> On Jun 19, 2:06 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.