The filmmakers considered casting Kate Jackson, a star of the ABC TV series Charlie’s Angels, and Benton met with her in New York. “She was a lovely woman, a really lovely woman,” he said. “We were quite happy with her, and we talked and talked, and I was thrilled. Then the network began to play games. I knew with this picture, working with a child, availability had to have flexibility built in.”
Jackson fell out and Benton’s agent, Sam Cohn, mentioned another client, whom Lansing had noticed in the 1978 miniseries Holocaust. Her name was Meryl Streep.
Streep was still relatively unknown, and the two movies that would rocket her to fame, 1978’s The Deer Hunter and 1979’s Manhattan, had yet to be released (one of them had not even been made: she would spend three days shooting Manhattan in the middle of Kramer). When Benton brought her in to read, her audition was a disaster: she was cold and listless, and it was hard to see the spark of the soaring actress she would become, perhaps because she was still suffering from the death of her great love, actor John Cazale.
“It was a terrible meeting,” said Benton. “It was just awkward. There was not a lot of energy. [But] Dustin and I turned to one another and said, ‘That’s Joanna.’ ”
Some executives felt Streep was neither pretty enough nor a commercial-enough name. But with Lansing’s support, she was signed for $75,000 (compared to the $2 million Hoffman received).
“I was a young actress, for the most part unknown, when I was cast in Kramer vs. Kramer, which I believe encountered no small resistance in development,” said Streep. “I was not aware how unusual it was that we had a woman executive in charge.”
A sixty-six-day shoot commenced in New York in September 1978, on a $7.5 million budget, several hundred thousand dollars more than Melnick would have liked.
“I flew out to watch, and I loved it,” said Lansing. “I’d just stand in a corner, out of the way. Benton knew I identified with Meryl’s character, and he’d say: ‘Why’s she like this? Why’s she like that?’ I told him she had no identity of her own, and she needed to create it.”
Because child labor laws limited the hours that seven-year-old Justin Henry was allowed to work, the filmmakers were under pressure to shoot quickly. Hoffman grew so irritated by the rapid pace that at one point he refused to come on set. “He felt we were rushing, which we weren’t,” said Jaffe. That was the culmination of a host of difficulties with the actor. He had initially turned the role down, then insisted on reworking the script, and now this. “I’d had it,” said Jaffe. “I said, ‘Go fuck yourself. How dare you talk to us like that?’ Benton and I thought the picture was over at that point. We had some real blowups.”
Hoffman’s relationship with Streep could not have been worse. During a restaurant scene, without telling her what he was planning to do, he knocked a wineglass and sent it smashing against a wall, shards flying into her hair. She was livid. Even worse, at one point just before they shot a dramatic scene, out of the blue he hit her, perhaps believing her performance would be more authentic.
“He thought he’d give her a little motivation, so he slapped her off camera,” said Jaffe. “Meryl is a consummate actress, and she was furious.”
They never acted together again.
The film opened on December 19, 1979, eight months after China Syndrome, and became a touchstone in the debate on divorce. It earned a huge $106 million at the box office in the United States and the following year was named Best Picture at the Oscars, where it won statuettes for Benton, Hoffman and Streep.
But Lansing was not there to take part in the celebrations. Much to her disappointment, she had been banned from attending, following a battle that culminated in her departure from the studio.
—
Lansing’s exit from Columbia had its roots in the biggest financial scandal ever to rock Hollywood.
The problems began in February 1977, when Cliff Robertson, the star of such movies as Charlie and Three Days of the Condor, was asked to pay taxes on income of $10,000, which the IRS claimed he had been paid by Columbia. Puzzled, he contacted the studio’s accounting department to say he had never received the money.
During a subsequent investigation, studio chairman Alan Hirschfield discovered that David Begelman—the suave former agent he had named president of the company—had been embezzling money by writing checks to men including Robertson then cashing them himself. It was simple, brazen and criminal.
Lansing was far down the chain of command from Begelman, but studios were smaller enterprises then, and some close contact was inevitable. Unlike many of those around her, she had always been suspicious of him.
“He carried himself like a gentleman,” she said. “He dressed in tailored suits and drove a Rolls-Royce and lived by appearances. One day Danny Melnick and I went to a party and I sat next to him. Danny said, ‘God, aren’t you lucky? You have the best person to sit next to,’ because everybody loved him. But I said, ‘He has strange eyes.’ There was something that made me nervous, something off.”
Lansing had arrived at Columbia just as the scandal was unfolding, and Begelman was suspended soon thereafter. To her amazement, he was reinstated weeks later. She could not believe the studio’s board would bring back a known felon. “It was such a mistake,” she said. “It was obvious he had to go.”
For the next few weeks, Columbia existed in a twilight zone, ping-ponging from extreme highs to extreme lows as it reveled in the success of Close Encounters while anticipating the indictment of a senior officer. Behind the scenes, the board was locked in a fight over whether he should remain, with Hirschfield arguing to get rid of him and Ray Stark, the most powerful producer of his era and a major holder of Columbia stock, insisting he remain.
