When I began work on this book in late 2012, my biggest challenge lay in finding out about Margot Heimann’s life in Germany. Then I stumbled on John Burland, a former airline executive living in Mainz and the best researcher I’ve ever met. I’m deeply indebted to him and the half-dozen men and women who spoke to me about their memories of Margot and Mainz: Werner Heimann, Charlotte Hölz, John Keller, Fritz and Lotte Kramer and Elsbeth Lewin.
I’d also like to thank my gracious editor, Amanda Patten, and the team at Crown Archetype, along with my agent, ICM Partners’ Jennifer Joel, and her colleague John DeLaney, who worked assiduously to make this book happen.
I have benefited from the counsel of my colleagues at the Hollywood Reporter, most notably its chief creative officer, Janice Min, who has taught me more about journalism than she will ever know, along with Matthew Belloni and Kim Masters. I also appreciate the great contribution of photo editor Audrey Landreth Viola.
I wish to thank my friends and family for putting up with (or possibly enjoying) my absences, and in particular my parents, Norman Galloway and Janine Webber, for their love and support.
Many biographers develop mixed feelings about their subjects the more time they spend with them. I had the opposite experience. After countless hours of interviews with Sherry Lansing, I have come to admire her more than I ever thought possible. I owe her my gratitude for taking a risk on this book and sticking with it, even when it caused her pain. Her input has been invaluable, but this is very much my work and I take full responsibility for it.
Hundreds of other people gave many hours of their time. I’d like to thank the following:
J. J. Abrams, Ben Affleck, Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Harold Becker, Richard Benjamin, Robert Benton, Jeff Berg, Albert Berger, Rick Berman, Frank Biondi Jr., Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Robert Bookman, Richard Brander, Richard Breitman, Dan Bronson, Jerry Brown, Michael Brownstein, Patricia Burke, J. C. Calciano, James Cameron, Don Carmody, Joe Carnahan, Jimmy Carter, Peter Chernin, Glenn Close, Jay Cocks, Arthur Cohen, Joan Cohen, Rob Cohen, Megan Colligan, Douglas Collins, Ward Connerly, Robert Cort, Katie Couric, David Crane, Peter Cury, Bruce Davey, John Davis, Donald De Line, James Dearden, Peter Desberg, Jonathan Dolgen, Michael Douglas, Donna Dubrow, Barbara Duhl, Frank Duhl, Dale Dye, Michael Eisner, Jack Engelhard, Robert Evans, Sharon Farrell, Tina Fey, Wendy Finerman, Gary Fleder, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Margaret Foti, Marc Freedman, Morgan Freeman, Tom Freston, William Friedkin, Michael Friedman, Robert G. Friedman, Fred Gallo, Sid Ganis, Dee Gardner, Alex Gartner, Judith Gasson, Mel Gibson, Bruce Gilbert, Mark Gill, David Gobin, Gary Goddard, John Goldwyn, Lawrence Gordon, Mark Gordon, Don Granger, Linda Gray, Colin Greene, Paul Greenfield, Winston Groom, Jean Guerin, Marc Gurvitz, Bill Haber, Bruce Halev, Tom Hanks, Roz Heller, Alan J. Hirschfield, Amy Holden Jones, Toni Howard, Jeffrey Jaffe, Jill Jaffe, Leonard Jaffe, Max Jaffe, Stanley Jaffe, Jon Jashni, Mark Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, Doris Kaiser, Jonathan Kaplan, Pete Keeley, Jordan Kerner, Pat Kingsley, Bob Klein, Steve Kloves, David Koepp, Judith Kovler, Norman Kurland, Alan Ladd Jr., Jon Landau, Dick Lansing, Jack Larson, Martha Lauzen, Lloyd Levin, Gary Levinsohn, Miriam Lewin, Kathleen Lobb, Bryan Lourd, Martha Luttrell, Adrian Lyne, Leonard Maltin, Frank Mancuso, Michelle Manning, Andrea Markin, Frank Marshall, Laurie Marshall, Bill Mechanic, Richard Meier, Susan Merzbach, Nicholas Meyer, Ron Meyer, Lorne Michaels, Chris Mitchum, Leslie Moonves, Pat Morin, Barry Munitz, Larry Nagler, Marcia Nasatir, Mace Neufeld, Rick Nicita, David Niven Jr., Edward Norton, Phillip Noyce, Lynda Obst, Jennifer O’Neill, Suzanne O’Neill, Dan O’Rourke, Michael Ovitz, Sharon Owsley, Paula Parisi, Alan Parker, Walter Parkes, Amy Pascal, Lisa Paulsen, Alexander Payne, Sung Poblete, Claire Pomeroy, Terry Press, Frank Price, David Puttnam, Jack