high anxiety

“Show business today is fast food cooked by anxious people,” says producer Richard Zanuck. How do the Hollywood players handle the pressure? The 15th in Times Staff Writer Paul Rosenfield’s continuing series, “The Rites of Hollywood.”

The psychiatrist had a confession to make. “You have no idea,” said Dr. Irwin Ruben of Beverly Hills, “the pressure put on doctors by the movie industry. It’s not unusual to get a call from a producer or an agent saying, ‘Doc, your patient writes all night long, but we need his pages. Don’t change him too much! We didn’t invent him, Doc, we just need him.’ There’s pressure to step outside normal bounds, to bend rules for somebody talented. The talented patient himself may expect special treatment. The great story is about the star patient who can’t pay his bill, who says, ‘Just tell people you treat me, Doc. They’ll be so impressed, you’ll get new business.’ ”

It’s business as usual in Hollywood, and the business is anxiety. In a town divided in two parts--the business community and the creative community--there seems to be no division when it comes to anxiety. It’s Topic A. Whether on the ski slopes of Park City or in the barracks-like residence halls of the Betty Ford Center, it’s become a badge of honor to tell all. To not only have a bodyguard, but talk about it. What once was the stuff of Hollywood novels--addiction, seclusion, insecurity--is now the stuff of media. When Elizabeth Taylor admitted she needed the painkiller Percodan to face a cocktail party, people for the first time in their lives identified with Elizabeth Taylor.

“Do you think there’s more stress with success or with failure?” wondered director Herbert Ross, as he scanned a back dining room at Le Dome. The question has a thousand answers, and variations, and meanings. Because everything is magnified in Hollywood; nothing is what it seems. In the span of a season, an actor can become financially furnished for life--or permanently damaged by drugs--and the accompanying anxiety won’t go unnoticed. (Especially in the various dining rooms of Le Dome, or Morton’s, or The Grill on the Alley.)

In interviews with a cross-section of the entertainment community, one fact emerged clearest. It will take more than the Swami Muktananda to allay anxiety in Hollywood. It’s an age-old condition. “Anxiety,” as Kierkegaard wrote, “arises as one confronts creativity. The absence of anxiety indicates an impoverished personality.”

Whether it’s Desi Arnaz Jr. lecturing in a Beverly Hills park on Relationship Magic or Kate Jackson debuting as a TV director (10 days after the death of her father), the upshot is obvious: When it comes to pressure, nobody escapes.

Children of stars learn early about anxiety. They get a special introduction, via crank calls, home burglar systems, and lack of domestic privacy. Sons of star mothers learn even faster. There’s a powerhouse quality shared by female stars, and when they become mothers, it can intensify. Desi Arnaz Jr. was born when his mother was the biggest TV star in the world. Lucille Ball, the former hat model and chorus girl, attained authentic stardom only when she turned 40. It was then, almost simultaneously, she became a mother. Learning to last in Hollywood is something she mastered. Has the son also risen above hometown insecurity?

“You mean am I in control?” asked Arnaz Jr. one recent morning, pouring glasses of apple juice in the living room of his house that overlooks Coldwater Canyon. Only days earlier Arnaz, 32, had lectured on “achieving harmony” to a crowd at Roxbury Park. Clearly the actor has become a spokesman; after “15 years of dependency on drugs and alcohol and anxiety and negative states,” he’s found an answer. After therapy and treatment centers and mood-altering drugs and three detoxifications and drug counseling and withdrawal, he met Vernon Howard, founder of an Ojai-based organization called Success Without Stress. Howard and company have been Arnaz’s springboard back, to at least some kind of control.

“You die or you get better,” said Arnaz, succinctly. He talks like a raconteur, like someone much older--one can almost imagine him sitting at the Racquet Club bar in the 1940s, talking nonstop and without hesitation. “For a very long time I was playing with fire. Something was running my life calling itself intelligence. I’m still here physically, but I did harm to myself and other people. I’m fortunate I’m alive. But being sober awhile means nothing unless you recover from why . In the last six years I’ve tried to be in control, but don’t misunderstand that word.”

