now you went went from A. S. U. Allentown.
Yes. Ah The
our program our program manager Shell Siegel.
Um it was
hired to put the station on in Allentown which
it's really important in Allentown despite the fact that on cable you had
the public station from new york and the public station from ah
philadelphia. But it was such a parochial place. Oh no no no we've got to
have our own, it's just money to show up and do it if you don't have it on
the air and exactly one year you both get fired
and I took it because I was young and petulant. I'm not young anymore
and you wouldn't hire me to be the program director after these fabulous
cask of amontillado Otto's misspell credit
actors, drunken actors in the studio performances out of the sewer after
all that you hired this stranger.
So I huffed my way too Allentown and I learned a lot. I had never put a
station on here from the ground up. Whether we purchased the first pencil
, leased the first temporary building work with architects to design other
studios but all of the equipment. I mean I did learn a lot unfortunately
when the learning was over the horrors set in that that snow really wasn't
fun. And one day I couldn't find my car and the apartment. Super said
because you're standing on it.
We've had a bit of a drift.
So these are of the Arizona state
network.
Ah The man with the tape network. He was had by now he's head of
education
in the Los Angeles station in Los Angeles station is close to going broke
And of course we've got 12 Union contracts. So how
how can they let people off and still keep going because everyone
and tv in that town is a specialist.
You know, people who do eyebrows don't make up ears very regimented union.
So um, so I offered me the job of a program director with the caveat. We
may not be here by the time you arrive with doctor Jim roper.
Ah
And uh we just don't know how this will work out. So you're really taking
a chance.
It isn't snowing is it? No it never snows here. I'll be there in three
days left and
I went to Los Angeles and
the finances were worse than I thought. We had long meetings. My favorite
was the one on, we can't afford to have telephones
and pay the electricity.
That was a short meeting your Tv station. You're not talk radio. So we
actually went without phones for a few days while the board phoned around
and wrote checks or things to.
And again I had come up from Tv From a one channel town
and I had learned to do everything. Floor manager, direct light run
cameras, audio
technical directors where I could do it all. And while I didn't have to do
it all I had to manage it all and I had to figure out how to, we work with
unions around situations where we couldn't afford full crews and we came
out of that.
Do you remember what brought us out of it? I don't really save the place.
My um, master's paper from the University of Denver called feedback to
advanced
and it got a huge ford Foundation
um,
grant
and when I saw the application many years later, the guy at the Ford
Foundation had written on it. If they don't pull it off, it'll pull them
under
and, and feedback for advancement, which you know, is Cancion de la raza.
Yeah, that got us in trouble, but that's all right.
We'll talk about that. You're in trouble. It got you in trouble.
Song of the race chuck produced us soap opera around it. I don't know how
many, there were many said too many. It was produced live the way soap
opera be produced. Soap opera was a chosen form because that was for all
Latinos. Primetime tv was built around evening soap operas. So it was a
form that was very familiar and the idea was, they could learn all kinds
of really good things from us,
arrogant. Oh yes. But uh, just down the Ford Foundation's alley. Uh, but,
but they're hardly were any Other than Cesar Romero and two or 3 others
rita Moreno's, they're just weren't Hispanics in the unions
and acting because to get many of these unions, all you had to have was a
part.
So I created um, a little university of Carlos where
we advertised, her kids wanted to be actors. People wanted to be actors.
Directors
put them through a a little screening process and we hired directors and
actors to essentially create the actors for the cast. The directors, all
of this was the part of the grant you didn't benefit from and many of them
are still involved in making film and television. Uh huh. Today, in fact
one of the directors who came out of that, who would just came out of
Occidental and never had a job in show business as a life. Today is on the
board of the directors guild of America.
The president of the directors guild is another one of my evil creations.
Taylor Hackford
now tell us about some of the other programs you produced because one of
them won the first Real Emmy for public broadcasting, the Andersonville
Trial, Hollywood television theater, the Andersonville Trial. uh 69 I
think I might be a little off on that. Uh, had a great cast, William
Shatner.
