City of Dreams

The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures

Bernard F. Dick

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813153650
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Filmgeschichte & Filmkritik

Horror films. Deanna Durbin musicals. Francis, the talking mule. Ma and Pa Kettle. Ross Hunter weepies. Theme parks. E.T. (1982). Apollo 13 (1995). These are only a few of the many faces of Universal Pictures. In February 1906, Carl Laemmle, German immigrant and former clothing store manager, opened his first nickelodeon in Chicago, where he quickly moved from exhibition to distribution and then to film production. A master of publicity and promotions, within ten years "Uncle Carl" had moved his entire operation to Southern California, founded a city, and established Universal Pictures as one of the major Hollywood studios.

In City of Dreams, Bernard F. Dick traces the history of Universal Pictures from its humble early origins to the modern day and analyzes the studio's films, from horror flicks featuring Karloff and Lugosi to comedies starring Abbott and Costello and W. C. Fields. Dick details how the Laemmle family was eventually forced out of the Universal empire, replaced by a string of studio heads who entered and exited one after another—the beginning of the age of corporate Hollywood, which transformed Universal Pictures into NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Dick explains how the Universal-International merger in 1946, Decca's stock takeover in the early 1950s, and MCA's buyout in 1962 all presaged today's Hollywood, where the art of the deal often eclipses the art of making movies. Ultimately, although stars and executives have come and gone, shaping and reshaping the studio's image, Universal's revolving globe logo has lit up screens around the world through it all.

1

THE REVOLVING DOOR

In Grand Hotel (1932), Dr. Otternschlag (Lewis Stone) observes the guests who enter and exit through the revolving door. “People coming, people going, but nothing ever happens,” he remarks, cynically. Even the film’s credits, with their kaleidoscopic circles of light, suggest that Berlin’s finest hotel, a social microcosm in its own right, is subject to permutation. Dr. Otternschlag, however, is only an onlooker, a one-person Greek chorus commenting on the rhythm of arrival and departure but unable to participate in the drama unfolding around him—a drama of terminal illness, ill-starred romance, deception, death, and, finally, birth. Similarly, moviegoers, whose knowledge of the industry derives from People or Entertainment Weekly, might conclude that not much happens in Hollywood, either—celebrities check out, and unknowns check in through the same revolving door. Sameness seems to be pervasive. Some scripts reach the screen, while others go into turnaround. Some stars become bankable, while others declare bankruptcy. Some film executives become familiar names, while others remain anonymous. And the beat goes on. Hollywood today evokes the myth of the eternal return because the script rarely changes. One company absorbs another, television executives move on to film, and film executives move over to television. Then, A leaves studio/company B for studio/company C, which he/she leaves either to return to B or proceed to D.

Barry Diller never felt the need for a college degree; his alma mater was the William Morris Agency mailroom. From there, he went on to an executive position at ABC, where his major innovation was the Movie of the Week. Once he became addicted to film, Diller would not rest until he became part of a studio. First it was Paramount, which Diller joined in 1975, eventually becoming chairman of Paramount Pictures. Ten years later, he was ousted from that position by then-chairman of Paramount Communications, Martin S. Davis. Diller then went off to Fox, where he started the fourth network, Fox Television. But that was not enough for the insatiable Diller, who left Fox early in 1993 when Fox’s new owner, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, made it clear that he ran Fox and Diller only worked there.

Although Diller hardly seemed the type to head a home shopping network where Joan Rivers hawked her jewelry line and Vanna White her Vanna dolls, he surprised the skeptics when he took over QVC Network in late 1993. Another surprise occurred two years later when on 25 August 1995 Diller became chairman and CEO of Silver King Communications, a small company with twelve UHF television stations in the Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles areas. Silver King, however, is only a rung on a ladder that will eventually bring the climber to a studio, a network, or a much bigger cable company. In November 1995 Diller obtained a controlling interest in Home Shopping, QVC’s chief rival, when Telecommunications, Inc. (TCI), America’s largest cable company, gave up its 80 percent of Home Shopping for a stake in QVC. Diller was then able to buy the independent distribution company Savoy Pictures Entertainment, an odd choice given Savoy’s unimpressive performance, notably its 1995 failures with Tales from the Hood and Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. But at least, to a degree, Diller was back in the movie business.

In 1989 Joe Roth left the independent production company Morgan Creek to join Twentieth Century—Fox at a time when film and television were becoming separate divisions there. Roth was appointed chairman of the newly formed Fox Film Corporation, reporting to Barry Diller. Under Roth, Fox enjoyed such successes as Die Hard 2 (1990), Home Alone (1990), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), and My Cousin Vinny (1992); there was also the resounding failure For the Boys (1991), which may have won Bette Midler an Oscar nomination but never recouped the $45 million that Fox spent on it. When Diller resigned in February 1993, Rupert Murdoch, who originally regarded Fox as just another acquisition, began to take a more active role in the studio. Determined to cut costs and eager to play movie mogul, Murdoch assumed Diller’s duties. When Roth made the mistake of asking for a raise, he discovered that there would not only be no raise but there would be no job, either. Within nine months of Diller’s departure, Roth was in Burbank as chairman of Walt Disney Pictures.

