On Jun 19, 2:06Â pm, "Adam H. Kerman"
chinet.com> wrote:> Fun, but shallow, documentary of the life of the true business genius
> among the movie moguls, Lew Wasserman. He was more intelligent, a better
> negotiator. The other studio moguls let Wasserman do their dirtywork to
> negotiate union contracts. Like the best American businessmen, he was
> the son of immigrants, getting his college education and MBA in the
> tough neighborhood in Cleveland he grew up in.
>
> Was Wasserman mobbed up? You better believe it. As a teenager, he got
> his start in nightclubs and vaudeville with jobs in the mob facilities.
> But he was the smart kid and would use the mob connections he made way
> back when to help keep labor peace in Hollywood after the mob took over
> the unions.
>
> He started booking musical acts and would come to the attention of Jules
> Stein, founder of MCA. Music Corporation of America began with Stein
> booking bands into mob joints in Chicago. Stein would make Wasserman an
> agent and send him to Hollywood. It had only a few clients, including
> Ronald Reagan.
>
> MCA made its vast fortune thanks to Wasserman, who thanks to his union
> ties (including Petrillo) got into television production. As an agency,
> MCA bought up as many of the smaller agencies as it could and signed on
> actors, writers, directors, and producers. So groups of clients were
> sold as package deals to studios. Wasserman then went one step further,
> going into television production, a huge conflict of interest he was
> able to get away with for 15 years till Bobby Kennedy, in his anti-Mob
> zeal, forced MCA out of the agency business.
>
> Little by little, MCA bought Universal till it became a wholly-owned
> subsidiary in 1958.
>
> The documentary skips details which I would have found fascinating and
> claimed Wasserman was the innovator in a few areas, when he obviously
> wasn't the first. For instance, he makes a big deal that Universal
> invented the made-for-tv movie, strongly implying that the other Big 8
> studios had nothing to do with television production. That's nonsense,
> as Warner Television was the major television studio in the '50's and
> '60's with Westerns that when the went to color were produced with movie
> production values despite smaller budgets.
>
> Universal's big foray into television was the Movie of the Week deal.
> Strangely, Mystery Movie is barely mentioned. Most of those titles have
> been in almost continuous repeat for 35 years.
>
> Wasserman was behind fin-syn, the FCC rule that effectively prevented
> the vertical integration of television studios with television networks.
> When there was danger of its repeal in 1981, Wasserman had a buddy to
> call in the White House. The rule would last, with some relaxation in
> the 1980's, until mid 1995.
>
> And they didn't mention any of Universal tv's '70's network shows, so we
> never heard their side of the "Rockford Files" story.
>
> Suzanne Pleshette was extensively interviewed, a long time family friend.
>
> Wasserman's downfall came, not surprisingly, at the hands of Michael
> Ovitz, the agent who molded his own power in the 1980's by emulating
> Wasserman of the '40's and '50's. By the late '80's, Ovitz was making
> deals for entire studios, no longer just actors, and brokered the sale
> of MCA to Matshusita (Panasonic). Wasserman was screwed when Ovitz
> probably manipulated the stock price by leaking a negative story to the
> Wall Street Journal. Wasserman had no idea how to make deals with his
> new Japanese bosses who rejected him. Can't feel too sorry for
> Wasserman, who made $300 million on the sale of his own stock, despite
> the artificially depressed price.
>
> After he lost power, Wasserman still went to his office daily.
>
> Ironically, the Japanese soon grew tired of owning MCA. Without telling
> Wasserman, it was sold to Edgar Bronfman of the Seagram's fortune.
> Wasserman thought he'd get along with the son and grandson of the
> Canadian distillers who kept Mobbed-up nightclubs wet during
> Prohibition, but Bronfman wanted to make movies, ignoring Wasserman.
> Despite the snub, Wasserman still went to the office. Bronfman even got
> rid of the MCA name.
>
> Bronfman would sell Universal to Vivendi, the French water utility that
> promptly loaded it up with debt. GE would then buy it for NBC.
>
> Now that each of the Big 8 majors is part of a diversified conglomerate
> (or in several cases like RKO and UA, no longer exists), the studio
> heads are answerable to corporate masters.
Fascinating. I saw that documentary on Wasserman awhile back and got
entirely caught up in it, but had no context like the one you've
presented, so thanks. Makes it much more meaningful. You mentioned
Petrillo: My aunt Jean, now gone, and a great favorite of mine, one
of my true friends ever who took me, a bratty kid, to lots of movies
in the 40's after she'd come home to West Virginia where I, then a
kid, lived as well and she'd returned there after graduating from
Rosary College in Chicago; and she made sure I saw all the Hollywood
classics of that period for which I could never have thanked her
enough--the movie houses in WVa we went to had names like "Rialto"--
and at Rosary she was a friend of a classmate, a daughter of James C.
Petrillo, no less, and told me about being driven places in
Chicago--"River Oaks" sticks in my mind--with her friend in Petrillo's
car with its bullet-proof glass. Another classmate of hers--Rosary as
I'm sure you know was essentially a finishing school for Catholic
girls and I guess it's probably still there but don't know for sure--
got her father, a prominent Irish-Catholic businessman, a Knight of
Columbus and "dedicated Catholic layman," in Chicago and who actually
reminds me now just a little of "Jack Amsterdam" as played by the
truly great Charles Durning in what I think is just a haunting, superb
film, "True Confessions," to take me around the town when I was about
10 or so right after I attended my aunt's graduation from Rosary, and
he and I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley which must have stamped me,
because I can still recall images of the Wrigley I saw pretty vividly.
The Cubs were playing the Phillies that day and I saw the Phillies's
Richie Ashburn, star player of those days, which really dates me. I
can still see him at the plate. Wrigley's a real place--you are really
in the "there" of a game (which is also true for Fenway, where I saw a
game many years later); those old baseball palaces are great. The
Chicago Irish guy also got me a signed picture and a personal note
from Red Grange, Bears running back and a legend in football in the
20's and 30's. I wasn't very interested in football, but it was a nice
thing for him to have done. Chicago really captivated me, and later
(even though I guess he's fallen in reputation as a poet) I liked Carl
Sandberg's "Chicago" a lot, and still do, though he's no Bellow when
it comes to preserving--rescuing, really--some of Chicago that
otherwise might fade to oblivion. I used to come through O'Hare a lot
when travelling on business in the 70's to 90's but regrettably never
seemed to have the time to explore the city as I'd liked to have done.
I do really like J.F. Powers's great novel, "Morte D'Urban" which in
part is set in Chicago and whose main character, the wheeling-and-
dealing Father Urban (he and Wasserman would, I feel sure, have gotten
along famously), stuck punitively by a jealous bishop in the wilds of
Minnesota at a Catholic parish something like the one DeNiro gets
exiled to at the end in "True Confessions," has a nostalgic, even
desperate, reverie of Chicago in the 40's-50's that's just
unforgettable and to me one of the finest passages I've read in any
novel. IMO all Chicagoans should enjoy this mini-masterpiece of a
capturing of a certain period of the city. Highly recommended. Father
Urban always would say of himself, no matter where he happened to be,
"For many years, I travelled out of Chicago." I mention this because
he meant trains. "Morte D'Urban" is a lot about trains and travelling
around then in them. It's like Ellington's compositions--since owing
to racial prejudice the Ellington band took trains a lot and, barred
from hotels, slept on Pulman (sp) cars in towns where they had a gig,
a lot of his classic pieces have a train-like rhythm. Chicago itself
and the great trains of a day that seems a long way from the present
are rescued by Powers.
I also hope Garner gets to go fishing.
