Stark Power : The Veteran Hollywood Producer Thrives Amid Turmoil and Change at Columbia and Tri-Star Studios

For some observers of Hollywood politics, David Puttnam’s abrupt decision to quit the Columbia Pictures chairmanship last month carried an unspoken message:

Ray Stark still counts.

The diminutive, 72-year-old producer scarcely figured in published reports of Puttnam’s departure.

Yet much of moviedom’s gossipy creative community prefers to believe that Stark--a fabled power broker, who has operated as an independent producer at Columbia for 19 years--played a behind-the-scenes role in toppling the outspoken Englishman who ran the studio for just 15 months.

“It was a matter of respect,” offers one major studio executive, who contends that Puttnam made the mistake of dismissing the impish producer as a relic.

“Ray wanted respect for his body of work. And David wasn’t willing to give it.”

Be that as it may, Ray Stark--past master of the big-star romance, from “Funny Girl” to “The Electric Horseman”--is clearly enjoying a new currency in Hollywood.

On the heels of a four-year slump that began with the disappointing reception of his “Annie” by audiences and critics alike, Stark has scored three hits in the past year, including “Nothing in Common” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” for Tri-Star, and “The Secret of My Success” for Universal.

In declining to be interviewed for this story, Stark told one friend that he didn’t want to be perceived “as a power guy.” In his 30-year and 250-film career as a producer, however, he has often been neck-deep in the roiling intrigue of studio politics.

Stark currently has ongoing production deals with both Tri-Star and Universal, and top executives of both are courting him for still more attention as the film maker’s arrangement with Columbia, dormant during the Puttnam regime, threatens to expire in the next few months.

“I hope we’ll continue to make movies with (Stark) . . . . He’s a magnificent producer, and he has never been more productive,” says Universal Pictures Chairman Thomas Pollock, whose studio is set to release Stark’s “Biloxi Blues,” based on a Neil Simon play, early next year.

Others privately speculate that Stark will instead choose to become far more deeply involved with Tri-Star and Columbia, which are soon to be merged under a single corporate parent that will be largely owned by Coca-Cola Co. “He’s going to be a big supplier (of films) to the new configuration,” says one top talent agent, who declined to be identified.

Tightening its bonds with Stark, Tri-Star recently agreed to join with him and NBC in making a sequel to “Annie” for the 1988 Christmas season. Released by Columbia in 1982, Stark’s “Annie,” based on the Broadway play, cost an enormous $42 million. The film earned only $37 million in U.S. theatrical rentals, but eventually returned more than $80 million to the studio, thanks to videocassette and foreign sales that continued long after it left the theaters.

Victor Kaufman, Tri-Star’s 44-year-old chairman and soon-to-be chief executive officer of the combined studios, declines to discuss any role Stark may have played in Puttnam’s departure or his own elevation over the restructured studios. But he acknowledges that Stark, one of Coke’s bigger shareholders, has been a frequent influence during his own rise to prominence.

“Ray has always been a great adviser to me. I’ve talked with him as a friend, and he’s taught me a lot about dealing with people,” says Kaufman, who was general counsel to Columbia for 10 years before joining newly formed Tri-Star in 1983.

One Coca-Cola officer privately called it “absurd” to believe that the Atlanta-based corporation’s overall decision to restructure its entertainment holdings was influenced by Puttnam’s poor relations with Stark or with discontented Hollywood stars like Bill Cosby, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.

Hoffman and Beatty were displeased with Puttnam’s attempts to distance himself from their movie “Ishtar,” which was begun under the prior regime but released under Puttnam. Cosby is similarly reported to have had disagreements with Puttnam’s management over his upcoming “Leonard Part VI.”

A Coke spokesman, moreover, specifically disavowed any notion that Stark--although he has been quietly under contract as a consultant to Coke’s Columbia unit for the last five years--had anything to do with the reassignment to the company’s soft drink operations of Francis T. (Fay) Vincent. Vincent had been Puttnam’s boss and primary booster as president of the Coca-Cola entertainment sector.

“It is really off the wall for anyone to tell you that Ray Stark or anyone else in Hollywood had anything to do with Fay’s change of assignment,” the spokesman said.

A former literary and talent agent, Stark in 1957 co-founded Seven Arts Productions. That company later merged with Warner Bros. after acquiring Jack Warner’s stake.

In the face of several takeover threats, the combined companies were soon purchased by a conglomerate that would become the present-day Warner Communications--yielding handsome profits for Stark, Frank Sinatra and other Warner-Seven Arts investors.

