Last
winter a story broke in the Hollywood trade papers to the effect that
Donna Reed was very tired and did not wish to continue with her film
series for a fifth season. On the surface, it seemed like a plausible
enough story. To William Dozier, West Coast production chief for Screen
Gems, which has a 25 percent interest in The Donna Reed Show,
it was recognizable as merely the first quite predictable move in a Hollywood
game called “How to Negotiate in Public Without Really Meaning It.”
Dozier, a former CBS vice president and
an old hand at “The Game,” picked up his phone the morning
the story appeared and called Tony Owen, Miss Reed’s husband and
producer of the series. “I read your ad,” he chuckled.
The Game was on.
The Game, friends, is sort of Machiavellian
maneuvering that could be likened to chess, only it’s a good deal
rougher. Most of it is played in print, but some—the Machiavellian
part—is played behind the scenes. Any number can play, but the action
usually centers around a star whose series has been eminently successful,
and who thus is in a position to demand more money or other emolument.
Vince Edwards of Ben Casey is a case in point.
One day a story appeared in Daily Variety,
a show-business sheet, saying Edwards would not continue in the Casey
role unless he received a raise from $1750 a week to $7500 a week, 25
percent ownership of the show and $100,000 with which to start his own
production company. Immediately, there was a counterplay. Basil Grillo,
executive of Bing Crosby Productions, which owns and produces Ben
Casey, was quoted in a gossip column to the effect that another actor,
Ben Gazzara, was being considered for the Casey role next season. Back
from the Edwards camp the ball bounced, A gossip column quoted a demand
for $300,000 to start the Edwards production company. Retorted Grillo
& Co., via producer Matthew Rapf: “We believe the show is strong
enough to carry on without Edwards.” Finally, their bag of hints,
threats and announcements exhausted and the column-reading public sated,
the interested parties sat down and thrashed out a compromise settlement.
The Game was over.
An inverted version of The Game, started
by the producers rather than the star, involved young Jay North of Dennis
the Menace. Screen Gems, also the producer of this show, let it be
known via the columns that young North was getting too big and too old
for the title role. The youngster’s agent countered with a column
item saying his client had been offered not one but two new series. Everyone,
including Gems, knew there was no chance of getting a series started that
late for 1962-63. However, Screen Gems capitulated, deciding to continue
North in the part and let him grow up naturally on the show. Quipped Dozier,
“Maybe we’ll change the title to Mr. Dennis the Menace.”
The happy game
player
Happily for all concerned, especially the reading public, the participants
in the Donna Reed vs. Screen Gems Game took themselves a little less than
seriously. A couple of nights after the Reed Game started—as a Hollywood
party was breaking up—producer Dozier approached his old friend
Donna—who had been tired, oh, so tired—and said solicitously,
“May I carry you out to your car? I know how terribly tired you
are.” Donna broke up.
A few weeks later the Owens and the Doziers
took a vacation trip to Hawaii. On the last day of the Hawaiian trip,
a bellhop carefully coached by Dozier, approached Donna as she was getting
out of a hotel elevator and said, “Congratulations, Miss Reed, on
your sixth TV season.” Miss Reed broke up again.
As the Reed Game neared its climax, it
did grow a little more serious. Who was winning? What was really
happening? Because of her friendship with Dozier, and the possibility,
of course, that any future deals might be jeopardized, Donna kept any
indications of victory well hidden. But a reporter suspected The Game
was going her way one day during an interview. “What has TV give
you?” he asked. Donna replied brightly: “Money.” A little
later Dozier was heard to comment, “We were happy to keep her happy,”
and the jig was up. Dozier said further, “Donna got ‘tired’
after the third season and didn’t want to do a fourth. She got ‘tired’
again in the middle of the fourth and didn’t want to do a fifth.
It’s what you might call a seriofacetious situation. Game-playing
time.” He paused. “But she had a contract and we knew she’d
stick.”
To keep Donna happy, Dozier revealed that
Screen Gems cut the show’s production schedule from 39 episodes
to 34, at the same time raising her salary to a point where she will earn
more from 34 than she has in the past from 39. Shooting schedules will
be arranged so that she will be in neither the first nor the last scene
of the day. A hike in the price of the series will increase the capital
gains to Todon Productions (Tony Owen and Donna Reed), which owns all
the show’s negatives and pays out 25 percent each to Screen Gems
and ABC. Finally, there is a bonus. No one will discuss the amount, but
it can possibly be equated with the cost of a first-class trip to Europe
which Donna was offered and turned down.
Dozier bets on
sixth season
Adds Dozier: “I will bet you even money right now that Donna will
do a sixth season. She’s a pro with pride. Besides that, if she
has been able to organize her life so well for the last four years, complete
with a husband, home and four kids, what is she going to do with no TV
show and all that time on her hands?”
The man to ask that question of is Tony
Owen. Donna’s husband-producer, who is probably the happiest and
most accomplished Game Player of them all. In the Reed Game, he was coach,
manager and ball carrier all in one. A Tough, gravelly-voiced veteran
of the wheeler-dealer wars, Owen once had been part owner of the Detroit
Lions professional football club. In Hollywood he learned the agency business,
handled such big-time female stars as Ava Gardner and Liz Taylor. Despite
his many executive chores since he married Donna 17 years ago and took
over management of her affairs, he still loves dealing. In the midst of
the Reed-Game dealing, a reporter heard him say on the phone: “Baby,
there is another guy hot to buy this show and he’s pressing me.
I’d much rather you had it. Can you give me a fast decision?”
There may or may not have been another guy; what Tony wanted was the decision,
but quick.
But Owen denies
it
Asked about Dozier’s prediction that Donna will do a sixth season.
Owen already began laying the groundwork for another Game a year hence.
“I would like,” he said, “to have a piece of that even-money
bet on a sixth season. I told Donna just the other day, ‘Suppose
we could do a sixth season on the basis of your doing only 26 episodes
out of 39, with the show to concentrate on the kids and with your filming
to be done in just 10 weeks time?’ You know what she told me? She
said that would be cheating, that people who liked The Donna Reed
Show would feel cheated.
“Donna is a perfectionist, and it’s
no fun to be a perfectionist. You know what tires her most? That two-hour
preparation every morning, the hair and the makeup. She has the hardest
hair in the world to work with, and it has to be perfect.
“She doesn’t enjoy her success
in the way most people do, doesn’t enjoy the adulation and the flattery.
Like me, I get a kick out of being known as the producer of the show,
I enjoy it when people come up to me and say they like it.”
Was Donna really tired and did she really
want to call it quits? Her husband says she was. “Sure she has a
contract. But you can’t make any creative person do something she
really doesn’t want to do, contract or no contract. She was tired.
I knew she was tired. I told the Screen gems people in New York that I
wouldn’t even try to talk to Donna unless there was a substantial
amount of money involved. Then I took her to Hawaii for a rest and now
she isn’t tired any more.”
Donna laughingly admits to “playing
games,” pointing out that “everything worked out pretty much
the way both sides knew it would.” But the giveaway look in her
eye disappears when she talks about next season being her last.
“That’s firm,” she says
firmly. “No games. Five years is right in every respect. It
works out right financially and it works out right…well, artistically
isn’t quite the word. But after five years, both you and audience,
I think, have about had it with each other.”
