L.A.’s Cultural Giving Gap: Chasing a Hollywood Dream

In the 1970s, Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the cash-hungry Mark Taper Forum, delivered his best fund-raising pitch to a trio of potential Hollywood benefactors--television heavyweights Norman Lear, Grant Tinker and Lee Rich. But rather than eliciting offers of help, his plea triggered a litany of complaints about rising star salaries and production costs. “At the end of the meal,” he recalls, “I was ready to write them a check.”

The relationship between show business and high culture in L.A. remains a complicated one--undercut by differing rhythms and visions, plus a somewhat prickly past. Show-business executives say the arts leadership has been elitist, even anti-Semitic, in its dealings with the industry--a reflection of the city’s traditional divide between old guard and new wealth. The arts world counters that Hollywood is apathetic when it comes to nonprofit culture in its own backyard, an attitude particularly frustrating in light of the arts’ limited resources and the depth of the industry’s pockets.

Some moguls have been generous, such as David Geffen, who gave $5 million to UCLA’s Westwood Playhouse (now the Geffen Playhouse) and the same sum to the Museum of Contemporary Art (whose Temporary Contemporary became the Geffen Contemporary). But when it comes to hands-on personal involvement and leadership, arts officials agree, no one has claimed the mantle of Lew Wasserman, the former chairman and chief executive officer of MCA/Universal. For decades he bridged the gap between downtown and the Westside, helping Dorothy Chandler make the Music Center a reality and serving as the first president of the Center Theatre Group.

The lack of industry support has been a constant frustration for 40 years, acknowledges Peter Hemmings, general director of the Los Angeles Opera.

“The film business is like a sponge,” he says. “It draws in the talent developed in live theater, music and opera but, like TV, believes that the world only exists for itself.”

On the face of it, the two communities should be joined at the hip--codependent if aesthetically different members of the same clan.

In recent years, the Walt Disney Studios hired a host of Mark Taper Forum staff producers, stage managers and technical directors who have worked their way up the corporate ladder. A 20th Century Fox tribute was among this summer’s offerings at the Hollywood Bowl. And, at the Academy Awards, actors have begun to invoke the name of the beleaguered National Endowment for the Arts nearly as often as “Mom” and “God.”

Still, only five of the 62 governors of the Music Center have entertainment credentials--and four of them came aboard during the past year. And, while the Center Theatre Group and the Museum of Contemporary Art have better industry representation, only two members of the board of the L.A. Opera and one each at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the L.A. Philharmonic are from show business.

The controversial Walt Disney Concert Hall represents a microcosm of the problem. Though the Disney family came up with a $50-million grant to build the hall in 1987, no studios--including Disney--have committed money to date. Spaces in the facility are being named not for entertainment companies but for Arco, Wells Fargo Bank and Ralphs/Food 4 Less. (A spokesman for Disney said the company had no comment.)

“What’s missing is a charitable attitude,” says Davidson, now artistic director/producer of the Center Theatre Group, composed of the Taper and Ahmanson theaters. “The entertainment industry doesn’t think of itself in the same way that a B of A [Bank of America] or a Boeing might. Corporately, they don’t regard themselves as participants in the cultural life of the community.”

Marilyn McAvoy, the Taper’s director of development, has experienced this firsthand. “A very small portion of the $4 million we have to raise each year comes from entertainment folks,” she says. “Last year’s $340,000 grant from DreamWorks for new play development was our first show-business gift in the six-figure range.”

Industry higher-ups acknowledge the chasm but refuse to shoulder all the blame. The business, with its sizable Jewish population, has never been made to feel welcome by some patrons of the arts, they say--despite the fact that many in the arts community are Jewish as well. In the early 1960s, a civic leader was invited to a fund-raiser for the Music Center, then in the planning stage. Informed that each of the invitees--like himself--was Jewish, he chose to stay away. Even today, the Fraternity of Friends of the Music Center, a support group for the institution, unofficially alternates leadership between the “Westside” and “downtown.”

“Everyone wants entertainment people involved, but no one can figure out how to cross the long-standing gulf,” said Creative Artists Agency agent Bob Bookman, president of the Fraternity of Friends and a board member of the Music Center, the L.A. Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “It’s very complicated--the problems go back 75 years.”

