Authors: Barney Rosenzweig
Chapter 32
SURPRISE AT THE GOLDEN GLOBES
The weeks of Christmas rest had hardly made a dent in the fatigue factor. We had about another month of filming and then some post-production work and hopefully a good long period of time off. I was not the only one who needed it. Tyne Daly was showing all the worst signs of exhaustion. Although she and I were getting along very well, I was receiving reports from many in the company as to her mood swings and her flares of temperament, ranging from attitudes about publicity, to references to her family life (or lack of same), to attacks aimed at coworkers. In true cuckoo clock fashion, Sharon had been in very good spirits but was very tired as well.
Cagney & Lacey
had entered the language. In January 1985, our title served as a punch line for a
New Yorker
cartoon; more and more we were being acknowledged as a staple, a standard. Still, given my experience with this venture almost from day one, I remained nervous, not believing we could relax at all.
I found it necessary to push CBS advertising for a change in approach. I also pressured myself and everyone else on the publicity front. The continuing high-powered assaults we were getting from NBC and ABC, with strong female-oriented M.O.W.s aimed at our core audience, made our ratings, at best, inconsistent. There was also my own desire never to be in development again and my growing belief that it would be very unusual if anything else in my professional life ever came along that would challenge, satisfy, or offer me anything compared to
Cagney & Lacey
. I wanted to enjoy it, to keep it going as long as possible, and then—to something completely different. Whatever the option, I resolved not to spend my life attempting to duplicate this satisfying experience.
Most of the time I worried about our performance in the Nielsen’s, but I also acknowledged that it just might be that, ultimately, the thing that would take us off the air would be Tyne’s unwillingness to continue. I hoped I could stall that a year or two, but only time and Ms. Daly would tell. Lest it go unsaid, at that time I was not worried about Sharon’s departing the show. Unlike Tyne, Sharon had reiterated over and over again that she was happy, would honor her deal, and would stay with the series as long as I wanted her. Ms. Daly, on the other hand, would make a positive reference to our future one day and very shortly thereafter ask what I was going to do for a replacement for her whether for the next day, the next week, or the following season. It could be unsettling.
I lunched with Tyne’s husband, Georg Stanford Brown, to discuss his directing for us in the hoped-for coming season. This was very important to Tyne, and I did not feel I could finesse this any longer. (Although Georg is a respected director and one with whom I had worked before, the conflict of interest between his role as director of our show and as husband of our star was difficult for me, if not for him.) The meeting was a bit strained (probably because of the obvious fact that so many episodes had been now made without his help), but, in the overall, it went well.
Later in the afternoon I saw Tyne. She had been in a fairly foul humor for two weeks and I kept waiting for it to reach a boil, but once again she was quite pleasant with me. We even had a few laughs together as she recounted her mild tantrums with staff, crew, and directors. She really hadn’t (at least from my point of view) been that bad.
Then, as if on cue, the cuckoo clock cooed, as Sharon Gless appeared in tears and quite distraught. She had learned from Monique that, although she was brilliant in our sexual harassment show (“
Fair Game
,” written by Georgia Jeffries and directed by Sharron Miller ), that I had, in editorial, juxtaposed a scene so that her big moment did not end the picture as it had in the script. Gless wanted it changed back, and I told her that I did not reedit pictures based on notes from the cast. (I also gave her my reasoning and my feelings about this, and, although she understood, she still wanted her way.)
She saw it as a slap at her acting (it wasn’t) and as a comment on Tyne’s popularity and importance (also incorrect). It didn’t seem to matter that Sharon was then arguably the bigger television star—or that she had (by far) the most fan mail; Tyne Daly had seniority on our series, had been there first, and it took a long time for Sharon to get over her feeling of being considered second to Tyne Daly. In those days, the accolades for Ms. Daly by the TV Academy only exacerbated this.
None of it was discussed openly. The bottom line here was Sharon’s unhappiness and how much I was hurting her by not surrendering to her demand.
Potentially, it opened a real Pandora’s box to do what she wanted; it also would not be a simple thing to accomplish as the episode’s negative had already been cut. Still, it was not impossible. (Once, on our “Burnout” episode, I made a change I didn’t agree with at Tyne’s request. That one had been easier, as it had come before we had finalized, or “locked,” the film by cutting negative.)
Maybe I should bend on this one, I thought. Maybe I should just do this and say to hell with it. It really was vintage Gless. I hadn’t seen her so distraught or insecure in a long time.