Stark subsequently became a shareholder in Columbia, and began producing pictures for the studio, including “Funny Lady,” his second film based on the life of Fanny Brice, the Broadway star and mother of Stark’s wife, Fran.

As Columbia’s financial condition deteriorated in the early 1970s, Stark arranged for Wall Street investment bankers Herbert and Charles Allen to help with a bailout of the studio--and later strongly defended production chief David Begelman, a friend and former agent whose admitted embezzlements led to the board-room upheavals chronicled in David McClintick’s best seller “Indecent Exposure.”

(Stark remains staunchly loyal to Begelman, himself now an independent producer. “Just mention Begelman, and he gets worked up,” says one Stark friend. “He’ll tell you, ‘I believed in him then, and I believe in him now.’ ”)

When Coca-Cola purchased Columbia in 1982, Stark received a substantial block of Coke stock in exchange for his stake in the studio. He currently holds about 1 million of Coke’s 350 million shares, with a value of about $48 million. Stark’s enthusiasm for the Atlanta company is considerable: In fact, he occasionally pads around Hollywood sporting Coca-Cola shoelaces.

According to a number of Stark associates, the producer--whose privately held Rastar Productions is headquartered directly opposite Columbia’s production offices at The Burbank Studios--remains a major force at Columbia, largely through his daily telephone contact with Herbert Allen Jr., who joined Coke’s corporate board in the Columbia acquisition.

Yet Stark’s influence has usually been more subtle than overt in recent years.

“If Ray was up to what the gossips always (claimed), I wouldn’t have been able to get people like (directors) Sydney Pollack and Ivan Reitman to work for me,” explains Frank Price, who was chairman of Columbia from 1979 to 1983. “They would have said, ‘Ray is in control here.’ ”

By several accounts, Stark initially endorsed Columbia’s decision last year to hire Puttnam, a British producer who was already known for his outspoken criticism of the big-star film making at which Stark excels. “David met with Ray, and told him he admired him. He regarded him almost like a father,” claims one Stark friend.

Puttnam has declined to comment on his recent experience at Columbia.

According to several private accounts, however, that relationship quickly soured as Puttnam--a champion of lower budgets and lesser-known talent--made it clear that he wasn’t interested in Stark’s projects, and telegraphed his disregard not so much for Stark personally as for the entire Hollywood system.

“Ray was angry not just for himself, but for the community,” maintains one Stark associate.

Another friend adds that Stark, the seasoned warhorse, found the 46-year-old Puttnam too callow to appreciate the irony in his own pronouncements: “Ray would say, ‘When I was David Puttnam’s age, I wasn’t producing ‘The Mission’ (a film of which Puttnam was co-producer) for $28 million and then complaining that the studios let me spend the money.”

If nothing else, Stark’s rage--vented throughout the creative community--may have helped to shake him from the professional doldrums that some friends believe he experienced in the wake of “Annie,” a project for which his passion was matched only by his disappoinment at its poor reception.

Following “Annie,” Stark had some success with “Blue Thunder” and “The Toy.” But he also had a string of painful failures, including “Sylvester,” “The Survivors,” “Violets Are Blue” and “The Slugger’s Wife,” for Columbia; “Amazing Grace and Chuck” for Tri-Star; and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” for Universal.

Stark intimates say they have been startled by the renewed vigor the producer has displayed lately in the face of some uphill struggles--including Walt Disney Co.’s refusal, just when Stark’s power base at Columbia was eroding, to make “The Secret of My Success.” That film ultimately went to Universal, and took in more than $65 million at the box office last spring.

“There had been a sense of depletion and disappointment (for Ray). But to come back this way is really very amazing,” says a Stark friend.

He adds: “I told Ray at one point, you have had the ultimate revenge. You’ve done three pictures away from Columbia, and they were all big hits. Why don’t you relax?”

Far from relaxing, there are signs that Stark--a prize-winning horse breeder and world-class collector of sculpture by modern masters like Henry Moore and Aristide Maillol--has become preoccupied with questions touching on age and vitality.

“Nothing in Common,” one of his 1986 hits, revolved around the difficult relationship of a young executive played by Tom Hanks and a cantankerous father played by the late Jackie Gleason. Lately, moreover, Stark has been sending friends copies of producer David Brown’s “Guide to Growing Gray,” a recently published compendium of advice on aging well.

According to Brown, who also continues to work in the mainstream at 71, Stark actually appears to thrive on his struggles with a studio system that seems more skewed toward youth every year.

“I adore Ray,” says Brown. “He’s been through the onerous things that all of us endure: Presenting projects to people of one-third our age and one-eighth of our experience.”

“But he’s never been defeated. He’s never become cynical.”