Remembering Dawn Steel, a Tough Pioneer

For the many in Hollywood who didn’t know her well, Dawn Steel, who died Saturday of cancer, will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the toughest and meanest executives the entertainment industry ever knew.

But from our first meeting I had a different view.

When I was first to interview Steel in her new role as president of Columbia Pictures back in the late 1980s, a close friend of hers advised me that the executive known for her harsh treatment of employees also was her own harshest critic. The friend said Steel recognized her own shortcomings and was far harder on herself than anyone else could ever be. Presumably, it was intense self-doubt that, at least in part, drove her so hard to achieve power and success in Hollywood.

The friend also suggested that few really knew that Steel was just “a scared little girl from Great Neck,” and that beneath the tough exterior breathed someone who was deeply vulnerable and insecure.

I guess that’s why I always viewed Steel with a somewhat sympathetic eye. Whenever we met or talked on a professional basis, I always saw a little girl behind the Armani facade.

It’s easy to become jaded toward the ruthless corporate players you cover as an entertainment journalist. These people make an obscene amount of money. They often abuse their power. They’re notorious for the way they try to manipulate those around them and think nothing of lying as they look you dead in the eye.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember or appreciate that beneath their slick exteriors, these are people who suffer the same pain, frustrations and insecurities that all of us do.

When I was a cub reporter at a Hollywood trade paper and wrote what Steel viewed as a critical article about her impending demise at Columbia--saying her new bosses had “clipped her wings”--Steel went ballistic.

The day the piece appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, she sent by messenger a handwritten note on her personally embossed stationary that read: “Dear Claudia, F--- You. Love, Dawn.”

The note was pointed. I already knew this was someone who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind or mince words. But I hadn’t anticipated that this was someone who also desperately wanted to be loved and approved of. And, who had a sense of humor about herself--an attribute that many in Hollywood who take themselves and their jobs so seriously sorely lack.

This weekend, Hollywood not only lost one of its most influential figures--a path breaker for women--but one of its bravest, both professionally and personally.

Known for her strength, tenacity and resilience, Steel is the last person I’d expect to have been mowed down by a fatal illness. This is someone who survived the rigors of a business that is cutthroat, high-pressured and unhealthily consuming, particularly for those at the top.

She had the added pressure of being the first woman to rise so high in a male-dominated industry, running one of Hollywood’s few major movie studios.

But instead of her toughness being considered a natural, necessary tool of survival in a rugged corporate environment, as it is for any male executive, she was endlessly criticized and branded in the media as abrasive and callous.

Now she finally is receiving credit for possessing some of the qualities that helped distinguish her as an industry leader--namely her creative passion and instinct for popular movies.

That’s not to say Steel didn’t have a ferocious temper, fueled by an underlying anger, or that she wasn’t at times emotionally abusive to those who worked with and for her, as many publicly attested over the years. There was a reason she was dubbed by some in the industry as “Steely Dawn” and in 1988 appeared on the cover of California magazine as Hollywood’s “Queen of Mean,” in an article about “bosses from hell.”

But it’s unfair that Steel was better known for her foul mouth, for hurling objects at her assistants and for screaming at employees or filmmakers than she was for her professional and personal accomplishments. In some ways, she never received due recognition for her achievements as head of Columbia and before that as president of production at Paramount Pictures. At Paramount, where she rose up the ranks from marketing to production, she helped develop such movies as “Flashdance,” “Top Gun,” “Fatal Attraction” and “The Accused,” and later at Columbia, she oversaw “Awakenings,” “Ghostbusters 2,” “Flatliners” and “Casualties of War,” among others.

In her later role as an independent producer, one of Steel’s successes was the surprise hit “Cool Runnings,” an offbeat film about the real-life triumphs of the underdog Olympic Jamaican bobsled team that struck a chord with audiences.

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Steel was tough all right. You had to be to sit in a room with the likes of her former Paramount bosses Barry Diller, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg and have the guts to openly disagree about a movie campaign.

She struggled with having to be “one of the boys,” despite how well she knew how to walk the walk and talk the talk. She was allowed into the club and was perfectly comfortable voicing her strong and sometimes different opinions in a room full of powerful men. She never quite learned how to strike a balance between playing in the boys’ club and being herself.

Steel was every bit as driven and ambitious as the next person in an industry teeming with people consumed by the business, who have a distorted sense of self-importance and entitlement, and who often sacrifice their personal well-being in their quest for power. But friends say she also searched to get more out of life and attain a deeper understanding of herself. She was constantly looking for inner peace and a level of spirituality that seemed to elude her.

Her close friend David Geffen said it was motherhood and the love Steel felt for her daughter that made her feel more whole.

“She told me 3 1/2 months ago . . . that in retrospect, if she knew then [when she was at the height of her career as a studio executive] what she knew now, she would have had more children.”

The same kind of toughness and bravery that Steel exhibited in her professional life would serve her well when she faced the biggest personal struggle of her life: fighting a malignant brain tumor.

Paramount Pictures Chairman Sherry Lansing--a close friend and another powerful figure who led the way for women in Hollywood’s executive ranks--calls Steel “the most courageous person I’ve ever known.” Lansing, whose own mother died of cancer and who is very active raising money for cancer research, said Monday, “I’ve seen a lot of people fight this disease. And, I’ve never seen anyone fight harder and be braver than Dawn. Up until the end, she kept saying, ‘I’m going to beat this.’ ”

Once a month Lansing and Steel would meet for a Saturday lunch at a small Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills called Balducci’s, wearing their sweats and no makeup, to talk about life.

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“We’d have a bottle of wine, some Italian food and we’d talk about what was important and what wasn’t important for three or four hours,” recalled Lansing. “We talked about how there was more to life than our business. About what we were going to do in our old age. She talked about living on a ranch in Oregon and giving back to society. . . . We used to talk about our families. . . . And, we never talked about the business.”

When I asked Lansing what can be learned from Steel’s experience, she said, “That we’re all so fragile and we all better learn that life is not about the grosses.”

Personally, I too hope Steel’s death will be a wake-up call to those in Hollywood who think they’re invincible, or who think their film’s opening weekend grosses are worth lying about, or that their position on the latest industry power list is life-threateningly critical.

Months ago, I called Steel after hearing from a friend how poorly she was doing.

To my surprise, Steel got on the line right away. “Hi, Bud!,” she said in her usual upbeat manner.

When I asked how she was doing, she told me she never felt better and that she was sure she was going to beat this thing. She said she and her husband, producer Chuck Roven, were planning several vacations and that as soon as she came back to town, she wanted to get our families together.

Even though I knew how sick she was, part of me wanted to believe that some way, somehow, this powerful person would be able to survive. And it made me think again, as I do now, about that little girl from Great Neck.