MGM Hopes Alan Ladd Jr. Can Make Lion Roar Again : Movies: Respected producer, son of late screen legend, brings a mix of the old and new Hollywood.

In Hollywood Westerns, his father often rode to the rescue with guns a-blazing. In real life, Alan Ladd Jr. has set out to rescue one of the great film studios of his father’s era.

Ladd became Hollywood’s latest man on the spot this month as he assumed creative control of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a company that his late father would be hard-put to recognize. The studio that once boasted more stars than the heavens has been eclipsed by more aggressive competitors.

Gone is the back lot that was home to Andy Hardy and the yellow brick road. Gone too are those classic films, having been sold to Ted Turner. MGM, which is really nothing more than some offices in an array of high-rises these days, is about the last place movie makers peddle their ideas. But those same executives give Ladd some shot at success, given his track record.

At 53, he has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most likable and bankable studio chiefs. In past jobs, Ladd piloted “Star Wars” and “Alien” to the top of the box office before he, ironically, crashed and burned with another space epic called “The Right Stuff.”

He also brings with him strong ties to such successful producers and directors as George Lucas, Richard Zanuck, Mel Brooks, Norman Jewison, Paul Maslansky and Ridley Scott. Scott, Maslansky and Brooks are already working for Ladd, and others may follow now that MGM’s new owner, Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti, has put Ladd in charge of the company.

In a business of fast talkers, Ladd is legendary for his reserve.

One executive recalled a meeting at which Ladd communicated only by hand signals. Another remembered the time that Ladd responded to a lengthy film pitch by simply saying, “No.”

Yet a third recalled the time Ladd and the equally uncommunicative Robert De Niro shared a limousine at the Cannes Film Festival. The two reportedly stared at each other for nearly 30 minutes before De Niro finally broke the silence by announcing he had to use the bathroom.

Critics contend that Ladd would be far more effective if he developed a stronger personality. One top Hollywood deal maker has called him the “least dynamic person I’ve ever met.” Others maintain that Ladd is a relic of old Hollywood, and see his partnership with the controversial Parretti as a sign of his professional decline.

Yet the loyalty he commands is unquestionable. It is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that, in an industry of constantly changing management, Ladd has been surrounded by the same basic cadre of executives for decades. Said one associate: “I would rather not die for Alan Ladd, but I would cheerfully kill for him.”

Ladd will have to marshal his skills to make a success of MGM for Parretti, who first hired him to head his Pathe Communications Corp. last year.

While he says he gets along well with his new boss, there are reports that an angry Ladd last spring confronted Parretti over unpaid bills when Pathe was trying to raise money to take over MGM. And many in Hollywood have already written it off for dead. Financial analysts have sounded the alarm that there soon may be no film production money left in MGM’s trough, because Parretti had to sell valuable television and video rights to complete the $1.36-billion acquisition.

Analyst Jeffrey Logsdon of Seidler Amdec Securities in Los Angeles said MGM could sink like a stone without some major hits. “They’ve probably bought themselves a year’s worth of time,” Logsdon said. “Now they need to get dedicated to the task of making movies that make money.”

Parretti denied that the company was under financial strain. He also called Ladd “one of the better production people in America.”

Ladd, in an interview last week at his Los Angeles office, also dismissed concerns over MGM’s future. The studio boss said MGM, still perhaps best known for its roaring lion logo, has access to a respectable $250 million for production in the coming year. Ladd also said he expects the studio to release as many as 10 to 12 pictures annually.

Ladd certainly has more than enough motivation to make pictures under his unprecedented contract with Parretti. The deal ensures Ladd $750,000 a year, 10% of company profits and an added $250,000 per film. He is guaranteed at total of at least $2 million annually.

At the same time, however, Ladd downplayed the significance many in Hollywood attach to his return to MGM, where he worked in the 1980s before a falling out with former owner Kirk Kerkorian. Kerkorian made millions of dollars selling off the most valuable assets of the company--known then as MGM/UA--before turning over what was left to Parretti.

“I’m not looking for revenge here,” Ladd said. “I left on good terms.”

When pressed, however, Ladd described the 21-year reign of Kerkorian as “very harmful” to the studio. “It was heart-wrenching to see MGM’s decline,” Ladd said quietly. “But then again, studios may be more important to me than to normal people. I grew up on these lots.”

As the son of the 1940s and ‘50s screen legend who starred in such films as “Shane” and “The Blue Dahlia,” Alan Walbridge Ladd Jr. grew up among Hollywood royalty in a life that was equal parts glamour and pathos. Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper may have palled around with his father, but Ladd was also a child of divorce. It wasn’t until his teen-age years that he came to live in the senior Ladd’s Holmby Hills estate.

By then Ladd Sr. had married his agent, Sue Carol. The younger Ladd did not appear in family publicity photos from that time, his brother said, because of fears of showing the star with a child from a previous marriage.

