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    Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul
    Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul
    Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul

    By Rocky Lang

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    About this ebook

    New Book Exposes Inner Workings, Wild Behavior of Hollywood

    What really goes on behind the veil of celebrity? Rocky Lang, who grew up in the 90210 as the son of mega-producer and screen disaster master Jennings Lang (Earthquake, the Airport movies and 35 other features), dishes all in his new book, Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul. Raised around the likes of Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Walter Matthau and Billy Wilder, Lang serves up—in self-deprecating style—a genuine insider’s collection of bizarre, sometimes ribald, often hilarious and always surprising true tales from the rarefied world of Hollywood, such as:

    Finding himself a pawn in the brutal creative war between Dustin Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack during the making of the classic comedy Tootsie.

    Spying on Olivia Newton-John being photographed nude in his family’s backyard pool, and the “breast-beating” he endured after getting caught in the act.

    Discovering the scandal-sheet affair between his dad and screen siren Joan Bennett—along with the truth behind his father getting shot in the crotch by Bennett’s husband.

    Having Steven Spielberg as an “older brother” before and after the famous filmmaker’s meteoric rise.

    Being told by his dad that writer Gore Vidal offered to buy young Rocky for $1 million.

    Learning his mother had slept with Ronald Reagan, plus the outrageous nickname the future U.S. president had.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRocky Lang
    Release dateOct 17, 2014
    ISBN9781310629686
    Growing Up Hollywood: Tales from the Son of a Hollywood Mogul
    Author

    Rocky Lang

    Rocky Lang produced Ridley Scott's film White Squall, the Emmy Award-winning CBS mini-series Titanic, and a host of other features, television series, and documentaries. Also a film and television writer who has worked with nearly every major studio and network in Hollywood, Lang lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

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      Book preview

      Growing Up Hollywood - Rocky Lang

      INTRODUCTION

      On the warm New Jersey evening of June 10, 1948, about ten years before I was born, my father, Jennings Lang, was ringside for the third of three historic world championship middleweight fights between Rocky Graziano, arguably the best knockout artist in history, and Tony Zale, the Man of Steel from Gary, Indiana. The first two bouts had been a virtual bloodbath, with both fighters bashing the crap out of each other.

      Dad had taken the train from Penn Station to the gorgeous city of Newark—home to pretty much nothing—and walked the short distance to Rupert Stadium (also known as Ironbound). From his seat just outside the ropes, he watched the fighters battle into the third round and then… WHAM! BAM! and SLAM! Rocky was a goner, not only knocked out, but also knocked out of the ring and right into my father’s lap. Dad stared down at a face that looked as if it had been run through a Cuisinart on chop-chop speed. It was an image he would never forget.

      A decade later, on January 11, 1958, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in downtown Los Angeles, my mother spit out a 6 lb. 14 oz. pile of chopped meat otherwise known as me. As my father was a major player in Hollywood, he asked Chasen’s, a West Hollywood restaurant he frequented with the celebrated likes of Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, and Joan Crawford, to cater my mother’s hospital room with fine food for all. He loved the chili, as did Elizabeth Taylor, who in the early 1960s had it flown halfway across the world to the set of Cleopatra.

      While others ate, my mother, Monica Lewis, a star of stage and screen who broke into the business singing for Benny Goodman, named me Andrew. HOLD THE PHONE, my father said spinning around and looking at my bloody face. You can call him anything you want, but he’s going to be Rocky to me. He looks like he just got pummeled by Tony Zale.

      And so my journey began as Rocky Lang, the son of a Hollywood mogul—a man who for more than thirty years was a top decision-maker, production executive, and profit-driver for MCA/Universal. I was part of an exciting time not only in Hollywood, but also in the history of our country. I ate peanuts with presidents and I shot pool with Steven Spielberg and played tennis with Clint Eastwood. I went to football games with Walter Matthau, made a movie with Dustin Hoffman, nearly got beaten up by Bill Murray, and made a few of my own movies along the way.

      Our lives are like chapters broken into pieces of time that define who we are at various points. The stories contained in the following pages are in no particular order but highlight some of the unusual experiences I have had and the fascinating, and famous, people I have met along the way. In some cases, I have elected to change the names. The details are presented as vividly as I remember them.

      Rocky Lang

      Toluca Lake, California

      October 2014

      MY MOTHER SAID

      YOUR FATHER WAS SHOT

      IN THE BALLS

      His words ricocheted across the playground blacktop with deafening clarity. My sixth grade best friend, Andy Stewart, was racing towards me yelling at the top of his lungs: HEY, LANG… MY MOTHER SAID YOUR FATHER WAS SHOT IN THE BALLS! He yelled again. HEY, LANG! MY MOTHER SAID YOUR FATHER WAS SHOT IN THE BALLS!