I did not agree with her and felt strongly that this would weaken the episode, but it was, after all, only an episode. Sharon’s feelings were more important to me than that. I guesstimated that the change would cost $2,000 and was dismayed to learn it would be closer to $6,500. What the hell!
After putting some final editorial touches on Part I of the two-parter and finishing a concept meeting with director Allen Baron on the season’s penultimate episode, I whizzed out to the company’s location to see Ms. Gless and to tell her of my decision to capitulate to her request.
She looked particularly radiant that evening as she began our meeting with a thank-you for the flowers I had sent that morning and my note, which tried to express how I hated seeing her upset. I then told her I wanted her to win, but that I also wanted her to know I still did not agree. I was only going to do this to please her, I said, even if it was at the expense of one of our episodes. She appreciated the offer but (almost predictably) declined. She even said that she understood my explanation for why I edited the show as I did and was simply concerned that I did not think she was enough of an actress to hold the audience’s attention for the finale. It was her insecurity, not modesty, but still she presented it sweetly. I remember thinking what a quality person she was and how grateful I was to know her. As stated, so often before in this tome, a class act.
The following evening were the
Golden Globe
Awards. Sharon, Tyne, and the show were nominated. I asked Sharon if she had prepared an acceptance speech. She harrumphed at my perceived sarcasm.
“Me neither,” I said. “I’ll join you at the bar.”
At the
Golden Globes
, we lost again, and I got more into my cups than usual. At the table were Tyne and Georg, Peter and Donna Lefcourt (still then a couple), PK, Terry Louise, Steve (mentioned here together, but no longer an item), Michael Fuchs, Corday, me, Hector Figueroa, and Sharon (our cinematographer and star were then a duo). Angela Lansbury won the actress award, surprising no one very much, nor did it seem to displease Sharon or Tyne (who appeared to be steeled for that, while sharing the conviction that our show would win).
Then a few minutes later, Angela Lansbury’s producer, Peter Fischer, was accepting the Best Series award for
Murder, She Wrote
. All of us were at least slightly stunned. The modest
Golden Globe
recipient said something about how surprised he was, and I, in an aside too loud to be discreet, added, “
He’s
surprised?”
I’d gotten used to losing to
Hill Street Blues
, but this was too much. Everyone agreed it was time to get me out of the hall, and so we adjourned to the then-famed Beverly Hills Bistro for more bubbly and chocolate soufflés. As I nursed the next day’s severe hangover, I focused on the reality that it was getting harder and harder to attend these functions and lose.
Chapter 33
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Tyne Daly was eight-weeks pregnant. She told me this in the strictest confidence after a full day’s location work, less than a week after the aforementioned
Golden Globe
debacle. We were in her motor home as she asked me to be happy for her and added that Sharon did not know yet, nor did her children. The amniocentesis (which should be done on pregnant women Tyne’s age—then thirty-nine) would not be done until she was four months along. I had to assume this would go to term and figure out an accommodating production plan.
Tyne asked that I keep her secret until February 15, when the season’s work would be completed, for then there would be time for her to sit down with her two teenage girls to present them with the news. She did not want them to read about it in the tabloids. I agreed.
The smart thing to do here, I reasoned, would be to go right back into production and make as many shows as we could before late June, when, to use Tyne’s words, she would be “looking like the Queen Mary.” How did I do that without alerting the people I’d pledged not to tell? How would I keep the walking wounded going? Tyne and I hugged on parting and said nice things to each other.
The prospect, due to Tyne’s pregnancy, of going almost immediately back to work without much of a break had me concerned. The alternative was even worse. This was bound to become a production nightmare of additional cost factors, with the child truly becoming a “million dollar baby.” On the other hand, if I could get my strength up and keep going, the newsworthiness of all this and the story material it would give us—yes, Mary Beth Lacey would have a child in midlife —could all be very beneficial to our series.
That same week, Sharon and Tyne were on the covers of both
TV Guide
and
People
. Tom Brocato looked like the hottest press agent in town. I diary-noted then that he should pay us for giving him permission to claim he actually did this work. Peter, PK, and Carole had been out all week with what we would refer to as the “Lacy Street crud” (our furniture factory/television studio was drafty and damp; mildew was a fact of everyday life, and, with the hours we were keeping and food being served communally, it was like kindergarten in terms of when one got sick, all came down with some version of whatever it was that was going around). As a result of this particular siege, in addition to my own work, I had been doing theirs. A truly hectic, but (God help me) fun week. What wasn’t fun was the realization that my worst fears regarding Steve and Terry and their lack of producing acumen might be true.
