Publishing Execs Go Hollywood, Enjoy World of Make-Believe

The woman was momentarily caught in the blinding glare of the big-beam spotlight as the movie director shouted at her from behind the camera: “It’s a Mary Pickford kind of thing and I like it!” he said. “You’re going to be very big in this town.”

She giggled and blushed and, not believing a word of anything he said, proceeded to walk onto the lot of 20th Century Fox, where publishing executives were getting a taste of show biz, as in the faux director who greeted them.

It was the second day of the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. conference being held at the Century Plaza, and after a day of seminars on dismal advertising revenues and the decline of newspaper readership, the executives were in the mood to have some fun.

The hosts--Rupert Murdoch, publishing mogul and Fox studio owner, wife Anna and Fox chairman and CEO Barry Diller--greeted guests as they de-bused and arrived on Mulberry Street, with its facades of shops and restaurants that have been used in many films.

“This is just purely people eating and enjoying themselves--hopefully,” said Diller between handshakes.

Guests snacked on pizza, popcorn, pretzels and deli sandwiches and strolled through the mock town as search lights scanned the sky. ABC’s Jeff Greenfield explained the finer points of Hollywood set design to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., deputy publisher of the New York Times, and Steve Braver of the Portland Newspapers in Maine took advantage of the free shoeshine.

Ariel Melchior Jr., publisher of the Daily News of the Virgin Islands, and wife Vera were on their first trip to Los Angeles, and taking advantage of the sights between seminars.

“We took the movie stars’ homes tour,” he explained. “I wonder if anyone really lives in those houses. It looks like another prop set up in Hollywood.”

A threesome danced to a one-man band playing “Route 66”: Barbara Hooper, her husband John, vice president of newspapers for Guy Gannett in Portland, Me., and their 9-month-old daughter Mandi.

“She’s holding out for a commercial contract,” said her father, already savvy to the entertainment business.

Guests were also allowed on the set of “Rockenwagner,” a comedy-drama pilot shooting on the Fox lot. They wandered through what looked like a typical American house, wondering how cameras could move around a small room with four walls (the walls can be taken out), and if the tour guide was an aspiring actress (no, she worked in marketing).

Even as dinner began there was still a long line for the Gypsy fortuneteller (maybe she’d tell someone that newspaper profits will increase?) as a saxophonist played above from a fire escape.

The buffet dinner (chicken scaloppine, shrimp in butter and garlic sauce, broccoli souffle and brown rice with pine nuts) was served on a huge sound stage, where the centerpiece was an airplane used in Fox’s “Die Hard 2: Die Harder,” starring Bruce Willis. Couples took advantage of the live band and danced before, during and after dinner.

Also among the guests were House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.), Mary Jane and Charles Wick, Wall St. Journal publisher and president Peter R. Kann, Gannett’s Doug McKorkindale, ANPA president Jerry Friedheim and vice president Bob Burke; and Ed Russell of Newhouse Newspapers in New York.