B004YENES8 EBOK (27 page)

On week three the competition got stiffer in the form of a very exploitable M.O.W. on NBC, which clobbered our show, resulting in our worst ratings since the disasters of the spring of 1983. I was not at all sure how to interpret this in light of the previous two weeks and our incredible summer numbers but came to realize that, unlike most series, we would never face regular competition (but rather football, specials, and movies) and that we would always be living under this particular pressure-sharpened sword. It was also one of the ironies of having such an intelligent and well-educated audience, an audience aware of its options and quite capable of exercising its right to choice on a regular basis. They were not (couch potato-like) glued to the CBS network on a Monday night, or any night for that matter.

On the set, a pre-
Emmy
cake is about to be dismantled by the two women, who are each odds-on favorites to win. That year Ms. Gless took the prize, but more often it was Tyne Daly. For the entire six-year run of
Cagney & Lacey
, no other actress could take the award from one of these two.

Photo: Rosenzweig Personal Collection

“Sister” Christine Cagney made a brief appearance in our episode of “Burnout.” Prayer didn’t help. Ms. Daly won her second Emmy for that very episode.

Photo: Courtesy of MGM

Chapter 31 

MONEY AND GLORY 

In the fall of 1984, we were enjoying our first twenty-two show order. By the end of November, even with very stiff competition,
Cagney & Lacey
was regularly ensconced in the Nielsen’s list of top-twenty shows. I began looking forward to the future with thoughts of preparation for yet another pickup, and the fall of 1985. This was more than compulsive behavior on my part. I had a number of projects under development for Orion, and if any of these were to become a practical reality, I would have to find someone(s) who could, while I moved on, truly take over the reins at Lacy Street. Better, I thought, to get that settled sooner than later.

Individual meetings with Peter Lefcourt, Terry Louise Fisher, and Steve Brown indicated that the former would probably not want to return but that Terry and Steve would. I was not overjoyed at having them back without the very talented and invariably affable Lefcourt as a balance.

The writing team of Jonathan Estrin and Shelley List continued to show interest in coming on board, a not uninteresting alternative given Lefcourt’s pronouncement. Then—for reasons unclear to me—Terry Louise Fisher added a wrinkle, saying she would only return
with
Steve Brown who, incidentally, was characterized as pissed because I would not commit to him for a new season. There was no way I could afford to hire Estrin, List, Fisher,
and
Brown. I would not be able to eat my cake and have it; I needed to confront that and simply make a decision between the two teams: continuity versus perceived higher talent, the familiar versus new blood, experience versus inexperience—the romance of the only slightly known. It was a tougher decision than it looks on paper, and I took my time making it.

By December we had been filming for nearly 150 days without a hiatus. It was the longest stretch of production I had ever experienced, due to the near overlap of our earlier short order of seven, merging almost immediately into this first full order for twenty-two episodes. Everyone was tired and, as a consequence, irritable.

I had produced more episodes per season in my youth on
Daniel Boone
, but those were six-day shoots with reasonable start dates, sensible hours, and plenty of breaks along the way for rest and recuperation.
Boone
was from another era of television and, in fact, a better time in which to toil in the world of corporate Hollywood .

In the late sixties, networks ordered their fall schedule no later than early spring, months before they would during the 1980s and beyond. This long accepted delay of at least three months has forced producers into longer shooting days, fewer hiatuses, and resultant heavy overtime payments to the crews and their suppliers in order to have a chance at making air dates. Nothing is done about it because everyone is making more money as a result of this policy: more money from the networks to the studios to compensate for the additional costs this late decision-making incurs; more overtime money for labor to put into divorce settlements because workers don’t get home to their families; and more money for medical problems that result from accidents and injuries that too often occur to an exhausted work force.

It is to the eternal discredit of the various guilds and unions that they continually pander to this system, as well as the greed of their members, by negotiating ever greater overtime payments while disregarding the quality of life of their members. All that aside, at Lacy Street we were all counting the days until the Christmas break.

One evening on the set, Tyne apologized for not having a year-end gift for me and asked me to settle for her gratitude. She also apologized for being grumpy in the early going of the episode we were currently shooting (which had her character contracting breast cancer). As one might surmise from the foregoing, she was quite pleased with herself, her partner (as each of the women referred to the other), the episode’s director (Ray Danton), and her own work. Sharon, too, was in very high spirits. It was a big difference from the previous week, but then so was every week.

The cancer episodes, “Who Said It’s Fair” Parts I and II, were special, precipitating this digression. Pat Green’s two scripts (I thought) were extraordinary, and my restraint at not doing an “I told you so” to the staff was something of which I was (I think) understandably proud. The cast, as usual, was nothing less than sterling; the information we were imparting was substantive, relatively new, and potentially life-saving. The episode gave me the opportunity to string some semi-subtle beads of my own: taking a piece of music we had used in an episode from the previous season (“Burnout” ) and reprising it, sans comment, months later in this story. It is the sort of tactic that is of no import to the casual viewer and a major reward to the zealous fan.