Even today Ladd appears uncomfortable talking about his father, who died in 1964. He describes him somewhat cautiously as a “very nice man.” Yet, in a vast office brimming over with family photos and memorabilia, the senior Ladd’s picture is nowhere to be found.

Friends say Ladd’s personal and professional lives revolve almost totally around the movies he first came to love as a child. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of film history and is rarely seen reading anything but film-related books.

While his hours are long, Ladd is commonly described as a classic family man. He lives in Beverly Hills with his second wife, Cindra, and their 3-year-old daughter. He also has three grown daughters from a previous marriage.

He was an avid tennis player until a recent elbow injury forced him off the court. Ladd’s love of football is reflected in the autographed ball from Heisman trophy winner Andre Ware that occupies a prominent place in his office. Another of Ladd’s precious keepsakes is a never-released group photo from MGM’s heyday, which has the married Spencer Tracy casting a sly glance at Katharine Hepburn, much to Louis B. Mayer’s apparent disgust.

During the tumult that surrounded Parretti’s eight-month bid for MGM, Ladd was characteristically quiet. But he was not inactive. He and his staff put together a package of 13 films that include the recently released “Quigley Down Under,” starring Tom Selleck, which so far has not made as much money as expected.

Ladd said he has high hopes for two projects that went into production before the MGM sale--”Rocky V,” the continuing Sylvester Stallone boxing saga, and “The Russia House,” from the John le Carre best-selling spy thriller. In addition, he was encouraged by the test market response to two other upcoming releases--”Thelma and Louise” and “Plastic Nightmare.”

In a notoriously fickle business, Ladd has shown unusual resilience.

He signed on as a talent agent at Creative Management Associates in 1963, after a U.S. Air Force stint and a brief career in his stepfather’s real estate business. His boss was the famed agent Freddie Fields, and his clients included the young Robert Redford and the fading Judy Garland.

Ladd also dabbled in film production. With his offices based in the swinging London of the 1960s, he produced such titles as “A Severed Head” and “Raw Meat.”

But he appeared to find his true calling when he took a job in 1973 as a vice president of production at 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Ladd, who had viewed a rough cut of a film called “American Graffiti” by an unknown director named George Lucas, was so excited by the movie that he jumped at the chance to do Lucas’ next project, a Western set in outer space.

“Star Wars,” of course, was an instant blockbuster that became the top-grossing film in history at the time of its release. “It was a $10-million movie with no stars and Laddie bowled it through all by himself,” recalled Jere Henshaw, former senior vice president at Fox. “And he did it over the objections of all the naysayers and snotty second-guessers.”

Ladd’s stock rose considerably in the afterglow of “Star Wars.” As studio president he went on to make another risky but highly successful science fiction thriller called “Alien.” Ladd also gained a reputation as a man with an eye for quality and an appreciation for strong female roles by approving “Julia,” “An Unmarried Woman” and “The Turning Point.”

But Ladd’s gambles didn’t always pay. His resume at Fox also included such bombs as the Burt Reynolds musical, “At Long Last Love,” and Elizabeth Taylor’s “The Blue Bird.”

But his reputation was strong enough that he received a lucrative independent production deal from Warner Bros. in 1979, when he resigned from Fox in a heated dispute with then-chairman Dennis Stanfill.

The Ladd Co., which occupied an entire building on Warner’s Burbank lot, would be remembered for one huge hit and one huge miss. The hit came to Ladd from his old friend Paul Maslansky, who was promoting a script about a goofy band of cops called “Police Academy.”

Ladd concedes surprise at the incredible popularity of “Police Academy” (there have now been six of them), but “The Right Stuff” surprised him even more.

One of the most critically heralded films of the 1980s, it opened to a huge premiere in Washington complete with a fly-by of jets across the Potomac and was attended by the astronauts portrayed in the film, as well as the nation’s top leaders. A Newsweek’s cover asked whether “The Right Stuff” could elect Sen. John Glenn to the White House. But in short order, both the movie and the senator’s presidential hopes went down to defeat.

By the end of 1983, the Ladd Co. was hemorrhaging. Estimates were that it had racked up more than $150 million in debts thanks to “The Right Stuff” and other flops.

But Ladd emerged from the wreckage with his reputation intact. He next landed at Kerkorian’s MGM/UA Entertainment Co., which was in constant turmoil.

Several writers and associates have described Ladd’s MGM tenure as nightmarish. Ladd struck pay dirt with “Moonstruck” and “A Fish Called Wanda,” but he also encountered constant management changes.

A well-known confrontation came when a furious Ladd, reportedly raising his voice for once in his life, cornered Kerkorian in an elevator over alleged misrepresentations made to Ladd.

Ladd finally left MGM in 1988, landing in Parretti’s camp a year later. Oddly, one of the great students of Hollywood finds himself working for someone unfamiliar with many of America’s most famous film talents. Ladd said Parretti, for example, did not even recognize Tom Selleck when he met him recently.

“He’s more interested in the bottom line,” Ladd said of his boss.