Um the director was George C scott. I was able to get George Because No
one would hire him. He had become a a prominent drunk and it's not that
Hollywood cared whether you
abused yourself with substances or whatever, but if it costs over time you
were dead, that was where they drew the line
and
and he had gone off the list on Hirable and you had to get back on the
list, which means you could be hired. You, you had to prove you could do a
play or a movie or something and not
throw it off budget. And he really wanted this to be good. And and he did
not want to fall down and ruin his career or disappoint us. And so he
hired a bodyguard who was even bigger than he was, who went around with a
bag of candy bars. And if George started getting the shakes outward, kind
of a candy bar and jam in his mouth and he said, you know, at night, he'll
knock me out if he thinks I'm going for a drink. Well, we we didn't have a
Betty ford center at the time.
So this was his rehab project and that's how I made all of Hollywood
television theory go, they were all rehab people. All of them, all these
people you thought were great actors who were dying to work for me. No,
I'm in rehab places, looking for people who look like the park. And of
course, once they proved they could, they were working again.
And you know, Shatner was young and very handsome and
I took one of the standard, one of the, one of the young phds
to make out with her and it's convertible back to the studio and they
couldn't find him. So somebody tells George that, you know, William may
not be coming back today. He's really having a good time at the back of
the studio. He went out grab him out of his convertible, pulling over this
side game a black guy and drug him back in and makeup people did their
work. And this one the M. E. And it's only been given once. And it was for
this show for the best single television show produced of that year. It
was above all other can above drama, all of it. And there you have there
you have it, Charles Bukowski
documentary produced by Taylor Hackford,
brilliant, brilliant guy. And the film was brilliant. And
But I had 20 or 30 f bombs in it. Of course we broadcast it isn't, you
know, along with a handful of others. And um
ah
the sec was notified.
And uh and there was a hearing which the commission themselves conducted
the hearing, I saw the film
and I had a great lawyer and
and we got off with a kind of don't do it often. Uh finding
because one it had been underwritten by the government. It was a National
Endowment for the Art Project
and it made it complicated to get into. And the other thing is, the
chairman said, you know, Anybody who is watching this after five minutes
really deserved what they got, let's call it art Art. And and that that
moved on. That was not carried by Channel eight I believe because we would
I would not let an edited version out. You either had to carry the whole
thing or nothing. And um
yes, that was
he was the L a poet laureate,
I had come up with a brilliant idea, I thought
for the the bicentennial
and there was a competition for funding at the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting. And
so I had this idea that we would have different Hollywood stars appear for
two minutes and tell you that on this day leading towards the revolution
in a year,
this was an important point of history. Well,
CPB was very angry, said I was a smart but and that you couldn't treat the
history of the United States like this and they wouldn't put a nickel in.
It crushed. I was crushed.
So the producer for Hollywood television theater who had
had really some very good credits by now comes to me and said, you know,
could I have permission to take that to CBS?
You know, I I don't think you're really nuts about this one.
So I said, yeah, until he takes it to CBS.
And they had a programming fred Silverman had turned down everything,
agents and everyone had sent him did not like any of the bicentennial
ideas
And he saw this one and let up had to have it. So he hires Friedman away
from me. So I lose my drama producer.
And but they've got to buy the concept the minutes.
And
so they said, well what do you need? Well we always need money, I'll give
you some money.
And then we've got a lot of plays. Mr Friedman bought that will never
produce.
So if you buy all of those, because we've got $10,000 down on the option
on each one of them And we've got 10 of nobody's ever going to produce
well by February.
So they took, my producer paid us around 250,000 for the concept, brought
out all of this junk that is piled up and it became a big hit and it won
an Emmy, thank you. Thank you. The corporation for Public broadcasting
lost again.
So I had to hire another producer and I hired norman Lloyd, uh, who had
worked with Alfred Hitchcock and never shut up about it and is still alive.
He's 90, just had his 92nd birthday.
He's, you've seen him in the movies,
he get on under Hitchcock skin. And so his Hitchcock cast him as the guy
who falls off the statue of liberty, the nazi spy
that was just a big claim to fame. Um, and he was in the Mercury theater
with Orson Welles.