The norm in
Cagney & Lacey
was for positions of authority (judges, medical examiners, school principals, bank presidents) to be cast with female actors. We were, after all, a show about women, and we felt it was important to show successful women in the workplace as often as possible. I rescinded my own rule about this sort of casting for this episode. Mary Beth Lacey’s doctor would be male, and not only male, but an actor with the least amount of sexual chemistry we could find. Millions of women would be watching this episode, and a measurable percentage of them would have similar medical concerns. We were advocating getting a second opinion, seeing more than one doctor, and ultimately exploring lumpectomy over mastectomy. I did not want Mary Beth’s on-camera visit to be in some glamorized setting or to be some rarified experience made easier by consultation with an attractive feminine role model or a
Dr. Kildare
wannabe. Most women in America did not then have access to a female physician or a handsome oncologist, and I didn’t want them using that as an excuse for not taking such a necessary visit.

Estrin & List continued to play reluctant brides in terms of accepting my proposal to come to work on
Cagney & Lacey
and I was getting very bored with that courtship. I therefore began renegotiations with Terry Louise, worked on trying to snare the very talented Patricia Green, and next—to placate them both—Steve Brown. Terry’s one-time lover/sometime writing partner, Pat Green’s new mentor, and my sometime pain-in-the-ass Brown continued to be a major asset to the story department, while too often forgetting his early admission to me that he was not a producer. That was, in those days, heavy understatement. He continually had a “bull in a china shop” effect on actors, directors, and various department heads. I respected him but felt I had to carefully define and limit his areas of responsibility.

On another front, I lost my big battle with broadcast standards over the “screw him” line in Georgia Jeffries’s teleplay on sexual harassment (“Rules of the Game,” directed by Sharron Miller). In a coffee shop scene between the two women, Cagney is encouraged by Lacey to do the right thing and charge a superior officer in the NYPD with sexual harassment. The blonde detective gives a litany of things her tormentor can charge her with if she makes such an accusation.

“Screw him,” says Lacey, in uncharacteristically raunchy fashion, to which Cagney dryly replies, “I’ve already ruled that out.” Seems mild today, but I couldn’t win that one at CBS in the mid-1980s.

Heavy editing chores prior to the holiday and a hectic PR schedule (as I did thirty or forty “phoners,” plugging our January-February product, a long interview for a
People
magazine cover story and also one for a possible
TV Guide
cover) kept me busy.

For the second week in a row, we garnered a 34 share. The big news of the month, however, was the three-hour lunch with Kellner and Rosenbloom.

That was when they gave me their presentation of what my position in
Cagney & Lacey
was worth. Despite my deal (even by their definition) being a “C-minus”— assuming the virtual certainty of one more pickup by CBS —the conservative estimate of dollars to be paid to me (most of it within the next three years) was from three to five million dollars!

O-K.

I thanked the two gents, told them that my anger was diffused and that I would go off to mull their request that I review and extend my overall deal at Orion another two years.

But why should I? With that kind of money coming to me, why, I asked myself, should I ever do development again? Why not just keep working on my “little” show for as long as it would last, and as long as I was having fun? I would, I theorized, hold myself out as available for any sure-fire project that came along and caught my fancy. With a little caution I was in that enviable position of not ever having to work again. It was no less than amazing, the salutary effect this had on me all week.

I kept my true feelings from Orion, telling them I would mull their offer over the holidays so that I could, while they were in a negotiating mode with me, get as much as possible for my Lacy Street group. It should be pointed out that while I was projected to get from 3 to 5 million dollars, Orion (off a Filmways speculation of $27,500 in 1974) was now the owner of a 60 to 100 million dollar property. Mace, who inherited the project from my old deal, who had never been in an editing room or on a dubbing stage for the series, who had never been to Lacy Street or had anything to do with the network sale or with casting (and, for all I know, had never even seen an episode on television), was—according to these selfsame projections, going to receive probably 10 million dollars.

(
The Kellner/Rosenbloom projections on future profits, given me in 1984, were a guesstimate, made before the collapse of the syndication market. As of this writing, neither Mace nor I have received a penny for our profit points, as first Orion, then subsequent owner MGM, claim there aren’t any profits. Perhaps the “C-minus” nature of my deal and the feelings about that may now be clearer. To be fair, monies that were settled on me [a small percentage of Orion’s end or gross] for giving up my opportunities under my 1983–85 Orion deal have been, and continue to be, paid
.)

Christmas and my Caribbean cruise with Corday came and went. I was back at work and began setting the staff for the (still at that time hoped-for) next season. All I had to do now was get CBS to pick us up.

Meanwhile the network had agreed to fund nine scripts. We had Terry, Steve, Pat Green, and Georgia Jeffries; they were pleasant to work with, understood the terrain, and were not afraid to work hard. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but I feared we would never realize our potential with this group.

I am, in this arena, somewhat less than even-handed, tending toward being a bit hypercritical of these people who I liked very much. Some facts: we did win one
Emmy
award for writing: Pat Green (“Who Said It’s Fair” Part II), and two nominations (Deborah Arakelian, “Child Witness,” and Georgia Jeffries, “Turn, Turn, Turn” Part I). We did collect two Writers Guild awards (both by Georgia Jeffries for “Unusual Occurrence” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” Part I). Still these awards paled next to the accolades collected by the writing staffs of
St. Elsewhere
,
Hill Street Blues
,
L.A. Law
, and
thirtysomething
. I believed (perhaps somewhat unfairly) we were making very substantial bricks with—at best—very ordinary straw.