“It was obviously a tremendous trauma for everyone,” said Hirschfield. “None of us were prepared for it. It was a huge upset for the company. We were at a peak. We had really saved it from going under, thanks to the efforts of a lot of people. Begelman did a great job and everybody was doing a great job.”
It was unrealistic, however, to think Begelman could survive. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were nipping at his heels. It would not be long before the full extent of his misdeeds was uncovered, and when David McClintick’s Indecent Exposure was published in 1982, revealing every sordid detail of the crimes and the cover-up, the book became a sensation. Its galleys were passed by hand from one insider to another, from the very top executives all the way down to the mailroom assistants, and from them on through the industry and across the city.
In February 1978, Begelman resigned, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to Lansing’s departure two years later.
After wooing but failing to hire several prominent executives to replace Begelman, Hirschfield decided to promote Melnick in June 1978. It was a mistake: Melnick loathed the bureaucratic nitpicking, the endless minutiae and countless administrative chores for which he was now responsible as the studio’s president, rather than just as its head of production. He began to show signs of stress, possibly exacerbated by his growing use of cocaine.
Lansing was ignorant of the degree to which drugs in general—and cocaine in particular—were taking their toll on Hollywood, though that would become more pronounced in the 1980s when careers were wrecked, families broken and lives lost. “I don’t think I ever really knew the extent,” she said. “Dan never offered drugs to me—nobody did. They’re smart, addicts. They know who does drugs, and that wasn’t my world. I never saw him take coke. But lots of people were doing drugs then.”
She noticed that Melnick was erratic, but he was naturally a person of intense emotions, whose moods could swing up and down and all around; this was one of the traits that made him such an unusual executive.
“I knew he was doing drugs, but barely,” said Hirschfield. “The drug culture in Hollywood really exploded in the early eighties, and that was when it was clear he was starting to have problems. Then in the nineties it cost him everything.”
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br /> Drugs exacerbated Melnick’s paranoia, which became clear when he walked into Lansing’s office after learning she had turned down a job at a rival studio.
“I guess I can take the piece of paper out from under your desk,” he said.
“What piece of paper?” asked Lansing.
“I taped a piece of paper there,” he replied.
She reached under her desk and, sure enough, found a sheet of paper plastered there. On it, Melnick had written: I knew you would betray me.
Lansing laughed in disbelief. Throughout this time, she had thought he trusted her implicitly, when he was secretly living in fear that she would abandon him. “It’s in situations like that that you really understand the depths of a person’s pain and their lack of trust,” she said. “He didn’t trust anyone.”
With Melnick’s promotion, his old job as head of production became available. There was no chance Lansing would get it at this stage in her career, but she worried it might be filled by an executive who was hostile to her, and so she recommended one of her business acquaintances, Frank Price. Price had tried to persuade her to join him at Universal, where he was a top television executive. But she had declined because film was her passion, not TV. Now she was returning the favor.
In his late forties, Price was almost the same age as Melnick, but the two could not have been more different. A buttoned-up former military man and bottom-line corporate player, Price had an avowed goal to deliver hits, regardless of their artistic merit, not the kind of highfalutin material to which Melnick aspired. He despised the latter’s pretensions, his pathetic attempts to elevate himself from the poor kid who had grown up in a suburban ghetto, dreaming of making it in Manhattan. Those pretensions colored his taste, Price believed.
“In the field I operated in—which was really about your judgment on story, script, picture and so on—Danny was not good,” he reflected. “He didn’t have good judgment about projects. He had good judgment with regard to what was current and hot, but not necessarily [with regard to] could we make any money out of it? Danny was also a person with a lot of conflict going on, which led to the cocaine.”
Later, Price would become known as the man who said no to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but he had a distinguished track record in television, where he had overseen such hits as The Rockford Files and The Six Million Dollar Man, and his strong history made him a valuable asset to a studio badly in need of more.
Still, television was very much a poor cousin to film, a shoddy medium whose best work paled beside the artistry of the movies, which it would not begin to rival until the explosion of cable unleashed a new wave of creativity in the 2000s. Price longed for the glamour of film, craved the vindication of the major leagues—even if that meant giving up the $3 million he would have received in stock options at Universal and accepting a job at the tarnished Columbia, still reeking from the stink of the Begelman affair.
“It was generally known that there was chaos at Columbia,” he said. “There was a civil war going on [within the board]. When I met Danny, I said, ‘I’m interested, but I don’t want to come in the middle of that.’ ”
Melnick asked him to meet Hirschfield, without realizing he was sealing his own fate. Hirschfield, overeager to land this clever player and be unburdened by Melnick’s demons, secretly made promises he could not keep, assuring Price that Melnick was not long for this job and that Price would succeed him. He introduced Price to several Columbia board members who threw their support his way, and so the Universal executive accepted the Columbia job, seeing it as a stepping-stone to a better one.
Friends had warned Price that when Melnick was feeling the heat, his left eye would start twitching, and this was already apparent. “Danny liked things to appear perfect,” he said. “That creates great stress.”
