The Studio Shuffle : Dawn Steel

Then: President of Columbia Pictures, 1987-1989.

Now: An independent producer, who along with her husband Charles Roven and their partner Robert Cavallo recently formed Atlas Entertainment in alliance with Turner Pictures.

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In September, 1989, then-President of Columbia Pictures Dawn Steel was invited by Michael Ovitz to a party celebrating the opening of Creative Artists Agency’s new headquarters in Beverly Hills. It happened to be the same day that Sony Corp. bought Columbia for $3.4 billion.

“I floated into the building. I was happy to be invited . . . to be sitting at the table with (director) Ivan Reitman and Tom Cruise. Haute Hollywood was there. And I thought, ‘Look at me, Ma, look where I am.’ . . . My stock was worth more money than I ever thought I’d make (reportedly $7 million). I was the belle of the ball. I had everything I wanted.

“Except what was going on inside me was that I was unbearably unhappy. I hated my job. I hated working the hours. I said, ‘Here I am on top of the world, and yet I ache for my daughter and my husband and a more simple life--a more private life.’ ”

Steel, now 48, her famous mane of hair cropped, seems genuinely more at ease today, wearing blue jeans and boots, walking a reporter around the set of her current production, “Angus,” than she once did sitting in the president’s chair at Columbia, clad in her Armani suits, spending as much time defending herself against bad press as she did greenlighting movies.

“I’m a happier person, and a happier person is a nicer person,” says the woman who was on a cover of California magazine in 1988 as one of the state’s worst bosses.

Steel will tell you that while she was “unbearably unhappy” in her executive role, the transition from studio head to producer was hell on her ego.

“You go from 200 calls to 10, and mostly if I didn’t initiate a call, there wouldn’t be one coming back to me.” Even more hurtful was being let down. “Two people--a director and an agent, who I thought were very good friends--I never heard from again,” she says.

Steel, the first female studio head, says, “Photographers would yell, ‘Dawn, Dawn.’ I was a one-name person, like Cher. And I remember the first event I went to after leaving Columbia and no photographer yelled my name. . . . They were on to other people.

“I was Dawn Steel--comma--vice president of merchandising; Dawn Steel--comma--president of production; Dawn Steel--comma--president of Columbia. Then all of a sudden it was just Dawn Steel--comma--nothing.”

Steel came to Hollywood from Long Island, N.Y., in 1978 and rose through the ranks of Paramount Pictures before becoming head of Columbia in 1987. Success was undeniably seductive. She recalls driving up to the gates of Columbia her first day on the job when the guard pulled out a picture of her so he would be sure to recognize the studio’s new president. “He looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Miss Steel, welcome to Columbia.’ I was so moved by it.”

With top stars, filmmakers and politicians clamoring for her support, Steel says, the job only grew more enticing.

“I’m not going to tell you it’s not heady to be treated with respect,” she said, recalling how in her first six months “I had meetings with people I had never met before, like Dustin Hoffman.” But after 2 1/2 years in the job, and success with such movies as “Ghostbusters II” and “Awakenings,” Steel says, “The higher up I got, the more . . . it was about corporate budgets and unhappy producers who didn’t like their parking spaces.”

In her trailer at El Segundo High School--the backdrop for “Angus,” a family movie about a 14-year-old misfit--Steel says, “In so many ways I feel far more like a winner in this Winnebago than I did sitting in that great office as head of Columbia. Finally, I feel as powerful and important as I need to feel.”