Real control, according to Arnaz, is about “giving up dependencies, about thinking external things make you happy for the wrong reasons. Drugs get you so out of balance chemically, you think you have to go on using them. If you don’t, your immune system goes out of whack. The penalty is, your life gets taken over. Letting somebody else control your life is like letting a waiter eat your dinner.”

If Arnaz sounds like a speechifier, he is, but he can rationalize it as a constructive way to face anxiety--as well as what he calls his “dependent nature.” A minor rock star at 13, a minor TV star at 16, a major Hollywood stud in the 1970s, Arnaz can look you in the eye, and say, “I had it all, and it was all a deception. Looks, money, fame . . . because when you have it all--and I can tell you about handsome, and how handsome attracts beauty--you only want more. The brain gets in a mad rush for more-more-more.”

How much more could there be than growing up in the big white house on Roxbury Drive? A lot, apparently. Arnaz doesn’t take (and never has taken) the easy route of I-Blame-Lucy (or Desi Sr.). He’s remarkably free of cant, and also free of the can’t-take-Mommy’s-success syndrome. “When one discusses parents, much of that is generational. Our parents’ generation thought more of everything would bring happiness. The rules were different.” And so were the expectations.

“Well, yes and no. Having another drink in 1955, that’s not much different from taking a psychotropic drug in 1975, or 1985. It’s all about a false sense of happiness, and that’s why the largest business on the planet is probably drugs. The truth is, you don’t have to alleviate what is . You just have to take responsibility for it.”

But if you’re of a dependent nature? “You have to work to control negative states like anger and depression and anxiety and, yes, dependency. It can become habitual to be in negative states. It can also become habitual to lose your friends. Ninety percent of all deaths are caused directly or indirectly by stress. If you look, you see.”

What you see depends on where you grow up, obviously. If your mother’s house has perennial and persistent autograph hounds driving around, and hovering, you see life from a different angle. Stardom offers a big foundation, but included in the legacy can be the most fragile of nervous systems. Already hypersensitive (“hyperventilative, too,” added Arnaz) the children of talented people very often are looking to anesthetize pain.

“Oh God, yes,” agreed Arnaz, who is in Florida playing “I Love My Wife” at Cocoanut Grove. With even the touchiest of issues, he delves in, doesn’t pause, or flinch. There is a certain sadness about his face that is at the same time hopeful; at 32, with the Arnaz genetics, optimism is in order. “Did you ever watch your own anger, or feel it? It can be an experiment in darkness. It’s the mind fighting for sympathy, defending its beliefs. You’re not really alive when you are controlled that way. It’s just a person calling itself you.”

Playing such an anxious role can consume much of youth, especially in a community that tolerates (or worships) role-playing. “That’s why you have to acknowledge it when you are an addictive person. My story is the same as other people’s; I just thought I was different. But you have to learn to suffer through anxiety. And you have to feel the sense of loss when you withdraw, from anything, which is why it’s so hard. Because nobody wants to take responsibility. Meanwhile, the mind is playing tricks on the body. And the nervous system gets worse when you fly away in your mind.”

But doesn’t it count if you are “creative” or “talented” or “special”? Don’t credits in half a dozen films, two TV series, and a dozen TV films count? Couldn’t they be a justification for succumbing to anxious behavior, and anxiety-reducing drugs?

Arnaz laughed off the notion and shook his head. “That a person is creative should have nothing to do with it. Talent is not enough of an explanation for anxiety. Life has to come first; there’s no talent without life. And happiness is a given; it really is. That what I’ve learned. Unhappiness is simply habitual behavior we can eliminate. Once you see the light.”

Arnaz can pinpoint the moment he began to see that light. “At 16 I remember going to Monte Carlo and thinking if there was ever a place where people were going to be happy. . . If people weren’t happy in Beverly Hills, they’d be happy in Monte Carlo, right? They weren’t, of course. Even amid serious beauty, people were no different. You know what it was like?” asked the son of one of Cuba’s handsomest expatriates and America’s funniest ladies. “It was like looking in a mirror.”

