, he would have told me I was crazy,’ ” Nixon recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, Mr. Congressman, if when I was growing up, in Yorba Linda, had I told my old man that some day I would be talking to a Congressman on the phone, he would have thought I was crazy.’

  “I will simply close my remarks tonight by saying if I had told my old man—and this will date us both, my old man and the man I am going to mention and me, too—if I had told my old man when I was growing up in Yorba Linda that some day I would be talking to Jack Benny, he would have said that I was crazy.”

  It was a nice salute to the assembled crowd. Nixon was divided about Hollywood. But in his sanguine mood on this evening filled with bonhomie, surrounded by many of the people whose names he had seen on those far-away marquees, what he was voicing was all he felt that was positive. The negatives, for the moment, had been shorn away. And his speech—with its glimmers of warmth, and
a few personal touches, and even a certain charm—was a crowd-pleaser.

  Almost a year to the day after that convivial event at La Casa Pacifica, Schreiber was being interviewed in his MCA tower office by a government lawyer who warned him that he had the right to refuse to answer any question if he thought it might incriminate him, and he had the right to counsel. The lawyer, Thomas McBride, was on the staff of the Watergate special prosecutor; he told Schreiber the government was investigating possible violations of federal election laws, and other federal laws. What had brought the government prosecutors to Schreiber, mainly, was their focus on the government antitrust suit against the networks. Had it been a quid pro quo, the prosecutors wanted to know, for contributions from the motion picture industry? According to a McBride memo, Daniel Margolis, a Washington lawyer who was representing ABC, said that he believed “the White House favoritism [shown in the filing of the suit] may have stemmed from the fact that major campaign contributions were made by movie industry interests and that the law firm of Kalmbach, DeMarco represented the Motion Picture Association. Mr. Margolis also mentioned Taft Schreiber as being one of the influential motion picture people in terms of White House access.” In a broad discovery motion, the government sought information concerning Jules Stein, Taft Schreiber, Ted Ashley, and Herbert Kalmbach.

  A great deal had unraveled in the course of the past year. In April 1973, Nixon, distraught, had fired Haldeman and Ehrlichman—notwithstanding Haldeman’s having warned him, the month before, “You fire everybody now, you send them to jail.” (Shortly after their firing, Nixon had a phone conversation with Haldeman in which Haldeman suggested that Ehrlichman and he could be supported through affiliations with the Nixon Foundation, as yet unformed, and that Leonard Firestone and Taft Schreiber would fund it. “Do it today—immediately,” Nixon told Haldeman. “Don’t announce it. Do it.”) Nixon had hoped from the start to keep Mitchell protected—he would claim at one point about the cover-up, “the whole Goddamn thing, frankly, was done because it involved Mitchell”—but it was quite clear to Nixon by the spring of that year that Mitchell would be implicated. Most bitterly of all, Nixon knew that he might have to resign or face impeachment. The decisive moment came on July 13, 1973, when Alexander Butterfield, under questioning by the Senate select committee, revealed the existence of Nixon’s taping system. That broke the dam.