Rapke, Sumner Redstone, Robert Rehme, Bonnie Reiss, Burt Reynolds, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Dan Rissner, Rusty Robertson, Phil Alden Robinson, Robert Rodat, Wayne Rogers, Karen Rosenfelt, Eric Roth, Max Rothschild, Scott Rudin, George Schlatter, Sue Schwartz, Andrew Sehler, Marsha Sehler, Bud Selig, Judy Blattberg Shapiro, Phillip Sharp, Catherine Short, Ellen Sigal, Casey Silver, Myra Silverman, Stacey Snider, Steven E. de Souza, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Stanfill, Steve Starkey, Gloria Stern, John Stiefel, Jack Stobo, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Michael Tadross, Michael Tolkin, Robert Towne, Sebastian Twardosz, Stephen G. Ujlaki, Giovanni Volpi, Paula Wagner, Ray Wagner, Mark Wahlberg, Randall Wallace, Arlene Washington, Harvey Weinstein, Paula Weinstein, Simon West, Steve Westly, Annabelle Weston, Patrick Whitesell, Pam Williams, Irwin Winkler, John Woo, Markus Würz, Ron Yerxa, Mark Yudof, Steven Zaillian, Robert Zemeckis and Ellen Ziffren.
CHAPTER 1
Both were careful not to repeat: Gary Baum, “Why Century City Ranks Among the Worst Real Estate Deals in Hollywood History,” Hollywood Reporter, October 4, 2013.
“There’ve been those that have tested her”: Author interview with Michael Douglas.
“More times than I care to admit”: Robert Evans, email message to author, January 28, 2015.
They included the brassy Dawn Steel: Wolf Schneider and Pat Troise, “The Hollywood 10 Step,” Movieline, April 1998, 76–81.
CHAPTER 2
Six decades before Lansing’s trip: Personal recollections of Mainz in 1938 and of the teenage Margot Heimann come from the following schoolmates, neighbors and contemporaries: Werner Heimann, John Keller, Freddy and Lotte Kramer, Charlotte Hölz and Elsbeth Lewin. I am also grateful to Dr. Richard Breitman of American University for helping me retrace Margot’s journey to America.
It was in the cinemas: These were among the films advertised locally in the first week of May. See Mainzer Anzeiger, May 3, 1938. For a brief account of Hollywood policy toward the Nazis, see Ben Urwand, “The Chilling History of How Hollywood Helped Hitler,” Hollywood Reporter, August 9, 2013.
Fritz had never achieved as much: Max’s clothing store, M. Hyman & Sons (the name spelled differently from the family name, Heimann), had a brush with fame during the 1984 presidential race when the Rev. Jesse Jackson caused an uproar for using the word “Hymie.” “There’s a place down off Maxwell Street called ‘Jewtown,’ ” he later explained. “Understand? ‘Jewtown is where Hymie gets you if you can’t negotiate them suits down,’ you understand? That’s not meant as anti-Semitic….You go down to Jewtown…and you start negotiating…and if Hyman and Sons show up, they’re called Hymie. There’s no insult even to them.” See Sydney H. Schanberg, “Jackson as Polarizer,” New York Times, April 10, 1984.
One of Fritz’s secrets: Minna’s family believed she died in childbirth, but the date on her tombstone in Mainz’s New Jewish Cemetery indicates that she survived nine days beyond that.
On May 17 she boarded the SS Washington: Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957.
The ship was enormous: Shipping Wonders of the World, Part 22, July 7, 1936, accessed July 5, 2016, www.shippingwondersoftheworld.com/manhattan.html.
It had its own orchestra: Dozens of Holocaust survivors describe the journey in testimonials at the USC Shoah Foundation. Many were so seasick they were unable to leave their cabins.
Weeks earlier, a banner headline: “Seize 3; Expose U.S. Spy Ring,” Chicago Tribune, February 27, 1938.
A serial killer had just been caught: Charles Leavelle, “Brick Slayer Is Likened to Jungle Beast,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, June 5, 1938.
At nineteen, Margot became engaged: “The engagement of Miss Margot Heimann to Alan Joseph of Michigan City was announced recently by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fritz Heimann of 7609 South Essex Ave.,” the Chicago Tribune informed readers on February 25, 1940. Lansing only learned of her mother’s engagement during the research phase for this book.