“Desi means what he’s saying. He’s quite sincere,” said ABC vice president Gary Pudney. “You know how I know? His mother told me.” That Gary Pudney is a longtime pal of Lucille Ball (and Lucie Arnaz) says something about his position in the community. “Senior executive in charge of talent” is a loaded phrase, and a loaded job. Essentially Pudney, a 17-year veteran at ABC, says he tries to create a climate for complex people, for stars. Is star anxiety very different from non-star anxiety?

“Hollywood anxiety today is about people, even stars, working for a new employer sometimes every other month. There’s no continuity, and I have to provide a certain reassurance. Where is their next job? Where is the next paycheck coming from? Generally a performer won’t know who the head of a network is, and there are already all these cliches about network heads, so I’m the one who makes the personal connection. I play the role of friend, diplomat, baby brother, and shrink.”

Not to mention packager. Much major star anxiety is caused by the “What’s next?” dilemma. In an era when nobody looks out for anybody (as in “long term contract” or long-term management relationships), a Gary Pudney fills in the gap. To do that requires both tunnel vision and a finely developed sense of politesse. “It’s called getting them jobs. It’s not simple getting Jane Fonda to do ‘The Dollmaker,’ for TV, or Ann-Margret for ‘Streetcar Named Desire.’ One doesn’t want to take credit necessarily, but . . . I can see Shirley MacLaine at a party, and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ and it can turn into several hours of ‘Out on a Limb.’ ”

Access isn’t everything, though, in dealing with the stress of network TV. “You have to earn the trust of complicated people,” said Pudney, sitting upright in a corner chair of his Century City office and letting all calls go on hold. One could easily envision him as the NBC page he was in his youth, and as the fan he’s remained. Certain industryites have a near-worshipful attitude about stardom, and Pudney can be counted in. Stardom, the good and the bad of it, is what he connects to. “Real stardom means understanding the rigors of a series, but also the pleasures. Being on ‘Dynasty’ is about the best 9-to-5 job in the world, and a Linda Evans knows that. And movie people today are no different from TV people. An Elizabeth Taylor understands the rigors the same way a Joan Collins does.”

What stars need, then, is somebody with a steady manner in an unsteady business. In another era a producer ensconced at a studio could provide security. Now stars are smarter and stronger, because they have to be. “A star can spot a faker at 20 paces, so your affection better be genuine. I’ve known Ann-Margret as a friend for 15 years,” said the man who was a major factor behind last September’s all-star evening that raised more than $1 million for AIDS. “I’ve known Carol Burnett since UCLA, and I’m the fan of all time, to the exclusion of anything else in my life. Otherwise, you are paying lip service to artists. In charge of talent means being with them.”

A fan operating at this level would presumably see the monster side of star anxiety. Horror stories still leak out of CBS, for example, about the demands of the Jackie Gleasons and Judy Garlands in their primes. “I don’t think much changes,” admitted Pudney with a deceptively boyish grin. “But will you believe me if I say I honestly have never met a monster? Stars are nervous and they need care and they need to be told they’re wonderful. They need to hear it; it’s part of their psyche.” And when they don’t? Backstage observers are often surprised at how rarely a star shows fatigue. Is that because of the behind-the-scenes pampering?

“When the camera hits a star, a star radiates,” said Pudney smoothly. “Think about that awhile. Think about what it takes someone to radiate. That quality has to be protected. Years ago at NBC (former head of talent) Dave Tebet began doing the same job I do, but almost no other network people do this job. Of course he and I operate differently. Stars here don’t receive Rolls-Royces . . . I’m more apt to unravel a puzzle for them than send them lavish gifts.”

But what about when, out of fear or anxiety, they behave badly? “TV gets rid of monsters,” reasoned Pudney, “because an audience can spot one. But is there sometimes turmoil? Sure. Look, an artist is the one with his face out there in front. So if backstage there wasn’t enough time to get it set up right, well, you might have to be rough. I’m not saying you break legs, but in TV you don’t always do everything nicely, because of time. You take it easy when you can, but the priority is presentation.”

And the byproduct is not, apparently, executive stress. “Oh God, no. That’s a misnomer. I don’t feel stressful because I can’t. I am not allowed. I’m too busy dealing with stressed-out people all day long.”