Sharon had some script problems that week and so did I. Peter, in a phasing-out mode and sick, did not do a good job on the revisions, and so, first Terry and then Steve were sent to Sharon to solve her problems. Each of them then, in conversations with the actress, made it worse, and I was needed to put out the fire.
The above barely tells the story. Not only was the script made worse and Sharon driven to frustration and near hysteria, but Steve and Terry’s hyper-emotional report of the situation further magnified and misrepresented the issue. I easily rewrote what had to be done and quickly converted Sharon’s mood to one of easy, good humor.
What, I wondered, did this mean for next year? Probably that Steve and Terry did not have the weight for this job even though my entire budget had been expended on them. Would I now have to do this work myself? That was the prophecy I saw being realized.
Things were not getting easier. The last week of production for the season was simply awful.
Ralph Singleton was a very good production manager, and, as a reward for services beyond the call of duty (or his salary)—he had occasionally, sans credit, served as line producer and always as head of maintenance for Lacy Street—we had rewarded him with the privilege of directing our twenty-second, and final, episode of the season, even though he lacked experience, especially in the area of communicating with actors. Tyne bitterly resented this. It was, as she (correctly) said, “beneath her talent.” She reminded me (again, accurately) that she “deserves better.” I agreed with all this, acknowledged the mistake, and I apologized for my error in judgment.
“Let him work for
Air Wolf
,” a reference to a not-too-successful but then-current TV action show. Ms. Daly went on. The more I attempted to mollify her, the greater was her anger.
Of course, the stupidest mistake was one of those by-the-numbers, traditional television producer faux pas: save the worst for last, never do now what you can put off, and so forth. It resulted in Ralph’s directing commitment being fulfilled on the last show—the show when our actors were their most tired.
“I am on empty,” Tyne said. She stared at me with dead, shark-like eyes.
I was totally empathetic for I, myself, was so tired, so stressed out due to the work that season, the short order that preceded it, the months of horrific negotiations before that, and the whole Orion–CBS–Mace Neufeld emotional roller coaster, that I was physically weak. Tyne’s method of getting herself to work those days was to manufacture energy through antipathy (most of it focused on Ralph, with plenty left for me).
Earlier in the week, at the end of a shooting day, Tyne, John Karlen, Corday, and I shared drinks and laughs in her trailer; all at the expense of poor Ralph.
There was a minor upset revolving around Sharon and the fact that, with no hiatus at all, this also-exhausted star of mine would have to postpone vacation plans to travel to Tahiti because she was being sold into
Letting Go
, an M.O.W. for ABC costarring John Ritter. She was in tears as she told me this, but her tiredness and attendant despair were quickly surpassed by her desire to do this new film.
She thought she would still get plenty of rest after that in the South Seas, not knowing that I might well order the company back in April due to Tyne’s yet-to-be-announced pregnancy. (“Not knowing” because of my pledge to Tyne not to reveal anything to anyone until February 15.)
On the next-to-last day of production, Tyne’s enmity for Ralph had reached the stage where everyone, save for Ralph, was talking about it. Ms. Daly had foresworn subtlety for caustic sneers and public derision. To what end? This was what I asked her in her trailer. “You have made your point, Tyne.” I apologized again for my grievous error. I told her the barbs were wasted on Ralph. “He is having the time of his life.”
Tyne was aghast at this.
“Just one more day and a half,” I pleaded. “Let’s try and be nice to each other and have pleasant memories.”
“I want him to die,” she snarled. She alluded to enjoying seeing the gophers in her backyard perish, having ingested her carefully distributed poison. That was her fantasy for Ralph. I got to my feet in the trailer,
“You want a director?” I asked rhetorically. “Here’s an ‘actable’ for you. For the day and a half that remains of this shoot, you be
Little Mary Sunshine
. Let’s see if you’re enough of an actress to pull that off.”
The meeting ended in a hug, some laughter, and an agreement by her to try.
The work in Tyne’s trailer had a good effect. Our assistant director, Paula Marcus, called me later and thanked me for the obvious change in disposition. Ms. Marcus claimed we would never have made it through the day without this help.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Earlier in Tyne’s trailer she spit out her opinion of that week’s on the air episode (Part I of our two-parter on cancer). Predictably, she hated it: all of it, her scene work, my editing, the script, the camera work, the direction. She couldn’t have been more wrong. The episode was sensational. Months later my opinion would be substantiated by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Part of the conversation was her question whether Sharon knew that following this new job with John Ritter “the blonde” must come immediately back to work at Lacy Street due to the pregnancy. Tyne enjoyed my discomfort of having to live all alone with my burden of knowledge on that score, not being able to consult with writers, lawyers, agents, production managers, accountants, or anyone for fear the story would get out before Tyne had a chance to tell her daughters.