But he was an artist by nature: Information about David Duhl comes from author interviews with Leonard Jaffe, Max Jaffe, Doris Kaiser and Max Rothschild.
“Sherry, this is Mr. Norton Lansing”: Norton’s father had changed the family name from Lansky to avoid any association with a slum landlord of that name. Author interview with Richard
(Dick) Lansing.
“My father was very narcissistic”: Author interview with Andrea Lansing Markin.
She fell in love with the school: In 2011 the school named a 250-seat theater in Lansing’s honor. She also contributed $5 million toward its fundraising campaign.
In this pre-feminist, “pre-revolution” world: Author interview with Laurie Marshall.
“He was very, very intelligent”: Author interview with John Stiefel.
“Even then, she was kind of a prize”: Author interview with Michael Brownstein.
CHAPTER 3
Here she was soon to be discovered: Figures cited are for the City of Los Angeles. The population was 1,970,358 in 1950 and grew to 2,186,061 in 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “Historical Resident Population City and County of Los Angeles, 1850–2010,” Los Angeles Almanac, Historical Resident Population, www.laalmanac.com/population/po02.htm.
Lyndon B. Johnson had escalated: John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 757.
“The city burning is Los Angeles’ deepest image of itself”: Joan Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 164.
“I was going to be an intern at Cedars”: Author interview with Michael Brownstein.
“I remember—this isn’t nice”: Ibid.
“We were thrown into rejection”: Author interview with Linda Gray.
“She was very intellectual”: Author interview with Richard Brander.
The gentleman was producer Walter Wanger: In 1951, believing his wife, actress Joan Bennett, was having an affair with agent Jennings Lang, Wanger shot Lang in the thigh and groin. He subsequently pleaded temporary insanity and received a four-month sentence. “Joan Bennett Sees Mate Shoot Agent—‘Thought He Was Breaking Up My Home,’ Says Wanger—Jennings Lang Hit by Two Bullets; Actress Denies Any Romance,” Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1951.
With his rough-hewn manner: Sharon Farrell, “Hollywood Princess” from Sioux City, Iowa (Topanga, CA: Sharon Farrell, 2013), 181.
“It was very mysterious”: Author interview with Annabelle Weston.
“Sherry was so outstanding that I just had to go backstage”: James Bacon, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, February 2, 1969.
That in turn heralded an outpouring: “It’s a whole different business now,” says William Holden in Wilder’s penultimate film, 1978’s Fedora. “The kids with beards have taken over.”
Their works were not the distant gunfire: Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 482.
The two top box office hits of 1966: The Bible earned $34.9 million, according to TheNumbers.com. Hawaii made $34.6 million. Both figures are North American (domestic) box office.
“What paid studio bills in the mid-1960s”: Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (New York: Penguin, 2008), 3.
“Each week we’d throw a cocktail party”: Author interview with George Schlatter.
“It took us almost three weeks to shoot that”: Author interview with Dee Gardner.
“She was very good”: Author interview with Ray Wagner.
Lansing was thrilled when the Hollywood Reporter described her: John Mahoney, “Columbia’s ‘Loving’ Strong B.O. Attraction; ‘Brilliant,’ ” Hollywood Reporter, February 19, 1970.
Variety praised her: A. D. Murphy (“Murf”), “ ‘Loving,’ ” Variety, February 18, 1970.
“It was a very tearful parting”: Author interview with Michael Brownstein.
Halfway through Michael’s tour of duty: Ibid.
“We’re getting a divorce by attrition”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 4
“Many people are conveniently called enigmas”: Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 4.
He had never liked his women: Ibid., 643.
Polly Platt, a production designer: Rachel Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? Women’s Experience of Power in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 2000), 21.
“She was absolutely terrified”: Author interview with Chris Mitchum.
She did not know that the sixty-three-year-old actor: Scott Eyman, John Wayne: The Life and Legend (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 427–28.
Early in the shoot, Wayne left: McCarthy, Howard Hawks, 636.
When the studio dragged its feet: Mitchum had no recollection of that, but Hawks confirmed the story. “The stand-off was resolved only when Hawks fulfilled his threat to shut down production in Mexico, which he did for two days, until Mitchum arrived,” writes Todd McCarthy. “ ‘I just asked if they wanted to go on their record or mine,’ Hawks said. ‘Chris was on the next plane.’ ” Ibid, 632.
O’Neill recalled meeting him: Author interview with Jennifer O’Neill.
