She’s the Boss

Regarding “A Look Inside the Studio Gates,” Hilary de Vries’ interview with film producer Dawn Steel (Aug. 29):

Years ago I sat in a doctor’s office reading an article in the old New West magazine on “The 10 Worst Bosses in L.A.” Steel was high on the list because of her penchant for slamming doors in executives’ faces and for screaming obscenities at her secretaries.

It takes Steel’s 6-year-old to let her in on the fact that she doesn’t act like an adult. If the stories are, in fact, true, it is truly infantile behavior that Steel exhibited, and infantile thinking for her now to explain away her actions by claiming that she is “demanding and an absolute perfectionist to work for” and by whining about her secretaries, “How come that never gets discussed--that some of them weren’t any good?”

Steel represents everything I detest about the way Hollywood thinks about itself; how being “temperamental” is considered a mark of some kind of artistic genius, instead of the clear indication that a person has simply not grown up. There is no excuse for this kind of behavior from an adult.

SUE THOMPSON

Glendale

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Does Steel’s definition of a good secretary include the ability to withstand excessive, unwarranted and often public verbal abuse? The only thing I “learned” from her office is that I want to be Sherry Lansing when I grow up.

DONNA K. LANGLEY

Los Angeles