“John Landis said to me, ‘You know what I like about you, Chevy? You don’t have an entourage. . . . ‘ I think entourages cause anxiety.” Chevy Chase was sitting in the Mr. H. Room of the Beverly Hilton, having simultaneously just faced members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the reviews of his latest movie, “Spies Like Us.” Chase may not have an entourage, but he does have to deal with one of the major causes of Hollywood fear, namely critics.

(On “Spies,” the critics weren’t exactly loving. “A clunker,” wrote Jack Kroll in Newsweek, “. . . only a semi-smidgen of inventiveness.” Or, as Janet Maslin put it in the New York Times, “ ‘Spies’ is in the oversized, overpriced New Comedy mode.” Exceptions to the pans included NBC both locally and on “Today.”)

For reasons right or wrong--his movies include “Foul Play,” “Modern Problems,” “Deal of the Century,” “Fletch,” “Oh Heavenly Dog,” “Seems Like Old Times” and “Under the Rainbow”--he’s no critic’s darling. “I think you probably get hurt by critics and don’t always know it,” said Chase, who at 36 still looks (physically at least) to have a case of prolonged adolescence. A polo shirt and chinos and loafers combines into a look that might have been fixed in 1957.

One of the few TV stars of the ‘70s who found movie niches (at seven figures a job) in the ‘80s, Chase has discovered domesticity in Pacific Palisades with third wife Jayni and their two daughters. He plays poker with Steve Martin and Johnny Carson, but that’s as name-droppy as it gets. The big point about Chase is his escape from his generation’s major seduction--drugs. Friends died, colleagues lost careers, Chase maintained.

“If you went to college in the ‘60s, you tried everything and did everything. You experimented,” Chase said as he lit a cigarette that he said would be almost his last. (His vow for 1986 is to give up smoking.) But if Chase “explored” in the ‘60s (and beyond), he never publicly displayed John Belushi-like nervousness (or vulnerability). His carrying-on was semi-private. “I think I was middle-class in many ways, and though I took risks, I was never out of control. But there comes a moment. . . .”

For Chase it came sometime after turning 30. “People I spent my youth with were taking their lives, and other people were just getting older but not any funnier, or more productive. What happens is you don’t see those people any more. Nobody who’s continued doing drugs has stayed effective. Nobody. Of course, some of us have a genetic propensity for addictiveness. That’s when you need perspective, maybe a stabilizer. For me it meant having a family. That, and writing.”

Chase makes the case for writing as a way of neutralizing insecurity. “When I left ‘Saturday Night Live,’ people said, ‘Can he cut it in Hollywood?’ But I wasn’t worried. People had been very supportive until then, but I always knew I had the writing. It protects you in a way performing can’t. I was writing edgy, sardonic stuff early on in New York, and of course the anxiety level there is at a peak all the time. Writing unloads fear.”

Chase would like to undo the myth that “Saturday Night Live”’ proved destructive to its original stars: “It was a very unusual group. Only John (Belushi) passed on. Bill Murray is doing OK, and the women are doing what they want. Jane (Curtin) is perfectly happy on ‘Kate & Allie.’ Gilda (Radner), well, I think her priority lately has been marriage (to Gene Wilder). The men on the show were writers; the women happened not to be. If you are a career writer, and I intended to be, you build a career slowly, on the success of little things. But I wasn’t looking to be famous,” insisted Chase. “I wasn’t pushing for it in a big way.”

And the biggest hardship about fame? “Maintaining the charge account at Saks Fifth Avenue. No, maintaining the body is what’s hard.” Chase said it so studiously he appeared to mean it. He has a tensile strength that at times can be unsettling; it makes him seem more professorial than comedic. “No, just kidding. I’m never going to look like Richard Gere. But if you are funny on screen, you don’t have to. I do have this romantic solipsistic fantasy of becoming a slovenly wreck and staying funny.”

Which may just happen since the Chase children are at that age where they keep the parents up all night. “Talk about separation anxiety. I mean you can forget Hollywood fear and tears. Just come over to our house some night.”

