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19 Only Sometimes a Happy Ending 317 There was a sense of dissatisfaction slowly building among Hollywood’s contract hyphenates. More and more they were beginning to be treated like, well, writers. Many of them were getting no respect. An example of one of the causes of our resentment was a young actor named Robert Blake, a highly experienced former child actor with a multitude of credits as an adult. He had received excellent reviews for his work as one of the two young murderers in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. In 1975 Universal studios sold NBC on the notion of building a series around Blake. That the actor was physically quite short and known as hot-tempered and tempestuous apparently only made him more appealing. The series was called Baretta and was a spin-off from another failed detective series. Tony Baretta was a very unusual detective , a cop who lived in a run-down hotel and worked alone. His wardrobe consisted of T-shirts and jeans. (Blake had built his small body to perfection, and he liked to exhibit it.) Baretta’s best friend was Fred, his pet cockatoo. When Blake reported to work, he established himself from the first moment he appeared on Universal’s soundstage. He let one and all know that he was the star, and was to be treated as a star should be treated. Furthermore, he was going to personally ensure the scripts were up to his high standards. But things didn’t work out quite that way. As the scripts came in, Blake complained they weren’t good enough. In short order he found a solution for the problem; he fired the writer-producer in charge. And when the new hyphenate didn’t work out to his satisfaction , he fired him, too. And so it went. Tony Baretta was, indeed one hot-tempered cop. It was rumored that during production Blake was locked in the studio at night so that he didn’t wander off and forget to show up for production the next day. I don’t know if it was true or not, but I do know that in Hollywood, the more bizarre the rumor, the more likely that it is true. Hyphenates seemed to come and go almost before they could unpack their reading glasses. Blake quickly became known as “Napoleon ” or simply “the little tyrant.” In Hollywood, when a TV star wanted the hyphenate in charge fired, both the studio and the network usually asked “How soon do you want him off the lot?” In fact, it soon became obvious in television that whenever the star demanded a raise the studio or the network merely asked where he would like the money delivered and in what denominations. This was especially true at Universal Studios but it was true at the other studios as well. Stars always called the shots and still do. Another actor famous for firing hyphenates was Peter Falk, the highly popular star of Columbo. Like Blake, it appeared all he had to do was threaten to take a walk and cadres of unctuous studio and network executives arrived on the set to reassure him he was king of the universe. If hyphenates had never known it before, they were being forcefully reminded that the face on the screen was what television is all about. All the rest, stories, characters, locales, ideas, are so much window trimming. It’s the close-up that counts. What were hyphenates to do in order to salvage a shred of dignity , if not respect? The majority of us were under contract to the studios and/or the networks. Only a small minority of us owned our own companies. We were basically hired guns with no union to give 318 Only Sometimes a Happy Ending 319 Only Sometimes a Happy Ending us a voice. The Writers Guild could represent us only as writers since the NLRB had ruled that producer-writers were supervisors, employees or not, therefore ineligible for union representation. Nonetheless, a small group of us banded together and formed the Television Producers Guild in 1957. We soon began to attract other hyphenates. Our membership grew rapidly, but management pointedly looked the other way. They were not interested in talking to us. What we lacked in numbers we made up for in zeal. We were going to get a union somehow, some way. Back in 1950 some feature film producers had formed the Screen Producers Guild as a social...

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