But when Price took up his post as production president, he was appalled at what he found. “Nothing was running smoothly,” he said. “We were in trouble. The studio had no money. I found I had to operate on a six-month budget—usually you have yearlong budgets. We couldn’t forecast out more than six months. The company was in the toilet.”
Change was inevitable, and it came swiftly and brutally. In July 1978, Hirschfield was forced out and replaced by Francis T. “Fay” Vincent Jr., a lawyer who had previously served with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Then in March 1979, Melnick was fired, too, and Price was given his job.
“It was very hard work getting Danny to understand that Columbia was not MGM in the old days,” explained Hirschfield. “We were a failed company, quite frankly. We were technically bankrupt and everybody had to give up the idea of ‘This is the old Hollywood.’ This was the new Hollywood and it was survival.”
He and Melnick could only look on in wonder at the quiet revolution that had chewed them up and spat them out, and they blamed Price.
“When I make a mistake, it’s a beaut,” Melnick told the Los Angeles Times. “I felt he [Price] had no creative abilities, but he did have a reputation for being a good administrator. I thought he would free me to work with the filmmakers on such movies as The China Syndrome and Kramer. Price set out to destroy me.”
—
Lansing was torn. She had been close to Melnick but also liked his replacement, who would go on to have his own distinguished career in film. She respected the level-headedness he showed when an assistant rushed into a meeting to say a major star was on the phone with a crisis, only for Price to wave him away, saying there was nothing that couldn’t wait until the meeting was over. “It’s his crisis, not mine,” he shrugged. He was cool and calm, smart and imperturbable, and gave Lansing the space to do what she needed.
“Frank left me alone to work on the movies I cared about,” she said.
With Price promoted to president of Columbia Pictures, the production presidency was again vacant. Given the success of China Syndrome and the promise of Kramer—both pictures Lansing had overseen—she seemed ripe for the job, and yet she never seriously thought of it.
“Why can’t you have it?” asked Dr. Hoffs, her analyst.
“Are you out of your mind?” she replied.
A woman had never held such a high-level position and in all likelihood never would, she believed. Only eight months earlier, she had told Life magazine she doubted that “in my working lifetime, I’ll see a woman as president of a movie company.”
But now she began to weigh it as a possibility and pondered what it would mean for her career. Just five years earlier, she had been a reader, and then, in what felt like the blink of an eye, she had gone from MGM to Columbia, had overseen two dream movies, had nearly lost her life and had survived the ravages of the Begelman era. Now, eight years after abandoning acting, she was within striking distance of becoming the highest-ranking woman in film.
She asked Price to consider her for the job, but he deflected her request with a vague promise to take it to the board.
Then she made a strategic blunder. Instead of telling him she would leave if she did not get the promotion—or at least letting that possibility float in the air—she backpedaled and gave him the perfect out. “I told him I was fine if it didn’t happen, as long as I continued to report to him and nobody else,” she said. “He assured me I’d only report to him and promised to present the idea to the board with his full support.”
That Sunday, she was at home, wading through her usual pile of screenplays, when Aubrey called. He had just heard that another Columbia executive, John Veitch, was being promoted to president of production. Lansing was in shock.
“I’d trusted Frank completely,” she said, “and I was wrong.”
The tall, silver-haired Veitch was a nuts-and-bolts guy whose background was physical production—that is, he oversaw the actual shoot of a film, approving which equipment was used, how many extras were hired and the thousand and one other day-to-day decisions that kept a film rolling. He had no knowledge of the creative aspects of moviemaking and little contact with the writers, actor
s and directors who were its beating heart.
Had Price favored Veitch over Lansing because she was a woman? “I’ll never know,” she said, “but they [the board] really didn’t know me all that well, whereas Johnny Veitch had the board relationships. He’d been there a long time and was much older than me.”
Price must have known he was going to promote Veitch even as he was promising to support Lansing. She had been royally outplayed.
“I was mad and I was hurt,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I should storm into his office and quit or break down in tears.”
Aubrey advised her to bottle up her feelings. There was nothing she could gain by being open, he said, and now she must consider her future, which was suddenly thrown into question. Given that Veitch had beaten her to the job and considered her a rival to boot, there was a real risk he might force her out, costing her her salary as well as her pride.
“Put on your nicest dress and best makeup,” Aubrey told her. “Go in and smile, and don’t let anyone know you care.”
Overnight, the atmosphere at Columbia changed. Lansing’s new boss blocked her at every turn. He questioned her judgment, interrupted her in meetings and even told her she was not welcome at the first test screening of Kramer. “He said only the president of production could attend,” she recalled. “Frank overruled him, but the damage was done.”
“John was a difficult character,” acknowledged Price. “But he was a political calculation. He was very well regarded by [some of the board members]. He was not some creative type. The package was what appealed. I said I wanted to make Sherry head of production, and that it would take me about a year because of the political thing. Then I’d make Veitch a producer and I would move her into that job.”
Lansing found this hard to believe. While she was quickly promoted to senior vice president, she knew what had happened to Melnick and feared the same would happen to her. She felt she had to leave, but until her contract lapsed at the end of the year, she was stuck, afraid to lose her paycheck and worried about her future.
Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker Page 10