In 1987, the forty-one-year-old Dawn Steel became Columbia Pictures’ first female president, replacing David Puttnam, who barely lasted a year. Her tenure would be a little longer—almost three. She would have fared better at the old Columbia, which was dedicated only to making movies. But Columbia Pictures was part of the Coca-Cola-owned Columbia Pictures Entertainment, consisting of Columbia Pictures, Columbia Pictures Television, Tri-Star (hyphenated at the time), and other units.

The corporate world, however, was not unfamiliar to Steel. In 1967, Steel realized that a New York University degree was not what she wanted. Instead, she turned to advertising and by 1969 was head of merchandising at Bob Guccione’s Penthouse magazine, peddling gimmicks like Gucci (after the publisher) toilet paper and phallic items such as Cock Socks (knitted penis warmers) and Penis Plants (nothing but an amaryllis).¹ Deciding to market her own designer toilet paper, Steel formed Oh Dawn Inc., eventually branching out into novelty soaps. When a friend, who was a junior executive at Paramount, told her about a marketing position at the studio, Steel flew to Los Angeles and by 1978 was creating tie-in products for Paramount’s movies and television shows.

It was at Paramount that Steel learned how complex the industry was. It was not just a matter of shooting a film; a decision has to be made as to whether the film should open “very wide” (fifteen hundred screens), “wide” (one thousand), “moderate” (five hundred), or “limited” (selected areas). In 1980, Paramount’s president, Michael Eisner, sensing a real film executive in Steel, elevated her to vice president-production; then to senior vice president-production three years later after Flashdance (1983), which she had personally nurtured after twenty-seven directors passed on it, proved a hit. In 1984, when Eisner and Diller left Paramount to join Disney and Fox, respectively, Steel filled the vacuum and by 1985 was Paramount’s head of production.

Steel took her title literally. She greenlighted The Untouchables (1987), which was hugely successful. But again, Steel’s Paramount was not the old Paramount Pictures, but a subsidiary of Gulf + Western, soon to be restructured as Paramount Communications. Her abrasiveness, which caused her to be dubbed the “Queen of Mean,” led to her firing in March 1987. Steel learned she was out of a job the day after she had given birth to her daughter, Rebecca.

That October, when Steel received an offer to head Columbia, she was elated; her euphoria, however, was short-lived. In 1989 Sony became Columbia Pictures Entertainment’s new owner and wanted its own management team, Peter Guber and Jon Peters (neither of whom lasted long either, although each got an excellent settlement, and Guber a production deal for his independent company, Mandalay). By the end of 1990, Steel was out.

But not to worry. Her ex-Paramount colleagues, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, were riding high at Disney, which would have seemed a likely berth for the production company Steel was about to form. But once she arrived at Disney, she discovered that despite such money-makers as Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994), the company was loath to loosen the purse strings. Fortunately, she found a patron in media magnate Ted Turner, whose vast empire now embraced film production as well as cable television (Cable News Network, the TBS Superstation, Turner Network Television, and the Cartoon Network). Turner Entertainment was thus able to release her first independent production, Angus (1995), which, unfortunately for Steel, fared poorly.

Brandon Tartikoff began his career in television, eventually becoming president of NBC, where one of his most notable achievements was Saturday Night Live. Tartikoff’s ability to tap the youth market for television endeared him to Paramount Communications’ president and COO, Stanley R. Jaffe. Hoping Tartikoff could rejuvenate Paramount, Jaffe offered him a five-year contract. Tartikoff placed the accent on youth, using the zaniness of Saturday Night Live to spawn such hits as The Addams Family (1991) and Wayne’s World (1992). But television is not film, and working for Jaffe, who was noted for his inflexibility, did not set well with a former network president. Within fifteen months, Tartikoff resigned his position, claiming that his primary responsibility was to his daughter, who had been seriously injured in a car accident. No doubt it was. However, the accident occurred on 1 January 1991; Tartikoff accepted the Paramount offer on 2 May 1991; he resigned on 29 October 1992 for reasons having as much to do with Stanley R. Jaffe as with his daughter.

Tartikoff had no intention of leaving the business. Within a year, he formed his own production company, Moving Target; in 1995, he became chairman of New World Entertainment, which he was forced to leave in July 1996 when Rupert Murdoch purchased the parent company, New World Communications. Whatever Tartikoff does will doubtless reflect his love of the off beat, as evident from Second Noah, the ABC series he helped develop about a veterinarian, his wife, and their eight adopted children.

Tartikoff’s replacement at Paramount was Sherry Lansing, a North-western University graduate who had previously worked as a model, a high school math and English teacher, and a bit player in Loving and Rio Lobo (both 1970). Once Lansing realized her limitations as an actress, she embarked on a career in production, starting as a story analyst at Universal before becoming executive story editor at MGM, where she quickly rose to vice president of creative affairs.