So I'm a kidney, the head of Hollywood television theater. And and by now
I have absorbed enough Hollywood lore, I have an idea of how a lot of it
works. And I had always loved Bruce jay Friedman's uh, play steam Bath.
Yeah, in which God played by a Puerto Rican
is running a steam bath and when you die, you just kind of blink and there
you are. You're in the steam bath and at some point you'll either go
through that door heaven or hot door over here and the bath attendant
decides
God, I really like that and, and the language is a bit much for, for
television. So I had, I've gone through and changed all of the sexual
references using
uh, Yiddish vaudevillian,
you know, Henny youngman speak and it was in my desk at all times. I get
bored. I'd read it again, chuckled and I had taken a an option on it,
which was easy. He didn't think anyone would ever, ever, I want to see
this, He's given up. And so there's that moment, here's the new executive
producer of the Hollywood television theater sitting in front of me and,
and I'm opening the door and I've got my hand on the book, they all do
this, it was really so pleased to have this job. Is there anything is
there anything that's special to you that you'd like me to do? And they
never ever ask you twice. It's a once a producer thing just like that.
Boom. It's on the desk norman produced this
and he says, I know that play. He said, I think there's something you need
, you're very young. I think you should understand that
if any station, but this one plays, it will be fired. I'm ready, are you?
Oh yes, of course. So off we, off we go And it required a special effect,
which was, which was a lot of fun and that was, somebody has to drink a 50
gallon cocktail
and so we had to have a special effects company to make a giant cocktail
that empty in seconds pumps,
you know, outside of the studio is how it was done.
Um the idea of God being a Puerto Rican, The head of Jerusalem at the head
of John Birch inside it came to see me about that one, I have a name
and he said you're about to make the biggest fundraiser I've ever had
and then we had the two gay guys in the bath and they,
they had a dance, the towel flips
where
they're naked and they're doing this dance and the towel flip covers any
genitalia, any, I personally went through it frame by frame, frame by
frame,
but everyone knows what they saw, Everyone thinks they saw something they
didn't.
So that was controversial. Then you had Valerie Perrine who was young and
gorgeous
dressed in as little as we could find to dress her in and that makes me
who's, I think really at the peak of his career, fine young young actor
and
ah the towel flip probably took half a day to shoot
but
it went very well.
PBS refused to put their logo on it, which meant we could not be
reimbursed by the ford foundation for the show that was the one caveat,
whatever you make, they have to release
and they had a PVS, your buddy Hartford Gun would not, he was, this will
bring down Oh, all the PBS
and,
and I would, I didn't know what to do. I mean, I was the board had a
meeting and all in. Is there anyone who's not in favor of hiring chuck?
You know, the guy we gave the big bonus to last week and he's going to
sink the place and,
and Caroline Leonetti ahmanson,
um
very important board member got up
and essentially
just just paid a wonderful tribute to the production and to me and made it
very clear she and her money would leave with
Well,
the president president jim said, well, I think we could see this as art.
I've created art again. So I I still have to somehow get this on PBS in
order to get the money and I think we spent 600,000 on this. And,
and
so I called a friend of ours,
Dick Bowman in in Chicago. This is a station, everyone.
And they actually had an audience where most stations, we're talking about
programming too important for audiences.
And Dick said, you know, we'll play it once and y'all will do will pledge
it. Oh,
so it pledges in Chicago. It makes a ton of money. Just tons of they can
we play it again? Yes. Play it until it wears out. I'll say, you know,
that copy and of course the other stations so sanctimonious will never
play in mind. What did you say it made? That's bigger than Lawrence. Well
suddenly PBS still won't carry it, but they will provide it. And uh Donald
Taverner, the president of the Pittsburgh station, refused to run it and
made some really nasty remarks about it in the Washington post and his
board fired him for not running for not running it.
I still have a copy of that, I've got a DVD copy that I get out and I look
at it every once in a while and I think it was better. There was one other
thing on steam bath.
