CORRESPONDENCE

To the editor:

In his review of my book, “Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood” [Dec. 14], Richard Schickel doesn’t find Lew Wasserman “interesting,” laments that he wasn’t “fun” or “rollicking” and suggests that he is not worth a third book. Yet the book unearths new material -- from how MCA’s brass rigged the 1950s quiz shows to how they quashed federal investigations in the 1980s.

Schickel says my book is studded with factual mistakes, yet cites none. That doesn’t mean there are no errors; I cover 80 years of history and include some 2,000 footnotes. Yet one would think that a veteran critic like Schickel would name at least one example.

More bothersome are his inaccuracies. He calls Sidney Korshak “Wasserman’s best pal,” when neither I nor my sources ever said that. Rather, the mogul considered Jimmy Stewart his “favorite best friend.” To call Wasserman “immune to wit” is to misrepresent what his friends, such as Alfred Hitchcock, found delightful in the man.

“The largely forgettable television shows” that Mr. Schickel brushes off are those shows -- “Columbo,” “Ironside,” “The Rockford Files” -- that have entertained ordinary people from Barcelona to Yuba City for the last 30 years. This fare may be too lowbrow for a literary reviewer, but such are the cultural changes that Wasserman wrought. Schickel finds it “quaint ... and routine” to learn that Lew created the first movie-theme park, TV miniseries and DVD. But to claim that “someone else would have eventually invented” such bellwethers is like saying Henry Ford just happened to be hitchhiking one day on the road to progress. He also describes Edie Wasserman as a “Jackie Collins character,” denigrating the significant contributions that she and her circle made to greater Los Angeles. If it weren’t for Edie’s low-profile work (and that of Doris Stein, the wife of Lew’s boss), this city’s charitable and cultural institutions -- such as Cedars-Sinai hospital, the Music Center, UCLA, the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the Motion Picture & Television Fund retirement community -- would be a dim reflection of what Angelenos boast of today.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate Schickel’s attention to my book. I do. But if he finds the business of Hollywood “tiresome” and doesn’t particularly like the legendary couple, that leaves little room for an analysis of how Hollywood has come to dominate not just American pop culture but its government and economy. And that was one of the key points of the book.

Kathleen Sharp

Santa Barbara

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Richard Schickel replies:

Let me take up Kathleen Sharp’s comments in order.

The quiz show scandals were an unindictable teapot tempest that bemused the press and its public at the time but had no lasting consequence -- except for poor Charles Van Doren. As for those “quashed” federal investigations of the 1980s, they seem to me of a piece with all the other troubles MCA-Universal has had with the government over the years. “Everyone” has always “known” that the company is mobbed up or exerting illegal influence on its would-be regulators. Or something. But no one ever proves anything that can’t be settled by a consent decree. So the objective observer must finally retreat either to total naivete or total cynicism when thinking about this matter. As for me, to borrow a phrase, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” And I don’t know why anyone else should either -- until someone makes a case that can be taken to court and fully aired.

As to the factual errors, glad to oblige: Marion Davies can scarcely be called a “starlet”; Burt Lancaster did not appear in “Spartacus”; Stanley Kubrick did not “build” a studio of his own; Don Siegel did not co-produce the “Dirty Harry” series with Clint Eastwood (he directed and produced the first of those films); “Where Eagles Dare” was not based on a “fine” script but on a ridiculously improbable one; Darryl Zanuck did something more than produce “several films” in the 1940s -- excepting the war years, he was head of production at Twentieth Century-Fox from 1934 to 1956 and one of the two or three most powerful men in Hollywood most of that time. But why go on? I agree with Sharp; anyone writing a lengthy history or biography is bound to make some mistakes, but these, it seems to me, lie uncomfortably close to the realm of common Hollywood knowledge.

As to the other points she raises: Connie Bruck, in her recent book about Wasserman, seems to think he was closer to Sidney Korshak than to anyone else -- including nice Jimmy Stewart. I suppose the point is debatable, but I found Bruck’s volume the more persuasive account of Wasserman’s life and so relied on it in this instance. As to Lew’s legendary wit, I suppose I have to concede that he did say one funny thing: “Stay out of the spotlight. It fades your suit.” Beyond that, I search Sharp’s book in vain for thigh-slappers.

As for the argument that Universal’s television shows “have entertained millions from Barcelona to Yuba City,” that says nothing about their intrinsic value. There have been touchstone television series that did have a shaping effect on popular culture in the period Sharp covers -- “All in the Family,” “MASH,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Simpsons” -- and it seems significant to me that none of them came out of Universal. The first “movie” theme park? Well, the Universal operation in this realm arose out of a studio tour, which is quite a different thing. It seems to me that nowadays, in its technology if not its content, Universal City competes quite directly with its predecessor, Disney. Discovision? It did not prefigure the DVD but rather the laser disc, which was a nice interim technology that is now disused.

As for the miniseries, I guess I’ll have to yield to Sharp on that one. MCA was first with it. But it was never the best with it, just as it was only occasionally the best in all the other entertainment realms. That was because it so rarely freed itself from the cost consciousness and mean-spiritedness that inhibited the often talented people who passed through its gates from realizing their highest aspirations. What Sharp never comes to grips with in her book is that Universal, for all its profitability, was an important contributor to the media hum of the age, but almost never, during Wasserman’s reign, did it sing arias that stopped us in our tracks.

As to Edie Wasserman, I think Sharp’s brief for her must remain unproved. That she had, and used, the power that naturally accrued to the wives of powerful men in her era, I don’t dispute. But it was a power confined to social and charitable realms. The most devoted reader of Sharp’s book will find few, if any, examples of her exerting meaningful power within the industry or the political realms in which her husband operated.

Finally, I do not find the business of Hollywood “tiresome.” I said I found the Wassermans tiresome because they were such joyless bores. Nor am I immune to analyses of “how Hollywood has come to dominate not just American pop culture but its government and economy.” It’s just that I don’t think Hollywood dominates either the government or the economy. It is obviously one of several players in those arenas and one that is ever suspect when it tries to exert its power on the national scene. If Sharp thinks she has made a thoughtful, arresting argument in support of this thesis, she is deluded. Her book is admittedly rich in gossipy quotation, but it’s as impoverished in the realm of political science as it is in critical evaluations of what Lew and his cohorts wrought.