When it comes to corporate giving, accusations of tightfistedness are way off the mark, entertainment insiders say. Though Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox--the only studios that agreed to respond to questions posed by The Times--declined to provide dollar totals, they reported that between 20% and 30% of their annual charitable donations are channeled toward the arts. The numbers would be higher, says Janice Pober, Sony Pictures vice president of corporate affairs, “if only we were approached.”

Power brokers in the arts community concede that, unfamiliar with industry practices and players, they’ve reined themselves in.

“We’d love to build stronger ties with the entertainment community,” says Connie Morgan, director of development for the L.A. Opera. “What we need is a road map.”

Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, recently approached French entertainment company Canal Plus about sponsoring a major architecture exhibition.

“We have to be proactive, to build bridges to the corporations,” he says. “There’s been a certain reluctance, a fear of rejection based on history.”

Though it’s premature to hail the dawn of a new era, there are recent rays of hope:

* The Ahmanson’s first official industry outreach--a Sept. 19 “Rent” benefit hosted by Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, John Travolta and Kelly Preston and sponsored by the Entertainment Council of the Center Theatre Group--took in $250,000 before expenses.

* The Mark Taper Forum is in serious negotiations to develop material for the Showtime cable network and, in November, will hold its annual New Work Festival at the new Falcon Theatre, built by producer-director Garry Marshall (“Pretty Woman”).

* A major studio is in discussions with the L.A. Opera about filming a production that could find its way to television.

* Paramount Pictures is planning to hold an April fund-raiser for the Music Center tied to the premiere of “The Odd Couple II.”

* Next spring, the L.A. Philharmonic is scheduled to initiate its Filmharmonic program featuring 16- to 20-minute movies co-created by film directors, including Renny Harlin (“Cliffhanger”) and Tim Burton (“Beetlejuice”) and composers such as Jerry Goldsmith (“Air Force One”).

* The Geffen Playhouse is organizing “industry nights” in an attempt to build its subscriber base.

Arts organizations always start out in a hole when it comes to charitable donations, says Jack Shakely, director of the California Community Foundation--a nonprofit umbrella organization administering gifts from 700 charities including those of Paul Newman, Johnny Depp and Annette Funicello. In 1995, the last year for which statistics are available, arts and culture received only 6.9% of all private-sector giving.

According to the American Assn. of Fundraising Council, most of these donations went to religion, which received 44%. The remainder was split among education (12.5%), health (8.8%), human resources (8.1%), public and social benefits (4.9%), environment and wildlife (2.8%) and international affairs (1.4%). And things are getting worse for the arts, a study just released by the NEA concludes. Between 1992 and 1995, contributions declined--a first in the 31 years that records have been kept.

“If you have $100 to hand out, do you give it to breast cancer or to a production of ‘Richard III’?” asks Gilbert Cates, a TV and film producer who serves as producing director of the Geffen Playhouse. “Our challenge is to identify areas of commonality and play to that. Self-interest is the grease that makes everything work.”

VISUAL ARTS

Tapping commonality and self-interest has given art institutions a leg up. MOCA’s “Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film Since 1945,” a 1996 movie-related art exhibition organized the museum’s former curator, Kerry Brougher, received a $100,000 donation from Universal Studios, as well as hefty personal contributions from producer Steve Tisch ($50,000), News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and Peter Chernin ($50,000), Viacom’s Jonathan Dolgen ($40,000) and New Line Cinema’s Michael Lynne ($25,000). CAA has held several MOCA fund-raisers. Director Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters”), Universal Studios President Ron Meyer and producer Dan Melnick (“L.A. Story”) are among those who have served on the board.

Though LACMA depends less on Hollywood support, galleries have been named for Geffen and board member Steve Martin, who donated $250,000 apiece. Among those contributing major works of art to the museum: director John Landis (“Trading Places”), TV producer Doug Cramer (“The Love Boat”) and former CAA President Michael Ovitz. Last year’s “Exiles and Emigres” exhibition was funded, in part, by the foundations of Steven Spielberg and Sharon Stone.

