B004YENES8 EBOK by Barney Rosenzweig Read Free Book Online Page A

television or too expensive. Some of the jokes were now dated as well. Without the plot, I was left with some thirty plus pages of character relationship and some damn good dialogue. I turned those pages into a blueprint for a television series, bridging gaps where necessary with simple narrative devices such as, “Here’s how they are at work,” or “at home,” or “ Newman and Redford , watch out!” It began its rounds of submissions to each of the networks—twice (once to each network as a drama with comedy, then back again to each of the comedy development departments as a comedy with drama).
    The partnership twixt Avedon & Corday was proving, at this time, to be less than stable. Avedon wanted to spend less time at the office, to approach the work on a more leisurely basis. Corday loved the action of being on staff of a television series and enjoyed the team play, the structure of the workplace, and its attendant camaraderie, including Turnabout , the Universal comedy starring John Schuck and Sharon Gless, created by Steven Bochco from a concept put forth by Michael Rhodes based on a Hal Roach 1940s comedy of the same name. It was from that studio, at that time, that the two Barbaras called to tell me, referring to Ms. Gless, “We have found Christine Cagney.”
    I was not all that impressed until some months later when, in Corday’s Beverly Hills den, I saw a beautiful blonde playing Carole Lombard in the television miniseries Moviola: The Scarlett O’Hara War on NBC.
    “That’s Cagney!” I bellowed.
    Corday nodded knowingly. “That’s Sharon Gless. ”
    Did someone say better late than never?
    At this time I had nearly a dozen different projects in one stage or another in development at the various networks—all under serious consideration and all at little or no cost to my employer. I was working hard, and I was as prolific and creative as I have ever been in my life. The problem was nothing was getting made.
    The two years I had told Mace it would take to become a viable production entity were coming to an end. We were very close, but, as yet, no cigar. Mace would prove to be patient.
    Corday and I got married in the backyard of our new home in L.A.’s Hancock Park. Having begun this partnership, Corday decided to sever her old one. She would end the team of Avedon & Corday and do so in order to take a job as a comedy development executive at ABC. It was a major career change and one I advised against. Fortunately, Corday took her own counsel. She quickly moved to vice president in charge of comedy at ABC, parlayed that period in the spotlight to an indy-prod deal at Columbia Studios, which led to her being asked to move to the executive suite at that studio as president of their television division. She weathered the first of two major corporate mergers and then was terminated by Columbia, only to land on her feet once more as the executive vice president in charge of prime-time programming at the CBS network. She thrived in the spotlight and for a very short while was arguably the most powerful woman in the television industry.
    I could have used some of that clout in 1979. By the time of our marriage, Cagney & Lacey had been turned down by every drama and comedy department in town.
    Jeff Sagansky, then at NBC, liked it, but he and his assistant, Bob Singer, bowed to their boss, Fred Silverman, who ordered a different female cop show to be developed by another producer. By reading and liking Cagney & Lacey months before Silverman’s brainstorm, Sagansky and Singer had me frozen in the marketplace.
    I could not risk offending them by going elsewhere; before proceeding with another producer-in-favor with their chief, Sagansky and Singer at least should have pointed out to Silverman that another female buddy cop show had been officially submitted to the network months before. By not doing that, it left open the possibility that our idea had been plagiarized.
    Real damage had been done here. I