All the other officers of this corporation lived out in the san Fernando
valley or the beach or somewhere loper uh in Pasadena. So any time
anything came up with the fire or the police,
I was on their list to call 1st because I live closer to the studio then
the rest of them and they didn't want to deal with those problems. So I
got called that two or 31 morning Mr Allen, Hollywood precinct calling.
Yeah, everything's going
well we've arrested arrested a guy that's Puerto Rican on a pretty serious
offense. He was jaywalking actually, he was arrested because he was a
Puerto Rican jaywalk together. Wonderful town. And I said and wow! He says
he's God mr Allen. And that God only listens to you,
oh gosh look, I can't straighten this out on the phone,
I'm coming right down. Be careful with Jose. God, Jose. Perez, the actor,
Great broadway actors. So I grab my checkbook and everything else it takes
to bail. There's somebody out and I went down there and they made me sit
in front of the bars. Now you're telling us, we know who you are and we,
We respect channel 20,
explain this God thing to me.
Don't don't, this is how the play goes and he's terrific. And and um I'll
send you a copy when we're finished or you can come down and watch, we've
got a dance number. You will love not the towel flip Valerie parade where
her top explodes. Have you ever complained about that? And they end up
taking Jose later on, you know, out for lunch at some crappy plates that
the cops hang out. I mean the frolic room on Hollywood boulevard? It's the
cops taking Jose God. And I got and his boss to the frolic room and I'd
never been in there. I mean, I just really didn't want to be seen in Mhm.
It's still there too, by the way. So it was, it was terrific television
as far as I was concerned and and Hartford gun eventually gets fired by
PBS and they hire a public relations guy who had been at NBC Larry
Grossman. I never met this guy phone rings one day, Jack, my name's Larry
Grossman. I'm the president of PBS. I don't even have an office yet. Do
you still have the rights to that steam bath thing? Yeah,
good. I'm putting in a schedule as a PBS primetime must if you'll let me
if you put the logo on it, you got it, can I call forward for you? Yes,
you can. And then he bought all of my tv tv specials ah which was a unit
outside of channel eight. I put together with the first handheld video
cameras and by Sony and they just gave us a bunch of to see what you could
do. So when they took it to the industry they could show the practical
application.
Tell us about producing the Cousteau people. I had 13 ah Cousteau Voyages
which I was in charge of and we had we had won Emmys for those and they
were very popular and and he was a wonderful person to know and and to
work with, he was a very smart filmmaker and it would
usually get me a month to six weeks in paris where all the editing was
done Because he shot at 100-1. Otherwise you shoot, you threw away 99 ft
for everyone that actually went on the air. Um
And
Philippe, his his favorite son normally handled all the arrangements, you
know forgetting calypso ready import with all the film gear and stuff to
take off. He had been ill. So I was kind of doing it through others and
and I got a call from Cousteau, he is just angry, He is just mr mild
mannered is just what the hell have you done? I said, what do you mean?
And we tried to get the ship ready, Philippe not here, but what have you
done? I can't go on this voyage. Well, you hardly are ever on them. Anyway.
We take you in by helicopter. No, but
where's my beef?
I don't understand what you're saying. I don't eat this fish crap. I eat
beef.
Be from California by the way. You know, hand fed, somebody gives
The Cow one straw at a time and you've stuck me with this,
You're killing me. Oh God, So wait, well what's a lost day? So you get rid
of the fish loaded up with red wine and lots of red beef because I
believed all this crap, he said, I
just, the executive producer tells me I believe him in terms of some of
the best things I've ever done. Ah and all of this iota issue. I love
school, I loved going to college, I loved the library, I loved all that. I
love the ability to sit in on classes. I wasn't registered for. I was a
real lifetime learner. So I used to go to caltech to see lectures
occasionally. We had had a former board chairman, um who was the president
of caltech. And so I went to see
an evening of lectures called why man creates
which eventually would be published. And the first person up is Cousteau
what drives him? The 2nd 1, James Michener, what drives him to write? Why
is he so interested in geography being tied to everything he does
Carl Sagan, why is he crazy about the cosmos and most of these people
except for Michener And ah Cousteau had never been heard of. They all
turned into series, didn't they? And what happened with Carl Sagan?
