THE LAST CREDENZA : A Hollywood Mystery: The Moving Man Cometh

An acquaintance, I’ll call him the Independent Hyphenate (Hollywood producer-director-writer-raconteur-bon vivant), was on the telephone one morning, his voice urgent and muffled as if he were whispering from a less-than-prestigious table in the Polo Lounge. “We gotta meet,” he said. “This is real important.”

So we arranged a meeting next day at Nat, Nate and Nathan’s, the nouvelle cuisine deli on the chichi side of the chichi Westside. Nat, Nate and Nathan’s is where a lot of the more trendy motion picture and television production deals are made. Salamis hanging against the white-painted high-tech walls, framed in puce high-tech neon, provide a surprising imagery in the midst of deal making.

I.H., Hy for short, looked furtive, as if he were under surveillance, and his voice was a whisper.

“I think I got the answer why there’s been so much activity at the studios. You know, Diller going to Fox, Eisner to Disney, ABC going to Cap Cities. It’s not economics and unfriendly takeovers and ego and board-room politics. It’s more basic than that.” He inhaled deeply and broke open his bran bagel and smeared it with tahini butter. “It’s a conspiracy.”

Visually sweeping the room of listeners, I.H. whispered, “There isn’t a studio executive in this town right now who wants his office completely furnished.” He then explained that when a studio executive--a genuinely important executive, the kind with a titled parking spot--gets a new job and office he is allowed to have his office decorated to his personal taste.

Breathing harder, his bagel a molehill of life-extending crumbs on the table between us, I.H. continued his theory: “I’ve been tracing the action at the studios. There’s a direct correlation between getting your office furnished and then getting axed. It may be too true to be a coincidence but it seems to happen every time an office is finished. You know that guy, the big deal maker from the cable network who just got fired? The morning he got the pink slip his last area rug was delivered.”

I.H. leaned back, allowing me to let the message sink in. “I think one thing that’s happened is that the decorators have gotten together. It’s been a depressed market for them ever since that sheik Al-Fassi painted the statues and took off from his estate on Sunset Boulevard. No big petrodollars are getting into Beverly Hills. When was the last time you saw a sheik on Rodeo Drive? And on top of that, all this high-tech stuff, the white walls, the dry weeds, the cactuses, the tile walls, the Miami Vice glass bricks made the decorators practically outmoded. Hollywood high-tech is the biggest threat to decorators’ incomes since Akron’s.

“So now the word is out on the commissary circuit: If your decorator’s finished so are you. Check it out if you don’t believe me. Every executive who left a top studio job just paid off his decorator. Fear is rampant. There isn’t an executive around any more who wants his or her office finished. It’s the kiss of death. It’s getting so bad that when a moving van shows up on the Disney lot security calls for the paramedics. Ambulances escort moving trucks onto that lot. An executive sees a truck and he thinks it’s his time to get moved out. One studio nurse calls it Bekins Angina.

“If you see a sofa carried upstairs at some studios you’ll see a body carried downstairs a minute later.

“You don’t hear people saying, ‘Ready when you are C. B.’ Now they’re saying ready when you are, R. B. Every one is leaving it to Levitz, including the final arrangements.” My friend’s eyes were beginning to spin almost out of control. I offered him some Gurkha decaffeinated cola. He gulped at it like a man plucked from the stormy seas.

“When I worked at MGM I didn’t accept the last piece of furniture my decorator had ordered for me. Sure, we all had agreed on a Louis Mayer Quinze theme, overstuffed, period pieces. But when it looked as if almost everything was there I refused the umbrella stand, then I refused the antler hatrack. I knew once the last piece of furniture is in place some decorator is going to lust after my decor. I avoided the last piece of furniture for almost 10 weeks, then I slipped up, took a three-hour lunch and came back and that damn antler hatrack was in place, a note stuck on the left horn. Your services have been terminated. . . .

“The lots aren’t movie lots anymore. They’re furniture warehouses. Pretty soon they’re going to call Fox 20th Century Wickes. There’s talk that Warner Bros. is going to merge with Barker Bros. The MGM lion is going to be replaced by the Lyon lion.”

I.H. was exhausted, spent. But he had enough energy left to urge me to check out what he had told me. Later I called a decorator friend and asked her if she knew anything about this situation.

“How did you find out about that?” she asked, her voice showing that I had hit a deep verbal nerve. “I really can’t tell you anything.”

Two days later I received an anonymous letter--another well-established Hollywood practice. It read: “Follow the money. Find out if a maple credenza was delivered to Barry Diller the day before he left Paramount. Did Dan Rather ever accept his decorator’s sweater rack? Is Rupert Murdoch ever going to shop for furniture?”