Mr. Producer

Elizabeth Jensen’s paean to miniseries producer Robert Halmi Sr. (“He Has a Most Storied Life,” Oct. 31) surprised me with the accuracy of “he bluffed his way into a full-time career as a producer, starting with bread-and-butter two-hour TV movies.” It’s true. I was there.

Leon Memoli, a New York colleague of mine in the William Morris Agency, called me at the West Coast office and asked that I meet “our client,” a New York documentary producer whose only claim to fame was a syndicated show about animals.

Unlike today, where syndication dollars can mean billions, in the ‘70s syndication was the absolute nadir in the hierarchy of TV and consequently there was no one in the Beverly Hills office who would give Halmi the attention he demanded. Would I, therefore, do Memoli a favor and steer Halmi to meetings at NBC and CBS?

On the drive to NBC, Halmi told me that “we” were pitching the incredible story of Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, a Roman Catholic priest and fierce opponent of communism who had been arrested by the Hungarian government and, when put on trial in 1949, confessed to crimes of treason he apparently did not commit. I innocently asked who would write it. In a Hungarian-accented boom: “The greatest writers alive today. Arthur Miller . . . Paddy Chayefsky . . . Reginald Rose!” I worried about the story’s accessibility to NBC’s audience. I need not. Halmi, whom no one in Burbank knew at the time, dazzled the two execs who sat at our feet. We went to the parking lot with a deal.

At CBS, our next meeting, Halmi successfully pitched a novel he loved: “The Photographer,” by Pierre Boulle, who wrote “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Planet of the Apes.” As we exited the lot, Halmi asked me to call the publisher about the rights: “I’m sure it’s available, but it’s been a while since I checked.”

We learned a few days later that not only was “The Photographer” not available, but the film version was in production in Europe as he was pitching his heart out.

Oh, the Mindszenty script got written (by Bob Thompson, not Miller or Chayefsky), but the network passed due to the paucity of American characters in the story.

While Halmi had made friends at CBS and NBC, it would still take him two years before he would make his first television movie. The rest, as they say, is history.

ARTHUR AXELMAN

Bell Canyon