Director Herb Ross (“Turning Point,” “Pennies From Heaven,” “Footloose”) has a theory for how to avoid domestic stress. “Never come home and say, ‘What did you do today?’ ” suggested the man who’s been married for the last 20-plus years to Nora Kaye, prima ballerina of the 1940s, whose previous marriage was to Isaac Stern. Yet this particular union is very much about career-- his . Within the film community, it has long been said that Nora Kaye gave Herb Ross the impetus to succeed, and survive. And Ross is himself strong enough to say “absolutely true. . . . For a very long time people felt I was gifted, but erratic, and wasting the gift,” he admitted. “With marriage, the change was extraordinary.”

The rise, from choreographer of 1960s Broadway musicals like “Anyone Can Whistle” and “Apple Tree,” to directing what amounts to a score of films, from “The Sunshine Boys” to “The Goodbye Girl” has been steady. (Not that there haven’t been slides, notably “Nijinsky.” And last fall Ross abruptly left the Broadway direction of John Pielmier’s troubled play “The Boys of Winter” due to “creative differences.”)

The point about Mr. and Mrs. Ross is the combining of two talents into one career, thus staving off the Hollywood bugaboo about abandonment. (Read: Lonely at the top.) Featured in “Passages,” Gail Sheehy’s 1976 study of the crises of adult life, the chapter devoted to the Rosses is called “Living Out the Fantasy.” Nora Kaye had been a girlhood idol of Sheehy’s, but instead of a sadly aging former dancer, the writer found a happily married woman, with a husband 10 years younger. The question--”Isn’t an understanding creative woman the best mate for an artist?”--got answered, affirmatively. The Rosses seemed to Sheehy, as they seem now, “like fragments of a picture being mended.”

The turning point here came in the 1950s when the couple, after working together in Europe, were driving through the Black Forest. Kaye threw a pair of toe shoes out the window of Ross’ MGA, and then another pair, and then another. She never danced again. Instead, she transferred the creative instinct to helping her husband, both as a credited and uncredited co-producer. Thus Kaye handled the traditional dancer’s anxiety about what happens after 40.

“But Nora has no interest in some of the movies I do,” said Ross, over a lunch in Le Dome’s back room. Ross is soft-spoken in the extreme, but simultaneously speedy about what he has to say. He seems to be playing “catch-up” for the unproductive years. If he’s known for handling stars (Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Goldie Hawn, Anne Bancroft) Ross is also known for understanding their psyches. (“Herb teaches you how to use your fears,” said Richard Dreyfuss just before “Goodbye Girl” won him an Oscar. “No director has tapped into that with me before.”) Ross is the direct antithesis of Bob Fosse, the man whose career most resembles his. If Fosse’s life and projects (“All That Jazz,” “Star 80”) are all about the dark side--the Ross career seems to be about rising above darkness. Indeed, “Pennies From Heaven,” his melancholy musical about the Great Depression, is his “most ambitious effort” and least successful picture. Observers thought the film’s failure caused Kaye to back off from working on more of her husband’s movies.

“Not at all,” insisted Ross, who this summer will direct Michael J. Fox in “Private Affairs” for Universal. “ ‘Footloose’ just didn’t interest her, that’s all. Nor ‘Protocol.’ And when she’s not interested, she’s not involved, and I go on about my business.” In other words, the couple is independent enough to be dependent, but not totally.

“People gave the marriage 15 minutes originally,” said Kaye, devouring pommes frites in a way she could not when she dominated the stages of Berlin and Rome. “But devoting your energies to private life has its rewards, too.”

“Artists,” said Ross simply, “have traditionally lived in one of two ways. Either as the gypsy or the bourgeoisie. ‘Turning Point’ dealt with that a bit, and the actresses in the movie are perfect examples. Annie (Bancroft) who’s our neighbor in Brentwood, is perfectly happy cooking pasta and making movies. Balanchine lived the bourgeois life, and so did Picasso. Then there’s Shirley (MacLaine), who wanders the world, living like a vagabond artist, on the creative edge. That’s brave, but it’s whichever way works for you.”

