COVER STORY : But Is There Hope for the Future? : There are only a few women near the top of the major studios. And even they have a long way to go.

The numbers speak for themselves: There is not one woman in a position to give final approval to send a film into production at eight major studios surveyed by the Times.

And of 45 films released by the same eight studios during the four-month period from June through September of this year, only one--Columbia Pictures’ “Postcards From the Edge”--had female leads and told a woman’s story. Just 16 of them --including “Ghost,” “Texasville” and “The Two Jakes”--had what a committee of Times critics and film writers agreed were significant roles for women.

To be sure, women have come a long way from the day 15 years ago when Paula Weinstein’s appointment as a vice president of production--a job that involves developing films and convincing the studio president to take them on--was so unusual that she received more than 100 phone messages from journalists and colleagues during her first morning on the job.

Today, women hold 22 vice presidential titles out of 62 presidential and vice presidential positions at the following studios, which were chosen for this story by their size and historical dominance in the market: Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, MGM-UA Communications Co., Orion Pictures International, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros.

But not one of the women has the power to authorize production of (“green light”) a film. And as vice presidents, they are all working to find material to suit the tastes of their bosses.

“It’s a sad state of affairs that there aren’t more women in decision-making positions at the studios,” said Pat Newcomb, a woman who served as a vice president of production at MGM under Alan Ladd Jr. “And I don’t know what will change it. There is a whole audience out there of women who aren’t going to the movies who I think would go if more (female driven) movies were being made.”

Indeed, in the nearly 100-year history of the film industry, just three women--Dawn Steel, Sherry Lansing and Paula Weinstein--have held the title of president of production. None lasted more than a couple of years. Only Steel, as president of Columbia Pictures Entertainment, was responsible for both the creative and business sides of a studio.

“It’s just about all boys,” said a male studio executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. And the women who currently serve as vice presidents, he said, are years away from the top job.

“It’s hard to know who (is next in line) because none of them is quite there, so you’re betting on intangibles or other craziness,” the executive said. “Most of these people are at least five years away, and it would mean five years of serious hits.”

Weinstein explained the vice president’s job this way: “When I went to Warner Bros. there had never been a woman vice president before, and as soon as I had it the janitor became the vice president for janitorial services. Everybody had the title.”

But does the absence of women at the top really explain the dearth of movies with female leads? Some women who have been vice presidents say they have had as much luck pushing women’s stories with male bosses as with the rare female boss.

“I’m at a company that has more women than men in the stocks, and of the five or six movies that are coming out, they all have great actresses in them,” said Michelle Manning, vice president of production at Orion.

A male production head, Alan Ladd Jr.--who has encouraged woman-oriented films since “Julia” and “An Unmarried Woman” in the 1970s--these development executives say, has made more so-called “women’s films” than a Dawn Steel or a Sherry Lansing. Orion’s upcoming slate, which includes “Mermaids” with Cher, “Love Field” with Michelle Pfeiffer and “Little Man Tate,” which stars and is directed by Jodie Foster, were all made during the tenure of current president Marc Platt.

But others simply point to the figures.

“If you look at the makeup of the hierarchy in Hollywood, you see that it is a very white, male-oriented structure,” said Marcy Kelly, president of Women in Film. “So the people who are commissioning scripts, finding scripts, directing the scripts and writing the scripts are men. Men are telling their stories from their perspective. And women’s voices are not being heard, period.”

It is true that some female-driven films get made, but typically that’s more because an actress, director or producer has developed the concept herself and presented it to a studio full-blown--not because the studio has found the vehicle and come looking for an actress.

Roger Birnbaum, president of production for 20th Century Fox and the only top executive who would agree to be interviewed for this story, said that his studio is backing a number of vehicles for female stars and producers, including “Alien III” with Sigourney Weaver, “Shining Through” with Melanie Griffith and “For the Boys” with Bette Midler.

But with the exception of Weaver, all of the women went outside the studio system to actually develop the films, forming their own production companies to scout material and get the projects off the ground.

Other films are made outside of the major studios altogether.

A good example is “Rambling Rose,” a film currently in production that was developed and is being directed by Martha Coolidge, who broke ground for women directors with “Valley Girl” in 1983. Coolidge has been trying to get the Calder Willingham script about a young woman’s coming of age made for nearly five years--in fact, both male and female producers have been trying to make it for 17 years--and in the end had to go outside the major studios to do so. The film will be produced by Renny Harlin and released by Seven Arts.