Great, that that's a whole bunch of stories that nobody has time for all
of that, The best one is mentioned, it we're at the wailing wall because
one of his books was set in Israel
and
all he has to do is say so it was here that
and he says so it was here and he knocks his glasses off and he steps on
them. He's blind. He cannot see without his glasses
and get getting, getting to his office, finding somebody, you know, the
executive secretary who could find the the eyeglass prescription, getting
that sent by telex, no internet uh to Israel getting, I mean it was it was
a week that was really expensive. That really went over budget. Thank you.
So, but everything in that evening became series that we're part of the
career at at Los Angeles,
I ran into steve Allen
who who was difficult to get along with and he was
Really in a in a bad mood in the 60s and 70s because
you know, there was nothing worse than in a restaurant overhearing your
name. And somebody said didn't they pass away?
I don't think, I don't think I've seen so and so and that would just just
light him up um
and he was really bright and investing so he had saved and had a fortune
put away where a lot of show business people just put away debt.
But this thing of not being seen. So one day he calls up and he's got a
terrific program for me. And
and so I agreed to see him and I came in and he wanted I wanted laughter
on Mount Olympus. And the thing is that Zeus is calling up all the funny
people and his and and great figures from history,
you know Hitler whoever I mean this is just and it was very funny. I have
read a lot of his scripts and he said oh no you can't have that. It's good
, jesus,
you can't have that, it's good.
No, I'm saving that, that's a winner. You know jesus what
I said, so do you have something horrible for us? Well
yeah um
yeah I do.
He pulls out a meeting of the minds
and I looked at it and said this is no laughter on Mount Olympus. But but
it's funny and it's got a lot of possibilities and I especially like the
part your wife is in Jayne Meadows.
Well that's a problem. I can't guarantee she'll be in any of it. We're
never allowed to discuss work with each other. I I can't ask her to be in
anything and I won't be anything. She asked me to do,
you know, that's how this marriages lasted. We just don't get into that.
So you'll have to ask her yourself. And it became I think one of the most
satisfying things we produced for stations,
the meeting of the minds series. And
and of course that's when I thought he was a genius and and he comes to an
outline for the first show. It's a half a page And there's three jokes on
it and he said, you know, this budget doesn't include a writer
and it certainly is enough for me. So you people will have to figure out
how you're going to create your script.
So we did and I edited every one of them myself.
You're one of the few people I know that have met President Nixon
personally. What was your impression of?
Mm hmm.
Well he had been kicked out of office and you're reading daily in the in
the L. A. Times pictures of him and the Secret Service guy going down the
beach and he looks upset. You're reading that he's depressed, People are
saying could he be suicidal? I mean this is just
and at the time I was dating one of our funders uh Wallace don't call me
wallet Annenberg
whose father of course had purchased the ambassadorship to the court of ST
James from Nixon. I mean he had been, he lost out to paley and so
eventually he would buy, I'm so he buys it from Reagan.
So anyway, uh, so we are going to dinner, you know at their 300 acre
uh Hovel and Rancho mirage and
and there are a couple of empty seats for dinner and these were never any
fun. There was always somebody there that you know, it was a yesterday's
important person. And so once everyone is seated, you know the ambassador
rises,
we're now going to bring in our special guest, someone who needs no
introduction. President Richard Nixon, never an X. And he comes in, he's
got his only costume on the blue jacket,
the lapel pin, the gray pants and he is just happier than a hornet. This
is not the next thing I've been reading about and he starts telling jokes
and they're actually very funny jokes, but he's a guy who has a hard time
telling them because his, his meter gets off or he starts to give you the
punchline before the and he was very engaging and funny and he looked
depressed to me and then he went out Uh with uh the ambassador and shot 36
holes in the backyard.
There was no suffering going on except for camera, A very smart guy. Um I
don't think he had much human contact,
but he had a terrific mind for detail. I think even the people who thought
of being enemies were on a list somewhere. That was a great thing in L. A.
