From Mobil Executive to Movie Maker
Mobil Corp. executive Herb Schmertz says he will soon form his own company. It will “represent corporations and foreign governments and produce television programs and theatrical movies.”
He also will continue his syndicated newspaper column and his unpaid consultation work for Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) on his bid for the GOP presidential nomination (although those services may not be required much longer).
Were Schmertz a Hollywood citizen announcing all this, it probably would be suggested that he lie down until his yin and yang achieve proper balance. But he is not a Tinseltown type. Far from it.
He is--until he leaves on May 1--Mobil Corp.’s veteran point man for quality TV programs and its chief jouster with journalists on a variety of issues, including, of course, the oil industry.
“I’ve long wanted to do it,” he recently said in explaining his imminent exit from Mobil (and a salary that has been estimated as high as $700,000 annually), where he is vice president for public affairs and a member of the board of directors.
“I’m at an age when I think I have time for one more career,” added Schmertz, a tall, well-tailored man of 57 who still puffs cigars in his office in an era when the smoking lamp is flickering out at most corporations.
It is safe to say he is not one of America’s more famous men. But 18 of his 22 years at Mobil have been in work that made him--at least in journalistic and business circles--one of the nation’s best known corporate-relations executives, the keeper and burnisher of the Mobil image, if you will.
You can thank Schmertz for PBS’ “Upstairs, Downstairs,” “I, Claudius,” “The Jewel in the Crown” and other “Masterpiece Theatre” bundles from Britain that are, as PBS says, “made possible by a grant from Mobil.”
He was instrumental in getting Mobil to do the granting, which he reckons has amounted to $5 million annually over the last 18 years.
(Schmertz won’t have any connection with “Masterpiece Theatre” or the Mobil-funded “Mystery,” now in its eighth season, after he leaves the oil company. However, their support from Mobil will continue.
(Rebecca Eaton, WGBH’s executive producer for “Masterpiece Theatre,” said that a new agreement has been negotiated in which Mobil will continue funding the two series through 1993.)
Schmertz also had a hand in Mobil’s sponsorship in the 1970s of such acclaimed American-made programs as CBS’ “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” and ABC’s video version of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”
Schmertz is credited, too, with Mobil’s issue-oriented advocacy ads that first appeared in the New York Times in 1970--paid ads by which, he said, “we were simply engaging in the ancient and honorable art of pamphleteering.”
And, amid his corporate work, he has written on his own, authoring “Takeover,” a 1980 novel on corporate intrigue, and co-writing in 1986 “Goodbye to the Low Profile: The Art of Creative Confrontation,” a tome on effective public relations.
Schmertz said recently that despite speculation over how long Dole continues his quest for the GOP presidential nomination, “if he continues, I’ll continue to help in any way I can.”
He said he has been offering advice to Dole on a sporadic basis, and added: “I hope he stays in (the political race).”
When Schmertz starts life anew in May, the feisty but soft-voiced native of Yonkers, N.Y., will be walking a tricky line--primarily with his weekly column. It currently appears in 25 newspapers, the largest of which is the Orange County Register, he said.
Schmertz was vague in saying what he will do as a “representative” of corporations and foreign governments. However, he said, “I don’t envision doing any lobbying” in Washington on their behalf.
He readily conceded that editors whose newspapers carry his column might wonder if what he writes about is in some way related to the work his company may be doing for nations abroad.
“I agree with that . . . certainly the content of a newspaper column is susceptible to that interpretation,” he said. However, he added, “the implications of my column, of representing any foreign government, are quite clear to me.”
He was asked about the entertainment side of the new company he’ll form. For television, he replied, the company would produce television movies and miniseries--but would not propose them to CBS, NBC or ABC.
“I simply don’t believe that the process of doing shows for the networks right now is something that I would enjoy,” he said. He declined to elaborate.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked if he might try the new Fox Broadcasting network. “I do know that I’m not going to make television material if I have to compromise my standards, what I consider quality.”
About those theatrical films. Any particular kind? “Well,” Schmertz said, “if I were to pick one movie, a prototype, it would be ‘A Room With a View.’ ”
He is of the view--it’s also spreading in Hollywood--that because of maturing popular taste, it is possible nowadays to make quality films for a relatively low budget and turn a profit.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that there is a growing market for quality movies that are made on modest budgets, with excellent scripts and excellent casts and excellent production values,” he said.
Stage ventures? “That’d be somewhere down the road. . . . I don’t preclude it; it’s something of great interest to me, and I’ve talked about it. But that’s a much tougher business than I’m prepared to undertake at this time.”
He said Mobil “will not be involved” in the new, as-yet-unnamed company that he plans to establish here.
Investors in the firm will be sought, he said.
But when first asked whence the money will come, Herb Schmertz, overseer of Mobil’s millions for quality drama on public TV, just grinned. “I don’t know,” he professed. “Do you have some?”