“They (the studios) don’t develop material for women,” Coolidge said. “And writers are not necessarily putting strong emphasis on writing female characters. There hasn’t been a call for it commercially.”

Those women vice presidents whose bosses would allow them to be interviewed, and women who have served in that position previously, do say, however, that their role in determining what films are made is growing stronger.

It was not until recently, these women say, that female executives had been around long enough to develop their networks of high-powered producers, directors and stars necessary to get their pet projects made.

“Ten years ago it would have made no difference (to have more women in decision-making positions), but today it would make a big difference,” said director Coolidge. “Women are changing. Women in power are changing. The relationships they can rely on, and their attitude toward the future has changed.”

Weinstein, who served as president of United Artists Pictures in the early 1980s, said that as time has passed, women and men in the ranks have undergone a change in attitude that may enable female executives to be more effective.

“It’s as superficial as language, as the reflection of the way women are seen,” Weinstein said. “Once there’s been a woman like Dawn who was president of the corporation and women like Sherry and me who were presidents of production, those jobs are attainable to them. Whereas we got the jobs having to fight to get them, and began our careers never thinking that (the presidency) was where we would end up.”

Among women currently working as vice presidents of major studios, the one with the highest rank and the longest history is Lucy Fisher, executive vice president of production at Warner Bros.

Hired in 1980 as a vice president of production after holding a similar job at Twentieth Century Fox, Fisher moved up quickly, then hovered just out of reach of the top job at Warner. Fisher, who was among the women whose company refused to grant access for an interview, has been called “the backbone of our team” by studio chairman Robert Daly, shepherding such films as “The Color Purple,” “The Witches of Eastwick” and “Empire of the Sun.”

Fisher has said that women executives should foster relationships with women directors, and also that she believes that even though there is no woman at the top at Warner Bros., the presence of three--and at times, four--female vice presidents has fostered an atmosphere of acceptance for films made by women.

The highest-ranking woman at 20th Century Fox, senior vice president Elizabeth Brand Gabler, is a soft-spoken 34-year-old with an air of quiet competence and no avowed plans to become a chief executive.

“I don’t feel any intense desire to take over, or to do that job,” Gabler said. “I have a very strong voice now.”

In a sense, Gabler’s office--mostly white with a framed poster of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”--epitomizes the difference some say exists between men and women, and in the business, colors their filmmaking choices.

“The previous occupant of this office kept it like a high school boy’s room,” Gabler said. “He had worked on ‘Predator’ and ‘Commando’ and ‘Die Hard,’ all those big action pictures, and he had everything you could ever have found from any memorabilia. Every square inch of wall was covered with it.”

But, “Little Women” poster or not, it would not be correct to say that Gabler, because of her sex, is making a point of bringing “women’s films” to Fox.

The project she was developing, Penny Marshall’s “A League of Their Own,” has been put on the back burner by the studio. Gabler is now concentrating on “Road Show,” the tale of a modern-day cattle drive to be directed by John McTiernan, and “A Faint Cold Fear,” with Dustin Hoffman.

But can women executives really be called upon to develop films for other women? The number of female-driven films produced under Lansing and Steel was negligible compared to overall studio output. In fact, most of the great female film roles and stories were developed by men.

“I don’t think it’s gender,” said Orion’s Manning. “I think it’s taste.”

“Instead of having an agenda,” agreed Rebecca Pollack, at 26 the youngest vice president for production at Pathe Entertainment under Ladd, “it’s about finding material that you rally respond to and finding a filmmaker who can realize that.”

One woman, a former vice president of a major studio who is now a highly successful executive for a large production company, said that the lack of female-driven films has less to do with the sex of a studio head and more with the type of personality that winds up in the top job--regardless of gender.

“It’s an awful job, and it’s going to take a very specific personality to do it,” the executive said. “And that is not the kind of personality that would be attracted to softer projects.”

20th Century Fox’s Birnbaum, who employs five women vice presidents in a staff of seven, said it’s up to women to write and produce their own vehicles if they feel the projects they want are not being developed.

“The answer,” Birnbaum said, “is that if an actress of the stature of Meryl Streep feels there are not enough good roles, she should develop some for herself.”