Finally, our last day of the season: I was called to the set, where, rumor had it, our indecisive-now-turned-democratic director was holding a debate on how to stage the episode’s finale. Something snapped. I came to the fore and, in front of everyone, dictated the ending—beat for beat, shot for shot.
48
Not good form, not my style, and not to Ms. Daly’s liking (since she had a whole different scenario she had decided to invent at this eleventh hour). Tyne and I quarreled in front of almost the entire company and then huddled. She agreed to do it my way for this “last and final time,” for she would “not return to this series anymore.” She closed with the statement that she “had been a whore for me for the last time”—then she exited. Shades of 1982–83.
I followed her to her trailer to attempt reconciliation. She drew herself up in a regal pose and calmly asked me please not to enter her domicile on wheels. I did not. Sometimes when a woman says no that is what she means. There was no doubt Tyne was serious, and my belief in settling things as quickly as possible would just have to be put in abeyance this time. It would be interesting, I speculated to no one in particular, to see our performance at that night’s wrap party.
The evening of our wrap party for the season was a success. Tyne and I exchanged kisses and hugs, and she even delivered a semi-apology for the outbursts of the past week.
We had wrapped on the fifteenth of February, the same day I ostensibly “learned” of Ms. Daly’s pregnancy. I went to Harvey Shephard and asked for an early pickup so that we could quickly go back into production, in order to have some episodes on the air prior to our announcement and portrayal of Mary Beth Lacey’s pregnancy (which would, of necessity, run on screen several months behind the pregnancy of the actress who played her). He told me he would have to consult with his management in New York.
It was all slightly complicated and made all the more so by everyone’s being tired and now facing little or no vacation; the prospect of a writer’s strike, which loomed in the near (within two weeks from then) future; and (would you believe it was still there?) Orion’s penny-pinching act.
There was, at that chintzy little company, no understanding of the impossibility of our going on as we had. I felt we deserved some amenities, some concession that—now that we were successful—a portion of the company’s harvest might accrue to those who actually did the labor. I was not pushing Marxist doctrine, or even pay raises. This was about getting decent toilet facilities, a reasonable lunch break, better air-conditioning, an eleven-hour workday.
Ball clubs win the pennant, and the bleachers get painted. What I wanted amounted to little more than that: some kind of reinvestment and demonstration of interest by the company. Nothing came without twisting arms.
I remembered my negotiations with these people—remembered the ten weeks of emotional chaos prior to the seven episodes that saved the series. I remembered, and I did not want to go through anything like that again.
I tried to explain to the powers that were that the penurious, “let’s do it again for
poor
old Orion,” would no longer be effective; that everyone was aware of the company’s windfall with
Cagney & Lacey
, and that we all knew that each new pickup on the series meant millions to the company. I speculated that pregnancy or no, the people at Lacy Street were simply not going to function under the same impossible conditions. I went on to state that Orion should figure on paying a 10 percent commission on their new wealth and anticipate a two million dollar deficit for 1985–86 against their minimum sixty to one hundred million dollars in projected profits on the series.
An automatic no came from Orion management: that same anti-labor, anti-talent, blindly pro-corporate tone I remembered so well from the days of negotiation with them—those days that were more exhausting than making any series.
“You mean,” I rejoined, “that Orion would risk twenty million dollars in order not to spend two million dollars? What kind of business decision is that?”
Orion, I was told, was quite capable of that kind of decision, and that “shoot the deal” was a major philosophy, with the partnership headed up by Arthur Krim. I felt these bosses were like the Van der Veer folks in New York; we were the diamond mine, and they simply could not conceive of our shutting down or not sending our allotment of gems, from which they would profit.
I had, some time ago, decided I didn’t want to be in development anymore. Now I didn’t want to do any of it. I hate notes. I didn’t want to explain to people what it was I was doing: “
Just watch the magic and enjoy the results
.”
This, of course, was unrealistic. Where could I work and not have notes? I thought it was at Lacy Street. I thought because I had pulled something off that was miraculous, because, over and over again, I had been proved right (and that I charged so little for this service) that I would not—at least there—need to suffer fools; but it was never ending. I was depressed to learn that this was still the dark at the beginning of the tunnel.