“And you have to explore before you know,” added Kaye, pointing two fingers in the air for emphasis. “You must have a lot of experience before you settle down. A lot.”

“Yes,” said Ross, as though unconsciously finishing her sentence. “When you are young, in your 20s and 30s, you’re really just practicing. You’re in rehearsal for the long relationship that lasts. You don’t, and usually can’t, find it when you’re young. And you will be nervous all the time if you try . . .”

On a Tuesday Kate Jackson was in Chatsworth directing herself and Bruce Boxleitner in an episode of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.” On Wednesday she was in the editing room. On Thursday she was hostessing a wrap party. On Friday she was acting in front of cameras, with a different director for a different episode. To those who say Kate Jackson is as driven as the classic rebuilt Mercedes that she keeps in her Benedict Canyon garage, she would probably nod in agreement. “A private life?” she murmurred. “You couldn’t prove it by me. I’m giving everything I have to what I’m doing now, and most of the time I feel terrific . . . But sometimes I feel like a soggy old French fry on the edge of the plate of life. Will you write that down? It says everything.”

Nobody in show business will deny that starring in an hourlong prime-time series (“starring” as opposed to being part of an ensemble, as in “Dynasty”) is as demanding a job as any in TV, save maybe being Johnny Carson. To be rested for the camera, to create an identifiable character on a weekly basis, to have the energy for stunts and retakes and looping takes special stamina.

Then there’s what TV analysts call “the likability factor.” If series TV requires familiarity, how then does the personality of an intense actress match up with that of the endearing mother of two she portrays? Or is there a blur? “Some things are what they seem, and some aren’t,” said Jackson, with a certain logic. “Part of me is my character Amanda King, sure. But I have to tell you that Amanda King of Arlington, Va., wouldn’t have a prayer in Hollywood. Not for 10 minutes.”

The killer question among series actresses when they talk privately is the one about personal life--is there room (or time) for a personal life? “I’m sure it’s possible,” said Jackson dryly. A veteran of four hit series and two failed marriages, Jackson is still playing the odds. Against the odds is her schedule: Up at 4 a.m., putter with dogs and plants for an hour, be at the studio all day long, and then “two hours at home at night. It takes half an hour to wind down, and you read for half an hour. The light goes out at 9:30. Make of it what you will. I’m dedicated to what I’m doing now, because nothing is forever--so I give 100%.”

Translation: Jackson has been dubbed hard to work with: “No, difficult ,” she corrected, slightly self-mocking. “Difficult is the word people use. But directing this episode has been so delightful I may lose my difficult reputation. And that would be disappointing. I’d like to keep a little of that reputation.”

Is it based on truth? “Fair or not I expect the absolute best,” said the star whose production company, Shoot the Moon, has a financial interest in “Scarecrow.” “I’ve been called difficult only because I have a high profile in TV. It’s not a high profile in the world; I don’t have myself out of proportion,” she said in the voice that’s pure Alabama malt. “But I’ve learned you can’t make somebody else happy if you aren’t . . . In ‘Desiderata,’ it says you have to enjoy your achievements as well as your goals. I think I can do that because I’m still who I was when I came to Hollywood.”

One almost never sees producer Richard Zanuck smiling, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one of the most contented men in town. Certainly he’s one of the most consistent. The producer of “The Sting,” “Jaws” and “Compulsion” has lived in one house for all but 15 of his 52 years. He’s had one partner (David Brown) since the 1960s. And he’s played tennis every Saturday, “since 1814,” with restaurateur Pierre Groleau. He’s also run exactly five miles almost every morning since puberty. “I didn’t miss a single morning in 1985,” beamed Zanuck on a recent afternoon. “But I finally realized I live like someone from an Eastern family. I actually like traditions. The morning run I do whether I’m in Sun Valley or the South of France. Is running that much fun? No. But it sets the day up properly.”

