When Hollywood Had a King

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it...

One of my favorite writers is Connie Bruck. She has written three great books- The Predator’s Ball, The Master of the Game, and When Hollywood Had a King.. The last one was one of my favorites. It traced the rise of Hollywood from a movie colony to a world-setting industry. The story is the rise of Lew Wasserman, a legend in the entertainment industry (and yes, grandfather to Casey Wasserman from LA 28).

Why am I bringing up a random book? Because, those who forget history, well…

Like with redistricting, we had to point out the history of why redistricting was bad, telling the story of Burton and Berman. Essentially the good government Citizen’s Commission was because of the ills of redistricting in the years leading up to the creation of the Commission. While the stories mentioned names, they did not go into the detail of the “why” the situation was so bad. We did. If history was told, we would have maybe had a better discussion about Prop 50 and its ills. Alas, history provided lessons and we ignored them.

I thought of it again today when Daniel Miller, the newest member of the Politico team, and Jeremy White (the SI issue curse writer), were discussing the travails of the Entertainment Industry and its new “political awakening.”

I will posit it is not an “awakening,” rather, a “re-awakening.”

Hollywood has been active politically for years and more structurally than the “pet causes” of late.

It has also been State and Federal.

Who was famously our Governor in the 1970s? Ronald Regan. What did he do before he got into office? He ran the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Where was his focus? Hollywood.

Who was the erstwhile actor’s agent and political benefactor? Lew Wasserman.

Who is Lew Wasserman? If you ask that question, then you likely do not know the Entertainment Industry like you should.

He was a giant, a legend, and for decades, the most Powerful man in Hollywood.

He ran the Music Corporation of America in the 1930s, which later became MCA. He transformed MCA from a talent agency into a producer. He bought Universal in 1962. He then had to sever MCA’s talent business from Universal. He pioneered so much of what made the Entertainment Industry the Powerhouse it is today. He did it in Los Angeles with his beloved Universal Studios, tours, theme park, and all.

He was a force, not only in business, but in politics too, and Democratic politics (Regan notwithstanding) no less.

If you want to know more, read Bruck’s work. It was her last and best.

The bottom line is, Hollywood was actively involved in politics, State and Federal throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Pat Brown. Jerry Brown. Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon. Ronald Regan. On and on.

These are names which cross the spectrum and were close to Hollywood.

Whether it was tax credits, carve outs, tax breaks, intellectual property protections, or whatever, the interests in Hollywood were well articulated. They were seen as a projection of America during the Cold War.

Wasserman ran point for the D’s. Taft Schreiber, another Universal Executive, handled the R’s.

They worked through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and Jack Valenti, Lyndon Johnson’s gopher who was hired in the late 1960s and nurtured relationships with Presidents through 2004 when he left the MPAA.

The history of the relationships between electeds and Hollywood are long, severing when we got to the end of Jack Valenti’s reign at the MPAA and Wasserman’s exit from the stage. Sure, there were the fundraisers, the presidential politics, but the depth of the relationships began to shift. Corporations were different. Two of the major studios were foreign owned. Pax Americana was different now when Japan owned a good portion of our movie making capabilities. Moreover, Rupert Murdoch, an Australian owned another (Fox), and who disputes Fox’s role in politics today?

So, what made the piece in Politico today so interesting was the fact it was a very superficial look at the history of politics and the “discovery of a need” to be active in Hollywood beyond just Presidential Fundraisers.

It looked over the rich history of the dynamics at play.

Locally, it was Wasserman and Dorthy Chandler who built our Performing Arts Center downtown. It was the first time the two united the Westside and Eastside/Pasadena in LA’s history. That is local politics. It is not new, but it is where the interconnection between the worlds collided. It showed leadership unlike what we have today. It was here the force of personality (Wasserman) got a huge number of checks written and moved earth literally.

The “discovery” of the need to be politically active is a result of much of the affliction which affects Los Angeles. We were able to focus on “luxury” concerns for the last 20 years, allowing the industry to hollow out as costs rose, as other countries aggressively tried to court our core industry, as labor became more costly, as overseas talent was cheaper and less cumbersome, and as an arrogance crept into the system It was viewed as forever, when in reality it was never. We were vulnerable because we did not see what was built on a foundation of sand.

Hollywood changed as Wasserman began to exit.

It became more corporate.

It lost the founders like Wasserman (who was as corporate as they came in form, but not substance). Matsushita bought Universal (and sold it to Seagrams, a Canadian firm in 2006). Sony bought Columbia. Independent corporations were no more, throughout the 1990s. Similar to the changes wrought by another of Bruck’s subjects with Drexel, Burnham, Lambert and her Predator’s Ball, Hollywood followed the long decline, leaving what was a Los Angeles focused industry to become a regional outpost of larger corporations (Disney remains a true Los Angeles based multi-national).

It was, like most train wrecks, really slow, and then really fast.

In fact, the industry peaked just before the crash.

Peak production happened prior to COVID shutting down everything.

Then there were the devastating SAG/WGA strikes.

Production just fled. Product needed to be made. If they could not do it in the US, they would go overseas. Barriers which kept industries in LA fell. Zoom was commonplace. Remote work rose. Size of staff fell. AI came in.

The structural issues were never addressed. They became too much to overlook. The tax credits became the solution, but it was really an arms race. “Luxury” political concerns gave way to “kitchen table” issues. Middle class and upper middle class jobs were lost, never to come back. Every week, another obituary of an Entertainment Industry casualty. Pain was not just for actors, writers, and small businesses. Organized Labor lost its jobs too.

Panic set in.

Panic is when you turn to electeds.

Now you are beholden to them. You buy access. You rent influence. You need to do something, anything, but what?

The King is dead. His helpers are long gone. No institutional memory of how it was built exists.

Like Los Angeles of today, managers exist. Managers who preside over the decline instead of building something. The trust fund is running out.

So, yes, they are discovering, or rather, re-discovering politics, but not because they just happened upon it. Hollywood is re-discovering what it needed because it long neglected what it had so delicately built over the years, under the King- Lew Wasserman and others. The reconstruction cannot happen overnight. Influence takes years. Trust takes time. Wins need to be stacked up. Momentum takes time.

They did not build this city and industry. The inheritors now need to save the family trust fund, but how? Where is the nuance?

Managers have taken over for leaders. Franchises have taken over for novel ideas. Risk is measured differently. The “autopilot” models of revenue of yore are no more.

The business is scaling back in all facets.

What is it we are saving? What is the future? What is the political “ask?” What is the vision? Is it to preserve what is gone or to set up the future?

Nobody asked that question- which is precisely where Politico needed to go. Hollywood once had a King. Hollywood had a vision. Hollywood was substantive. Today, we have something different.

Take a read of the book. It was a clear example of what Hollywood might want to rediscover in more ways than one.