Was the Nixon's enemy list. Everyone who was a writer, no insisted they
were on it and the world came to an end. But eventually the times gets the
enemies list they're not on
and it was just awful. But um
Moyers called and said you know we're going to I've gotten Reagan to agree
to to one hours and that's a good chance he'll be the next president. Um
and we're going to shoot them at the ranch.
You know these people
do you think you could kind of get it set up for us and you know we'll pay
you whatever it takes. But and every time we have someone from my office
call we end up with a spat. His people just hate us. You know the nicest
thing they call us. They're Commies.
I said okay
so we we go up to the ranch in santa Barbara where you remember he was
clearing brush at all times when there was a camera around and and he was
a really nice guy. I mean it's one of the nicest people I've ever met was
Ronald Reagan really very nice and very considerate and and his wife was
everything the wicked witch of the west wanted to be. I mean it was
really awful. So we shot a morning with Reagan and ah lawyers and he gets
along with everyone. Reagan does. I mean he just I think he could I think
he could interview with dead body and make it interesting. Just a great
guy and and then we're gonna break for lunch and he said I know I'll make
sandwiches,
he goes into the house and he's in the kitchen making sandwiches for a
crew of 13 or 14, I don't know and just humming and telling jokes. Great
guy. And so we're out there with our sandwiches and beer and stuff
and here comes nancy damn you S. O. B. S ripping sandwiches and beer out
of hand here. Oppressed asshole. You don't want us to be president. And
she grabs the food and runs away
and then announces she's going shopping. And and he said you know
sometimes mommy has bad days that that was always his name for her mommy.
They really
I mean he was really a great person to be. He saved public TVs bacon every
year that he was the president and he would have us in once a year where
he wouldn't fight important people like you bob and me if there was room
and he would tell jokes for 60 75 minutes without a script. I mean just
and he always had the punch lines in the right place. I mean he was a
brilliant storyteller, great great entertainer.
The last L. A story is the best. I also had a local unit that made local
shows and I think they were really the best things we made. How good were
they? Well, none of the specials Could have a budget of more than 35,000.
We earned two Oscars
out of the underpaid people. The Oscars
and nobody had done that. That's a good one for National Geographic.
And the first one in fact was was a Woman's Barbara meier Hops doctoral
dissertation called Old jews in venice
which becomes numbering number, numbering our days, which which is a very
moving film. Oscar and the other one was Taylor Hackford who yeah, I made
a terrific film on ah
old guys who made westerns who nobody remembers and and of course boxes
and boxes literally of of local Emmys but they were too interesting units
, one was over funded and there were some good times with it. But the the
the local unit, just a week after week terrific material that people I
really enjoyed watching and Oscars vs. There is no there's no great Emmy,
you know, and snob value.
Oh yeah. And all of those people connected with this stuff end up and
marrying each other, having Children, having divorces, marrying other
people but having terrific careers all from there Time at Channel eight.
It really was a place and a time where we couldn't afford to hire pros. So
we took people who, well I hired Taylor Hackford and you probably saw one
of his movies Officer and a gentleman or Ray the Ray Charles movie. Um
He, we hired him in the mail room and you know what you did in the
mailroom. He opened my mail, he's reading all of my memos.
This is true. This is absolutely true. And there's a discussion going on
with business and the present others about whether we can afford to hire
another producer and how much or could we promote someone? Did we have
someone to promote? And what would the pay grade B and all this is
floating around in memos, No email
and and there was no EEO at the time. So Taylor walks in in a suit. I
hardly recognized him. And he said, I'm here for my interview. Your
interview. Yes, I want to interview for the producer position. That's open.
I said we just opened it 10 minutes ago. I know I was standing next to
loppers door. I heard him tell you on the phone and I knew the job was
coming. So I've I've got this, I've got demo tapes
and I said you've got the job.
I mean, he's unstoppable. He's still unstoppable. He's married to Helen
mirren always. Yes. Any award show. I don't like the Graham, not the
Grammys, The Golden Globes, the center Taylor, the center table Taylor
President of directors guild of America. Helen mirren because she's got
Oscars.
There yougo