A Messy and Drawn-Out Fight at Columbia : Entertainment: Its chairman appears to be fighting for his dignity as much as his job. The battle has paralyzed the studio.

Seated in his sparsely furnished conference room last week, awaiting word of his fate, Columbia Pictures Chairman Frank Price looked more like a prisoner than a powerful studio boss.

Fellow executives were avoiding his telephone calls. There were even unfounded reports that his doors had been padlocked, a ritual that often signals a changing of the guard in Hollywood.

An angry Price, who had finally abandoned all pretext of adhering to the company line that all was well, insisted privately that he would not go down without a fight. But with everything but the trappings of power peeling away, Price was already consigned to a sort of executive purgatory.

After serving just 18 months as Columbia’s boss--the average amount of time that a studio chief gets to prove his worth in Hollywood--Price still declines to publicly discuss his status, though he has made no secret of his unhappiness. He is expected to receive his walking papers any day. Waiting in the wings is former Warner Bros. executive Mark Canton.

The Price episode has been unusually drawn out and messy, even by Hollywood bloodletting standards. Accompanied by rampant rumors, it has paralyzed Columbia and deeply embarrassed Sony Corp., which has been trying to shake an image as a poor manager since purchasing Columbia and TriStar Pictures for $3.4 billion in 1989.

The struggle also illustrates the pre-eminent role of ego and personality in Hollywood decision making: Price has enjoyed a fairly successful run at Columbia, but his close-to-the-vest, conservative style has alienated him from many of the industry’s power brokers.

Sony Pictures Chairman Peter Guber--not known for being confrontational--has come under particularly strong criticism for allowing the Price controversy to fester for so long. Some now contend, though, that Price is in the driver’s seat, trying to dictate the terms of his own departure.

Negotiators hope to resolve the conflict as early as today, but concede that further stalls still could occur. Those working on the deal include such Hollywood heavyweights as superagent Michael Ovitz, lawyers Jake Bloom and Barry Hirsch, Sony USA’s Michael Schulhof, Guber and Sony Pictures President and Chief Operating Officer Alan J. Levine.

People close to the talks expect that Price--who appears to be fighting for his dignity as much as his job--will end up with a lucrative producing deal or a position in the Sony Pictures hierarchy.

The official response from Sony is “no comment.” But for months the plan to move Canton into Price’s post has been one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets.

The rumors, fed by some of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives, began shortly after Price came aboard and have gradually gained momentum ever since.

Some say that Price angered such longtime Columbia power brokers as producer Ray Stark with his management style--especially when he passed on “Barbarians at the Gate,” a film about the bidding wars for RJR Nabisco that is a pet project of Stark’s. Others say that Price was always regarded as a stand-in, since Guber and former Sony Co-chairman Jon Peters had long favored Canton as their first choice to run Columbia.

The 61-year-old Price--who headed Columbia once before, from 1978 to 1983, and then ran Universal Pictures, as well--has frequently been criticized in his current Columbia stint for his tortoise-like management style. Canton, 42, is characterized as someone more attuned to the go-go style of the new Sony brass.

Guber and Peters are also close friends of Canton, who worked with them on the mega-hit “Batman” at Warner. But Canton’s transfer to Columbia is seen as a logistical and legal nightmare, since Sony had been forced to make an estimated $500 million in concessions to Warner when it hired away Guber and Peters about two years ago.

As rumors of a possible deal intensified last June, Warner at first indicated that it would force Canton to honor the 16 months remaining on his contract. But by August, Warner executives had entered into talks on letting him go, apparently deciding that Canton already had one foot out the door.

Privately, Price--who has spoken to journalists but offered only limited public comment about his status--rebuffed the talk about Canton at first. As the currents of change swirled around him in the early weeks, he seemed unable to find his balance.

The patrician studio chief attended an upper management retreat at Guber’s home in Aspen, Colo., where the subject of his future was oddly ignored. He laid out his plans to attend this week’s Tokyo Film Festival, where he is scheduled to meet with some of Sony’s Japan-based executives for the first time.

But as the gossip mill continued to churn out rumors of his imminent ouster, Price finally started to question why no one at Sony had come to his defense. In one angry telephone call last week to studio publicists, he threatened his employers with legal action if the talk against him continued.

Syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith took note of Price’s plight in two recent articles, gushingly characterizing him as the greatest studio executive since Louis B. Mayer.

In fact, Price has enjoyed some success over the past year. Columbia distributed one of the summer’s biggest moneymakers, “City Slickers,” from Castle Rock Entertainment. Price also released “Boyz N The Hood,” a surprise hit by rookie filmmaker John Singleton. His “Return to the Blue Lagoon” was an embarrassing flop, but hardly qualified as a “Heaven’s Gate.”

Price--who has always been drawn to more mature films and who prides himself on his relationship with top-notch directors--has subsequently given the go-ahead to such promising projects as Penny Marshall’s “A League of Their Own”; Rob Reiner’s “A Few Good Men,” with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula.”

But the quality of Price’s film slate offers little comfort to producers at Columbia, since new studio bosses rarely have much enthusiasm for projects approved by their predecessors.

In past weeks, some executives have taken to referring to Price in the past tense. One producer brazenly sent out a pitch with a note saying, “Good luck with the new regime.” Others have openly courted Canton, who conducts much of his business from his beachfront home in Malibu.

In his lonely conference room, surrounded by a few awards and a reproduction of a note from legendary director Frank Capra, Price--looking physically frayed--roller-coastered from feelings of rage to quiet acceptance of his certain ouster.

The one thing he made perfectly clear was that he would not go quietly.

Hollywood Reshuffle Frank Price, 61

Named Columbia Pictures chairman in April, 1990. Previously headed Columbia and Universal. Former TV writer who specialized in Westerns.

Career Hits: “Boyz N The Hood,” Tootsie,” “Out of Africa,” “Gandhi,” “Ghostbusters”

Misses: “Howard the Duck,” “Legal Eagles,” “Return to Blue Lagoon”

Mark Canton, 42

Expected to be named chairman of Columbia Pictures this week. Previously served as executive vice president of Warner Bros.

Career Hits: “Batman,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Lethal Weapon 2,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”

Misses: “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Nothing but Trouble.”