Providing Hollywood’s art collectors with guidance on purchases and painting conservation has been an effective means of engendering fealty, says LACMA President Andrea Rich--far more so than the short-lived Entertainment Alliance, an outreach program set up in 1985 to raise money for acquisitions. Though Hollywood is a generous community, she points out, it tends to support its own.

“Entertainment industry charities are insular and self-referred,” Rich says. “Power brokers get behind a cause or two or three and get their buddies to chair an event. Unlike other cities, power and prestige don’t derive from sitting on the board of the opera but by how many stars they can bring in.”

PERFORMING ARTS

L.A. Opera and the Philharmonic are taking baby steps--the former seeking to get some of its productions on screen, the latter hoping the 1989 hire of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the recent appointment of managing director Willem Wijnbergen, both 39, will lure the increasingly youth-oriented entertainment world.

“The industry’s never made a connection with the Philharmonic,” says Ernest Fleischmann, the group’s retiring managing director. “In the early ‘70s, I naively tried to put together an event with the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] in which Oscar-winning composers would conduct. Just getting permission to put statuettes at either side of the stage was like getting the crown jewels out of Britain.”

The good news, Fleischmann says, is that the East-West schism is beginning to erode: “There’s been a perception that the Music Center has been supported by Hancock Park and Pasadena--and, though slightly exaggerated, it’s true that the Jews weren’t very involved. That’s all changing, however. Maybe half my board is Jewish.”

Davidson is more successful than most at currying favor with Hollywood. Even so, it’s one step forward, two steps back. Between 1983 and 1986, the now-defunct Taper Media Alliance developed plays and writers that could make the transition to film. The reality, however, didn’t pan out. Actors asked to be let out of their theater commitments if a film came up--and playwrights were reluctant to come back.

This summer, film producer and former studio executive Sid Ganis, co-chair of the Center Theatre Group’s Entertainment Council, encountered resistance working the phones for the “Rent” benefit.

“In such a fast-paced industry, there’s zero awareness of the sweat and money it takes to get something onstage,” he said. “We have to get show-business executives out of their own little worlds. That means turning the big, bad Music Center--a place the so-called Westside crowd finds daunting and imposing--into the friendliest, hippest artistic venue in town.”

Part of her mandate is to rope Hollywood in, acknowledges Andrea Van de Kamp, chairwoman of the Music Center since June 1996. After seeking advice from her friend Sherry Lansing, chairman of Paramount’s motion picture group, she named Lansing, International Creative Management President Jim Wiatt, producer-director Lili Fini Zanuck (“Rush”) and Sony Pictures Entertainment Executive Vice President Ken Williams to the board.

Wiatt says he was unaware of how marginalized Hollywood had been in Music Center affairs.

“Purposefully or not, we were nowhere to be seen,” he says. “We probably took for granted that the Music Center is a well-funded operation when, in fact, the New York arts scene is far more organized and aggressive. Except for small yearly sums from the Music Center’s fund-raising arm, each of the [resident] companies must fend for itself.”

No one questions that some progress has been made. For starters, the Entertainment Council of the Center Theatre Group has ballooned from 30 to 130 in recent years. ICM Chairman Jeff Berg, actors Tony Danza and Sally Field and Universal Motion Picture Group Chairman Casey Silver are among those contributing $1,000 a year for new play development--and their pick of choice seats. For those who remember the slights of the past, however, it’s a case of too little, too late.

“The Music Center was built by an elite for an elite having nothing to do with serving the needs of the general population,” one insider says. “No one gave a damn about the industry until they realized its firepower. But entertainment people are on their own planet . . . you’ve got to get in your rocket ship and go there.”

DISNEY HALL

Van de Kamp, for one, is on the launching pad--set to approach Hollywood about contributing to Disney Hall. If some are critical of the fact that Hollywood has been slow to chip in, the Music Center executive is not. When the initial grant was awarded 10 years ago, she explains, everyone assumed it would cover the costs. Now that between $50 million and $100 million still must be raised (depending on who’s doing the accounting), she’s taking her case to the WaltDisney Studios, whose hoped-for contribution, she says, should “loosen the others up.”

There are some, however, who view Disney Hall as a microcosm--evidence of Hollywood’s civic tunnel vision. That point is underscored by the composition of Los Angeles Business Advisors, a group of 24 CEOs helping to shape the city that has taken a special interest in raising funds for the concert hall. In what many have called a company town, not a single member hails from the entertainment industry.

