If you didn't already read the first part of this, go read the first part of this before you read this part of this.
Now then. This happened one day when we were just beginning to produce The Fabulous Funnies: The First 100 Years. Lee and I met for lunch and planning, then at 2 PM, we went to the big black-and-white CBS building at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax. This is where the main West Coast offices for the network were located. They still are…I think. Some of that has been moved elsewhere with the rest to follow.
We had a meeting with the Vice-President in charge of specials at CBS, who was at the time, Fred Rappoport. Fred was, and I'm sure still is, a nice, bright guy who knows his business well. He no longer has that post and I'm not sure anyone does since networks like CBS do very few specials these days. We had a very pleasant, constructive meeting with Fred, discussing what would be in the special and what would not. People who've never been in network meetings think of them as some sort of Executive Thunderdome with arguing and powerful people in suits flexing their muscles and barking orders, many of them foolish in the extreme. If my experience is typical — and few of mine anywhere are — they're almost never like that.
This one certainly was not. We liked Fred. He liked us. He had some good suggestions and he made sure it was understood that they were suggestions, not demands. He made clear that he trusted Lee to deliver a good show…and why shouldn't he assume that? Lee had been producing specials for CBS for more than thirty years, several of them among the most highly-rated programs ever to grace the network. He had numerous Peabody Awards and twelve Emmy Awards…and perhaps more impressive, he would wind up with a lifetime total of 46 Emmy Nominations.
(Brief Detour: Lee once told me that he was once trying to sell a documentary to a buyer who was not Fred Rappoport. He told the man, "My company has received 46 Emmy nominations and we've won twelve times." The buyer scowled a bit and according to Lee, said the following in dead seriousness. He said, "I don't know that we can trust a company that's lost that many times!" And the funnier part of that is that many times when a Lee Mendelson Production was nominated and lost, that's because it was beaten by another Lee Mendelson Production that was nominated in the same category.)
Back to our story — and I'm telling you this because I want you to understand what Lee meant to CBS at this time. There may have been no producer who had such a long, successful career with them. He'd outlasted hundreds of executives there in that 30+ years. He got along with everyone. He was liked and respected by everyone.
On our way out, Lee asked me if we could stop off for a few minutes down in the Business Affairs department. He said, "We haven't settled yet on what they're going to pay us to do this thing." I said that was fine with me and a few minutes later, we were in the office of a gentleman who negotiated such arrangements for the network. I do not recall this man's name so we'll call him Sammy. Sammy welcomed Lee warmly and shook my hand with gusto. There was friendly small talk which ended abruptly with this exchange…
Sammy said, "So, Lee my friend. Have you given any thought to how much you'll need to do this special?"
Lee put down the little briefcase he'd been carrying. He responded, "Well, Sammy, I ran some numbers and I think the right price is going to have to be $550,000." And with that, the mood in the room changed. Horribly so.
Sammy looked aghast, like Lee had just asked for seventy quadrillion dollars plus complete ownership of the Columbia Broadcasting System. "You're not serious," he insisted.
Lee said he was. "Five-fifty…I could maybe get it down to five-thirty…"
Sammy was almost shouting now. "Five-thirty? There's no way on God's green earth I could possibly…do you have any idea? Any idea at all how these specials are running these days?"
Lee said yes, sure. And it was at this point that Sammy began murdering his children…
'Lee, for God's sake! If you were holding a gun to my daughter's head, I couldn't give you a cent over $320! If you held a knife to my son's throat…"
"Sammy, I know what you paid for that Michele Lee special last month…"
"That was special. That was Michele Lee. She was on Knot's Landing for us all those years. If I stole from some other show's budget, I could maybe get your number up to $350,000 but not a penny more. If you had my daughter tied to a railroad track and you were going to run over her with a train…"
On and on, this went. Back and forth with Sammy ticking off increasingly-graphic ways to murder his children and occasionally coming up a bit in his offer, and Lee coming down a few nickels…
I sat there, somewhat aghast, as Sammy finally declared the show was off. There was no way in the world he could authorize the kind of money Lee was demanding, not even if his youngest one had just taken poison and Lee held the only antidote in the world…
Or if his son was dangling off a mile-high cliff and Lee was prying the lad's fingers off his last handhold before the kid plunged to his death…
Finally, Sammy said, "This conversation is over. If you were pointing a cannon at my baby daughter's heart and the fuse was burning, I could not give you one penny over $375,000. That's my final offer, take it or leave it! Even if you were strangling my son and he was about to breathe his last, that's it!"
Lee said, "If I really pushed and cut corners, there's a chance I could do it for $410,000."
Sammy said, "Deal!" He leaped to his feet, reached across the desk to shake Lee's hand and asked, "So, are you getting season tickets for the Lakers next year?"
There was a little more friendly chatter and then Lee looked at his watch and said, "Whoops! Gotta go!" The two men hugged and Lee and I made it as far as the elevator before we were alone enough that I dared speak. I said, "I can't believe he put you through all that! And all that stuff about killing his son, killing his daughter…"
Lee made a face like I was making a big fuss over nothing. "Oh, that's Sammy. We go through that on every show. He's a good guy."
I said, "Yeah, but you thought we needed $550,000 to do the show right. What's it going to be like if you have to do it for $410,000?"
"Fine," Lee said. And he pulled out a paper he had in the little briefcase he was carrying. It was a budget for the special and he pointed to the bottom line. It said, "$410,000."
"It's just a game you have to play," he said. "I always know where we're going to end up. And so does Sammy."
That's the kind of thing a producer has to do. Lee was one of the best who ever lived.