Feudin’ and Fussin’ : Delta Burke Tiff Is Most Recent in a Long Line of Star Wars

They flare up like wildfires across the Hollywood landscape, these star turns--Roseanne Barr’s fits with her “Roseanne” producers, Lynn Redgrave’s right to breast feed her baby on the set of “House Calls,” Redd Foxx’s demand for a dressing room with windows on “Sanford and Son.”

Just how the spats become public spectacles is invariably curious. Said one publicist of long standing, “The early part of my career, all we did was keep stuff like that out of the press. You know this went on all the time. People like the Warners would certainly put it out that they suspended Bette Davis hoping to scare her into coming back in those days, but it didn’t get into this mud slinging stuff.”

The reference was to the fax fight between actress Delta Burke and her producers on “Designing Women.”

Now it may be settled in a draw. Concerted efforts are being made to cool the embers. The show went back into production for its fifth season this week and “business as usual” was the recurring comment out of both camps.

At Thursday night’s taping of the first episode, security guards were posted at the entrances and instructed to reject any prying press. Sources said that the taping went swimmingly and “the Delta question” never came up.

Earlier in the day, executive producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason sent what might be their last fax on the matter, entitled, “Thomasons End Feud.”

It said that this tiff was “unfortunate,” that “our family is no different than any other family except that our disagreement has been aired in the public spotlight,” that they “regret all the hurt feelings on both sides.” Then they added the bemused note that “Now, as a public service, we would like to get out of the feud business.”

This has been one of the bitterest of the star wars, although some other great combatants come to mind--Carroll O’Connor and “All in the Family,” Scoey Mitchlll and “Barefoot in the Park,” Larry Hagman and “Dallas,” Suzanne Somers and “Three’s Company,” Valerie Harper and “Valerie,” Farrah Fawcett and “Charlie’s Angels,” Cindy Williams and “Laverne and Shirley,” Erik Estrada and “CHiPS” and John Schneider and Tom Wopat and “Dukes of Hazzard” and Ken Wahl and “Wiseguy.”

Although most of the disputes have to do with dollars (more, never fewer), not all. One of the louder of the disgruntled ones was Pernell Roberts who felt lassoed into a six-year contract on “Bonanza” and even at mid-run he yelled that the show was “bad literature” and he wanted out because “I am an actor, not a carnival freak on exhibition.” But he stayed all six years, until the end of the 1964-65 season. The show lasted until 1973.

Publicist Richard Grant, who represents Joan Rivers, Richard Dreyfuss, PeeWee Herman, etc., also has Connie Sellecca, who just popped into the news. In something called “contractual differences,” she’s being dropped from ABC’s “Baby Talk,” even before it gets going.

Asked about it five times, Grant returned “No comment” five times.

Finally, he elaborated: “You can say that in Grant’s opinion, the matter is between Connie and her attorneys and the network and the producers, period.”

But it was a different Dick Grant in 1980 on the case of Larry Hagman, “Dallas” and the cliffhanging summer of the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode.

Hagman’s J.R. Ewing was a national phenomenon. Grant noted, “At the moment, he was the 50-ton gorilla . . . the hottest actor on TV.”

Grant doesn’t recall how Hagman’s insistence for a substantial raise first got into the media (he says that “no way” did he plant any gossip), “but once it was in the press, we used it to beat the band.”

Grant said that Hagman told him: “We’re going to go to Europe; we really want to be visible; you do the job.” So Grant put a publicist in London on retainer to make it happen.

In England, Hagman was even more of a phenomenon than in this country. “We used high visibility in England,” recalled Grant, “to make it very clear to the people at Lorimar (Productions) and CBS that he was real content to spend the rest of the year in London having a good time if they didn’t give him enough money to make him come home and also to show how hot he was and the power of the media that he had.

“I mean, he was in the Royal Enclosure in Ascot, he went in costume and visited the bobbys and was celebrated by all the British police force. There were pictures of him and newsreel coverage wherever he went in Europe.

“Larry sent all of the people that were negotiating on his team white Stetsons with the request that whenever they went into meetings, they wore the white hats. And the agents at the (William) Morris office, myself and his attorneys and everybody walked around town that summer in white Stetsons . . . and he got what he asked for.”

Many stories make the media through court filings, which are public documents. But then there is the Hollywood Grapevine.

Said one publicist: “There’s not an emergency room or a restaurant where there isn’t somebody who isn’t a quote ‘stringer’ for the tabloids.”