When Rio Lobo opened in December 1970: Kevin Thomas, “Wayne in Hawks’ ‘Rio Lobo,’ ” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1970.
“However charitable one might care to be”: McCarthy, Howard Hawks, 640.
“Her heart wasn’t in it”: Author interview with Burt Reynolds.
CHAPTER 5
“I said, ‘Why don’t you come and be a reader?’ ”: Author interview with Ray Wagner.
“She kept a little wire-bound book”: Ibid.
“It was one of the most interesting ways to begin a career”: Author interview with Jeff Berg.
Wagner watched with delight: Author interview with Ray Wagner.
Even his office was filled with artwork: Author interview with Robert Cort.
“A lot of studio executives ride the fence”: Douglas Martin, “Daniel Melnick, Hollywood Producer, Dies at 77,” New York Times, October 16, 2009.
Average weekly attendance had tumbled: Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 475.
The corporate owners brought in “a new age of greed”: Author interview with Leonard Maltin.
“She walked in wearing a green miniskirt”: Author interview with Susan Merzbach.
“[One of the men] said”: Haber believed it was a lunch, not a dinner, and that he and Rosenfeld flew the two women to Catalina Island. Author interview with Bill Haber.
These were Lansing’s happiest years: Author interview with Susan Merzbach.
“He was at his best when he was angry”: Dave Itzkoff, Mad as Hell: The Making of ‘Network’ and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies (New York: Times Books, 2014), 1.
Lansing read the 160-page black comedy: MGM script synopsis dated July 21, 1975, provided by Merzbach.
“It was one of the most astonishing things I’d ever read”: Author interview with Susan Merzbach.
“Sherry Lansing was a most attractive girl”: Don Siegel, A Siegel Film: An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 420.
CHAPTER 6
“There was no feminism in Hollywood”: Author interview with Paula Weinstein.
De Havilland took Warners to court: Until de Havilland successfully sued, studios made it a practice of adding all the days an actor had not worked to the end of his or her contract, including weekends and vacations. This allowed them to extend contracts ad infinitum. In 1943, de Havilland sued and a California court found in her favor, ruling that a seven-year contract could last no more than seven years from the date when services began. California Labor Code Section 2855 is known informally as the de Havilland Law.
“Sexism doesn’t have to be about making a pass”: Author interview with Marcia Nasatir.
It would earn a spectacular $300 million: Star Wars made $307.3 million following its initial May 25, 1977, release in North America, while Close Encounters of the Third Kind made $116.4 million following its November 16, 1977, release in North America and a total of $303.8 million worldwide; boxofficemojo.com.
A drama starring Jane Fonda: For a definitive account of the making of The China Syndrome, see Aaron Latham, “Hol
lywood vs. Harrisburg: The Story Behind the Race to Finish The China Syndrome Before the Inevitable Real-Life Accident,” Esquire, May 22, 1979, 77–86.
“We didn’t know anything about a woman named Sherry”: Author interview with Michael Douglas.
“I was the young punk with one credit”: Author interview with Bruce Gilbert.
Douglas found an ally in her: Budget and salaries come from the Columbia Pictures archive, Picture Budget Recap, January 13, 1978. The movie’s budget later rose to $6.1 million. See Robert Gutwillig, “The Worst Thing You Can Do in Hollywood Is Harm a Star,” Look, April 30, 1979, 43.
Among the alternative titles were: These titles are included in a one-page document preserved by Merzbach. Other suggestions: This Is Kimberly Wells Live, Film at 11, The Silent Syndrome, Contract: Earth, Broken Trust, Killer Watt, The System Works, The Sanest Man and Responsibility.
At various times on location: Patricia Bosworth, Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 435.
“I was wearing very elevated espadrilles”: Author interview with Jane Fonda.
“He was an enormous protector of hers”: Author interview with Robert Cort.
Known as “the Smiling Cobra”: “The face Aubrey presented to the world was that of the controlled tactician, the master of cool,” writes Peter Bart in Fade Out: The Calamitous Final Days of MGM (New York: William Morrow, 1990), 33–34. “The after-hours Aubrey was a whole different animal—hard-drinking and feral…the fabled ‘Jungle Jim.’ ”
“We were really scared”: Author interview with Martha Luttrell.
“The film falsely suggests”: George F. Will, “A Film About Greed,” Newsweek, April 2, 1979.
On the morning of March 28, a valve malfunctioned: Among other accounts of the incident, see “Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident,” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html, accessed July 1, 2016.
Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker Page 40