When Columbia beckoned with a senior vice presidency (production), Lansing left MGM and found herself overseeing Columbia’s The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer (both 1979). The following year, she replaced Alan Ladd Jr. as president of Twentieth Century-Fox, becoming the first woman to run a major studio. Feminists rejoiced; however, the male establishment, specifically, distribution head Norman Levy, proved too formidable for Lansing. Nor did her string off lops (the 1982 releases Making Love, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Author, Author!, and Monsignor) endear her to Fox’s new owner, oil tycoon Marvin Davis. By January 1983, Fox was past; Paramount, present. At Paramount, Lansing embarked on the most creative period of her career. She joined forces with Stanley R. Jaffe, whom she had known at Columbia, where he was head of worldwide production. Their partnership resulted in such Jaffe-Lansing successes as Fatal Attraction (1987) and The Accused (1988). History repeated itself in 1992 when Lansing was put in charge of Paramount’s motion picture group, becoming the equivalent of what in the past would have been a studio head. But in view of her brief time in the sun at Fox, she may well have wondered how long her new position would last.

Allyn Stewart moved swiftly through Hollywood’s revolving door. Her career began at Twentieth Century-Fox’s London office, which she left to become vice president of production at TriStar. Then it was on to Warners as a senior executive where she was involved in such projects as Memphis Belle (1992) and Driving Miss Daisy (1993). The desire for artistic control led her to start her own company, Stewart Productions.

In the summer of 1995, Stanley R. Jaffe, who had gone through the revolving door himself, was back at Columbia, where he had been two decades earlier. But the Columbia he knew then was part of Columbia Pictures Industries, which along with Warners formed the Burbank Studios. The Columbia where Jaffe would be setting up his production company was now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, no longer located in Burbank but in Culver City on MGM’s former back lot. Returning to Columbia was a comedown for a former Paramount COO. In 1991, the Jaffe-Lansing successes had resulted in Jaffe’s becoming second-in-command to Paramount Communications chairman Martin S. Davis, and when Lansing came on board the following year, it seemed that Paramount had found a team that had already racked up a series of hits to make up for the 1992 failures, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Cool World, Bebe’s Kids, and School Ties.

Neither Jaffe nor Lansing had counted on Viacom’s buying Paramount Communications for $8.2 billion. With Viacom president Frank Biondi destined to become CEO of Paramount Viacom, there was no place for Jaffe in the new company. So it was back to independent production. Although Jaffe had neither a name nor a production slate for his company, he knew he needed a senior executive—someone like Sherry Lansing. Jaffe had to look no further than Allyn Stewart, who by now had acquired invaluable contacts in the industry. By September 1995, Stewart was on board at Jaffe’s as yet nameless company with another entry for her ever expanding résumé.

They come, they go—the “mobile moguls,” as one writer called them.² But it was not always the case. Leo Jaffe, Stanley’s father, spent his entire career at one studio, Columbia, where he arrived in 1930 with a degree from New York University and progressed from a bookkeeper, as Columbia’s president Harry Cohn called him, to first vice president and treasurer. After Cohn died in 1958, Jaffe stayed on, eventually becoming president of both Columbia Pictures Corporation (1967) and Columbia Pictures Industries (1968) and finally board chairman (1973).

It was not uncommon for the moguls of the past to spend their lives at one, or perhaps two, studios. Thus they never passed through the revolving door; whether through death, retirement, or replacement, they found another way to exit.³ Even before Harry Cohn became president of Columbia in 1932, he had been part of the company from which Columbia evolved—CBC Film Sales (1920). When Cohn died in 1958, he was still Columbia’s president.

Herbert J. Yates formed Republic Pictures in 1935, relinquishing control of the studio in 1959 after investors sued him, charging that his misguided attempts to make his wife, ex-skater Vera Hruba Ralston, into a star resulted in a succession of financial flops. The year Yates gave up the Republic presidency, the studio released its last film, Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959).

Louis Mayer had been part of MGM from the moment of its inception in 1924, when he became the new studio’s vice president. It was only in 1948, when Dore Shary came in as head of production, that Mayer experienced an erosion of authority—partly because Shary was more progressive, partly because Mayer had lost touch with post-World War II audiences. Mayer was forced to resign in 1951, dying of leukemia six years later. Still, MGM is the studio with which Mayer will always be associated.

Darryl F. Zanuck started at Warners as a writer, eventually becoming head of production. He left Warners in 1933, joining Joseph Schenck to form Twentieth Century, which two years later merged with the moribund Fox Film Corporation to become Twentieth Century-Fox, with Zanuck as production head. Zanuck left Fox in 1956 to become an independent producer, releasing through his old studio. Although his glory days were over, Zanuck returned to Fox as president in 1962, becoming board chairman in 1969 and retiring two years later. Except for his Warners peri...