Grant said that he’s “always paranoid” talking business at restaurants because he isn’t sure who’s sitting at the next table.

“Sometimes it’s innocent,” he went on, “people just gossiping, and they tell the wrong person, who then sells it for a tip. You would be amazed at the amount of money made in this town by people on the set, makeup and hair people, script supervisors, dialogue coaches, who overhear conversations on the set and get on the phone and sell it to somebody. To the tabloids they can make 250 to 300 bucks a tip.

“I know press agents who sell items to the tabloids on their own clients and make money, unbeknownst to their clients.”

Pat McQueeney, who manages actor Harrison Ford, recalled the turmoil of 1976 when she represented Cindy Williams during “Laverne and Shirley,” the wildly popular ABC comedy. The tiffing on the set had grown to the stuff of legend and then word leaked when Williams, the Shirley of the title, stormed out of a rehearsal and threatened to leave Laverne alone for good.

She thought her duties were diminishing to a supporting role to co-star Penny Marshall sister of executive producer Garry Marshall.

“What I remember is that (a reporter) called and asked me a whole bunch of questions--and I wouldn’t talk to him,” related McQueeney.

“So he went and talked to the producers. And so then he called me back and said, ‘Well, you better give me Cindy’s side of this because this isn’t so good.’ So of course then I started talking to him. A little blackmail.”

Two producers, one of them a co-creator with Garry Marshall, were replaced (they became consultants instead).

McQueeney declared herself amused by it all but she didn’t think it made any difference to the show because “it was so popular . . . (but) I think it’s always detrimental to them personally. It hurts their feelings to see all that kind of thing in the press. I know Cindy’s feelings were very hurt.”

Actress Valerie Harper was upset to hear about the “Designing Women” battle because she is a friend of Burke’s, has worked with her husband, Gerald McRaney and admires Bloodworth-Thomason’s writing. And she knows something about public feuding.

One staff member at MTM Productions who asked anonymity recalled Harper’s “Rhoda” days when she wanted more money and “it got very unpleasant internally.” As he recalled, “Grant Tinker (who was running MTM) said, ‘Fine, then we won’t do the show’--and the network (CBS) said, ‘Oh yes, you will do the show because you’ve got a contract to deliver the show.’ The network came up with some money.”

It never made the public prints, the staffer related: “We’re talking probably 1974-75. The Enquirer and all those were not as strong as they are now. The attitude is so different now--’Let’s tell it all.’ Everything seems to be an open book.”

Harper said it was just the request (i.e., demand) for more money was just the business of the TV business.

But in 1987, it was a different matter. It was the public acrimony with Lorimar and NBC over “Valerie” when she wanted more creative control and more dollars--and was fired (her character was put to death) and replaced by Sandy Duncan. It led to a rousing court battle in which she and her husband, won $1.6-plus million plus many more millions in show profits.

The story first broke in gossip columns, Harper recalled, “and then it became a field day.” She was accused of walking off the set even before the show was shooting; she was placed in restaurants where she’s never been.

She has a low view of the Hollywood gossips: “It’s only news if it has a steamy side . . . I know a waitress who used worked at Joe Allen’s (a popular, now deceased West Hollywood cafe) that had been offered $50 a tip about anything, about any celebrity ever, if she could give something she overheard at a table to one of the newspapers.”

One of the tabloids rented an apartment across from Suzanne Somers’ beach house and “they were shooting photos out the window, her comings and goings . . . That’s how close they were to the story,” recalled Bob Levinson.

One of the biggest Hollywood stories of 1980 was Somers’ demand for more money from the producers of “Three’s Company.” Somers and her manager-husband Alan Hamel hired publicist Levinson for “crisis management.”

The controversy had grown out of proportion and allegations were flying, he said. “They (the producers) were painting Suzanne as the bad guy, making her the villain and letting it slop over to Alan and even painting him blacker. He was being characterized as something just short of a maniac.”

Levinson said he felt that the “crisis” was resolved “within six months.”

In the first counteroffensive, Somers had a press conference at the Los Angeles Press Club and it was jammed, the press pack awaiting word that she was leaving the show--but instead she announced that she was going to Korea with Bob Hope to entertain the troops on Thanksgiving.

Levinson had her on doing talk shows and interviews: “We turned it around simply by moving away from the issue and moving back to the person in terms of career and talent. The story was not going to go away. The secret at times like this is to recognize what you’re dealing with and build a backfire.

“When we were all through getting our side out, Suzanne was the victim. People began to understand that she was being victimized by the system. We made the media work for us.”