Hollywood May Have Been Fatal for Begelman : Death: Faced with financial setbacks and a youth-oriented industry, the former film mogul gave up the fight.

Even for the rich and famous, Hollywood can be a rough town. Money, power and status come at a price.

For David Begelman, the price was his life.

Struggling desperately to maintain a lavish lifestyle in the face of business setbacks, and trying to start over at the age of 73, the former super-agent and scandal-ridden Columbia Pictures president decided to bail out. On the heels of the 1994 bankruptcy of his Gladden Entertainment production company, the impending imprisonment of his former partner Bruce McNall and failed attempts to get a new venture off the ground, he apparently put a gun to his head in a Century City hotel room Monday night.

While Begelman’s end was more dramatic than most, his struggles were emblematic of Hollywood as a whole. It’s a society built on external validation, where the perception of success and the trappings that come with it must be maintained at any cost.

Add to these pressures the backlash against aging in a youth-oriented industry, where plastic surgery is de rigueur and the fast track is dominated by the thirtysomething pack.

Even though he was financially strapped, Begelman lived in a Beverly Hills mansion. He drove a Rolls-Royce and hired pianists and the best caterers at the parties he threw.

“He was very proud,” said Danny Welkes, Begelman’s best friend of 40 years and the one who identified his body. “A lot of people that go through adversities downsize their lifestyle. But he lived on a high plane until the end. You could never pick up a check with him, whether it was a party of two or 200. And he was not about to move into a two-bedroom apartment.”

Getting older affected Begelman’s worldview, said a longtime family friend.

“Lining up money isn’t easy, particularly at his age,” the friend observed. “David never came to grips with that reality . . . or maybe he came to grips with it and chose not to challenge it anymore.”

According to his longtime friend Freddie Fields, who partnered with him in the agency business in the 1960s, Begelman had succeeded in lining up three partners for his new company, but he lacked the major financing required to turn out a slate of films. He was said to have set up an important meeting with backers on the very afternoon he died. It is speculated that the session did not go well.

All of Begelman’s troubles came to a head Monday.

At 8:30 p.m., Begelman placed a call--likely the last of his life--to Welkes from his Century Plaza & Tower hotel room, where he was registered under an assumed name.

Ostensibly phoning to ask a favor, he was really saying goodby.

He told Welkes he was sending over a pouch with some letters that he wanted him to mail. One addressed to his wife Annabelle was of particular concern.

“I knew there was real trouble,” said Welkes, demanding to know Begelman’s whereabouts. “He said, ‘I just wanted to tell you I love you very much.’ Then, he hung up.”

Welkes immediately called Annabelle Begelman, who was “plenty worried” about her husband, who had failed to check in as usual after leaving the house at 11 a.m. She began calling hotels, inquiring about guests who had checked in without credit cards. A group of friends, including Welkes and actress Suzanne Pleshette, joined her in the search.

They narrowed their search down to the Century Plaza, which not only had two rooms reserved on a cash basis, but was close to his office.

“David’s life was in chaos, and he was in a fragile state of mind,” said Pleshette, who had known Begelman since she was 3 years old. “Though he never mentioned suicide, there was no way to sidestep that possibility. Even if we were wrong, we had to pursue it.”

Pleshette, Welkes and another friend, Sandy Bennett, notified hotel security staff, who discovered Begelman. Then they called Annabelle, who wanted to see her husband one last time.

The package Begelman alluded to in his phone conversation was never delivered, but retained by police in the hotel lobby. In his letter to Welkes, Begelman revealed the depth of his despair.

“He said that he was sorry, that things were getting too rough and he had to call it quits,” Welkes said.

Even at the pinnacle of his career 18 years ago, however, Begelman was functioning on the edge, exhibiting signs of the self-destructiveness that would ultimately do him in.

As one of the industry’s top talent agents in the 1960s, his lavish lifestyle mirrored that of his high-powered clients--including Judy Garland, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Limousines, first-class travel and lavish expense-account meals were the order of the day.

In the mid-1970s, as president of Columbia Pictures, the Bronx-born Begelman was pulling down a salary of $300,000 a year, plus significant stock options, and was heralded as the savior of a studio facing imminent bankruptcy.

Then the boom fell--an outgrowth, his therapist later said, of a lifelong feeling of unworthiness. Begelman was caught embezzling company funds, which included $40,000 worth of forged checks to an actor, a director and a restaurateur. He survived, to people’s amazement, going on to head MGM/UA and to produce movies after that. But “The Begelman Affair” was his fall from grace--the self-defining act of an otherwise illustrious career.

Begelman, industry observers say, was a vestige of the old Hollywood--a time when movies and movie making had a very different cast.

“Making movies, not keeping your job, was the priority in those days,” says producer Rosilyn Heller, a production executive at Columbia under Begelman. “We did one-of-a-kind movies instead of sequels and remakes. Under David, you never had millions of dollars in abandonment costs” for projects that never got made.

But this was the same man whose demons ultimately drove him to throw it all away.

“He disappointed too many people,” said a highly placed industry source. “He had a big brain and was a big thinker but just didn’t get it. It was a tragic, misspent life.”