Especially if the stretch of beach at Santa Monica is where you grew up. Father Darryl, who came out of Wahoo, Neb., was, as his biographer Leonard Mosley put it, Hollywood’s last tycoon. And the tycoon’s family moved in the ‘30s to the swankest piece of beachfront: Neighbors included Louis B. Mayer, David O. Selznick, Mervyn LeRoy and Bing Crosby. The sons of the fathers grew up, according to Zanuck, “disinterested or inhibited by the movie industry. But for some reason I had no fear. I saw the movie industry as a giant adventure. I can remember growing up with Irving Thalberg Jr., who became a professor. He wanted no part of Hollywood. I always wondered if it was because he was named ‘Junior.’ It’s a hard label to live with.”

Zanuck and Alan Ladd Jr. are the industry’s only two offspring who’ve maintained major studio level status as producers and/or executives. (Sam Goldwyn Jr. runs his own independent company.) In other industries, progeny like Edsel Ford and Joseph Kennedy Jr. are groomed to succeed in the family business. “I wasn’t groomed exactly,” maintained Zanuck, who sold Saturday Evening Posts on the 20th Century Fox lot practically from the time he could walk. If his father was bombastic, a polo player and womanizer and visible all over town, Zanuck the younger is the opposite: He keeps a low profile. In a community where executives consider themselves--not the talent--as the major players, Zanuck acts more like a watcher. He can lunch outdoors at Bistro Garden without being disturbed, but he’s hardly unnoticed. It’s just that the savvier members of Hollywood’s boys’ club understand Dick Zanuck. And the contrast to his father’s legendary flamboyance is always acknowledged. Sometimes the son rises quietly, if quickly.

When Zanuck pere was chief shareholder of 20th Century Fox, he installed his son (still in his 20s) as president. Later the chairman would fire the president before being ousted himself. The saga is tailor-made for a Hollywood yarn on fathers and sons. But temperamentally speaking, the gap between generations was enormous. “Dad had a very short fuse,” said Zanuck easily. “But D.Z. didn’t harbor anger for long. He could throw you for a minute, but if he trusted you, he trusted you. I learned early to speak up.”

Zanuck also learned, right out of Stanford, equations of the movie business: At 25, he produced “Compulsion,” based on the Leopold-Loeb murders, and soon he was the youngest Hollywood production chief since his neighbor Thalberg Sr. in the 1930s. His own stress came from internal studio politics, not family politics, and Zanuck can now remember “having to prove myself to a lot of people. People said, ‘Your father put you there, kid. It’s as simple as that. We know why you’re behind the big desk.’ ”

It was the spur Zanuck needed. “It prodded me to get involved at a very basic and ongoing level. I did a lot of the engineering on pictures like ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ and ‘M*A*S*H,’ involving myself way beyond what a studio executive would. I had to prove myself.” It was an era when jobs lasted longer and meant more, “but you always learned the same pressure lesson. More money is made outside executive ranks. I could take the pressure but didn’t want to. In executive jobs you don’t pay much attention to the happiness quotient. . . . “

Zanuck’s formula for relieving stress is simple on the surface. “I systematically eliminate whatever irritates me. I avoid functions I don’t like and people I don’t like, and I only worry about one thing. Ten or 20 years from now will I still be interested enough to want to read the trade papers? It’s what’s fascinating about men like (agent) Irving Lazar and (producer) Ray Stark. Well beyond middle age they are still like young stags, hungry and determined. I don’t know if I’ll be that way at that age. I have other interests than the movie business. Which is why I like it that our offices are away from the Valley, from the constant industry talk.”

At the Zanuck-Brown headquarters on Canon Drive, one discovered historic suites of offices that at various times have belonged to Burt Lancaster, Robert Evans and Dino De Laurentiis. (Zanuck’s office features what may be the neatest desk in town; the producer is famous for his impeccable personal memos, written with multi-colored pens. Another feature at the Z/B offices is a private gym, where a trainer comes several times a week. The offices, like the occupants, seem stressless.)

“Oh, sure!” cracked Zanuck’s third wife, Lili Fini, who’s known as both a compulsive worker and a constant companion. (It was she who found the property “Cocoon.”) “We’re getting a big kick out of the word stress . To those people who think Dick is stress-free,” said Lili Zanuck, grinning slyly, “I say, You shoulda seen the table he kicked over after the football game last night.”

“Yes, honey,” said her husband. “But football isn’t Hollywood.”