Sam Bell, president of the group, says he has direct correspondence with entertainment CEOs in the last few months and is confident they will come aboard. “You can always drag up the rumors and dragons of the past, but this is a new day,” he says.

Stephanie Barron, LACMA’s vice president of education and public programs, is less optimistic: “Hollywood floats above most civic causes because its market isn’t L.A. but the world. There’s less local identification since it’s an international brand.”

When theater and opera director Peter Sellars (“Nixon in China”) staged the citywide, multidisciplinary L.A. Festival in 1990, it drew tepid industry attendance and no entertainment dollars--except for a donation from Barry Diller’s 20th Century Fox.

“Show business is focused on day-to-day survival and getting something tangible in return for investments,” Sellars says. “Like raising children, the arts require a longer-term approach--payoff may not come for generations.”

Los Angeles’ geography compounds the problem, veterans in the arts world say.

“Our 5 o’clock rush hour starts at 3 and ends at 8,” says Michael Blachley, director of the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts. “Getting anywhere is an ordeal.”

Adds Elizabeth Connell, public relations manager for of the L.A. Opera: “Stars who’ve arranged for tickets often call an hour before an event wondering how to get downtown.”

The unpredictable hours and hairpin turns in show business, moreover, discourage subscription buying and cross-pollination between the arts. After getting Herb Ross (“The Turning Point”) to direct “La Boheme” in 1993, the L.A. Opera went after others such as John Schlesinger (“Midnight Cowboy”) and Bruce Beresford (“Driving Miss Daisy”). But since the Opera requires commitments three years in advance, each declined. Davidson faces a similar hurdle signing a star for the last play of the Ahmanson’s current season. “Everyone is hedging their bets,” he says. “I can’t get a contract today for next June.”

Even so, entertainment insiders say, they’ve stood up and been counted where the arts are concerned.

“Over the last five years, we’ve channeled some of our social service activities to the arts,” says Lisa Paulsen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Industry Foundation/Permanent Charities. The fund-raising umbrella has given out more than $150 million since it was established in 1942. September’s “Tribute to Style” raised more than $1 million for the California State Summer School for the Arts and MOCA’s community and educational outreach programs.

On the corporate side, the industry has also marshaled its forces: Sony not only makes an annual donation to LACMA and the Museum of Television and Radio but recently awarded L.A. Theatre Works $10,000 to put their radio-play cassettes in schools. Walt Disney founded CalArts, which with studio support has become a prime training ground for up-and-coming animators. Time Warner sponsored MOCA’s “Art and Film” exhibition and is a founding sponsor of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts.

Fox Broadcasting and the Fox Studios just came up with a $100,000 endowment for an artists-in-residence program at six L.A. public schools. And DreamWorks’ $340,000 gift to the Taper was noteworthy in that there was no quid pro quo--unlike Spielberg’s controversial 1994 deal with Manhattan’s Playwrights Horizons in which he paid a commission for a first look at material that could be developed into films.

Ticket sales cover only part of their budget, arts officials note. The Philharmonic has to raise $5 million and L.A. Opera $6.8 million a year just to make ends meet. NEA funding to most Music Center institutions, moreover, has been cut by about two-thirds. Whether Hollywood has an obligation to pick up the slack is a matter of debate.

“It’s not carved in stone that every artist needs to support every art,” says actor Charlton Heston, who is a member of the Center Theatre Group board. “There’s a marvelous Shakespeare theater in Alabama that’s more important to me than Disney Hall. And I suspect that any effort on the part of the opera to build up entertainment industry support will have limited success. Disney’s not going to make a series on the “Ring” Cycle any time soon--and all giving stems from self-interest.”

Maybe so, says Serena Tripi, general manager of the Southern California Theater Assn., which just presented a financially disastrous summer season of dance at the Music Center. But “self-interest” can be defined in a lot of ways.

“No offense to Arnold Schwarzenegger,” she said, “but the next generation should grow up with the arts. Culture, after all, isn’t ‘The Terminator’ . . . which, unfortunately, is all young people know. What they pay Tom Cruise for one movie would bring 20 dance companies to town.”