      Then there was silence—the type of silence you remember when you awake in the middle of the night and you are waiting for the monsters to come out. Kids stopped playing, basketballs stopped bouncing, and Mrs. Cohen, the playground monitor, dropped her whistle and locked her disapproving eyes with mine.

      I stopped and looked around. I was stunned. Even though the infamous event involving my father was a major Hollywood scandal years before I was born, it was somehow kept away from me. I thought for a second, realizing my vulnerability. I looked around and saw Alena Levy, picking her nose, staring at me (and yes, she ate it). My friend Donna Bojarsky’s jaw hit the pavement and the girl I had a major crush on started to cry.

      I had to say something, so I yelled back across the playground: Hey Stewart! That’s a lie! I’ve seen his balls. At least I thought I had.

      The two-hundred-and-eighteenth day of my sixth grade year was hell. As I sat in Mr. McCutchen’s art class doing a self-portrait, my classmates peppered me with whispered questions.

      Did he really get shot in the balls?

      Is his dick still there?

      Can he still pee?

      Questions began circling in my own mind as I worked on my would-be masterpiece. Did I really see his balls? Were there really two of them? Then it came to me, and I stood up. Hey, if my dad was really shot in the balls, how was I born?

      There was silence. I had answered the unanswerable question. I thought I had them, at least for a second… until Court Slavin, a wisecracking kid, fired a near-fatal shot.

      Maybe the gardener did it with your mom.

      The bell rang and it was lunchtime. I chose not to head to the cafeteria, even though it was pudding day, because I was exhausted by the morning’s events. Instead, I went to the front office, where I worked for the office secretary for extra credit. To this day, I still remember her perfume and the way she walked. Her name was Desiree, and she was beautiful. She wore some sort of push up bra that made her breasts look like torpedo prototypes. They were perfect.

      (Occasionally, Desiree and my old fourth grade teacher, Miss Bennett, would take me into Beverly Hills for lunch. It was our secret and one that I have kept until this writing.)

      Desiree had heard what happened to me earlier that day; like just about everyone else in Hollywood, she knew of the scandal. She came into the mimeograph room and saw the look on my face. Your dad is a great person, there is a lot to be proud of, she said. And then she gave me a doughnut.

      Desiree was right. My father was the youngest person ever to pass the bar in New York City. In 1938, he headed west in his Ford Tudor with $40 in his pocket and big Hollywood dreams. Arriving in Los Angeles, he settled with no money and no job in the Silver Lake district, where he mixed horsemeat and hamburger and invited his newly found Hollywood connections to dinner. The horsemeat was great, the conversations were better, and the deals started to fall in place faster than the 1938 Santa Anita Derby winner, Seabiscuit.

      Dad opened an office and signed his first client, comedian Hugh Herbert (now what we in the industry call a Hollywoodwalkafamian)—securing him a multi-picture deal at Universal Studios, where he would appear in comedy shorts and features such as Pitchin’ in the Kitchen.

      Sam Jaffe, credited for saving Paramount Pictures from financial ruin in the 1920s, was a hell of a guy and had one of the most successful talent agencies in Hollywood. He took a liking to my dad and brought him into his agency in 1940. Dad quickly rose to the title of president, representing Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Richard Burton, and many other high-profile clients.

      The 1940s were a great decade for the agent business, for it was—despite being sandwiched between two wars—a time of some of Hollywood’s greatest successes. Movies such as Casablanca, Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, Suspicion, National Velvet, Men of Boys Town, Fantasia, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Maltese Falcon captivated audiences throughout the country, and there was plenty of work for top talent in all aspects of the industry.

      By 1945, one of dad’s best friends and prized clients, Joan Crawford, was riding high after her Academy Award-winning performance in Mildred Pierce. She stopped by his office one evening to lament about her romantic issues—many of which had to do with her boyfriend and my father’s close pal Greg Bautzer, a Hollywood mega-lawyer.

      Bautzer and Crawford had a passionate, combustible relationship rife with explosive outbursts by Joan, and she’d recently had another after Bautzer fell asleep watching Mildred Pierce for the tenth time in her home screening room. She locked the doors, called the police, and had Bautzer arrested for trespassing—yelling at him as he was taken away: That’s the last time you will fall asleep at one of my movies!

      Joan raged to my dad about Greg and how all men were horrible. She rose from the maroon leather chair across from his desk and walked back to the bar concealed behind two mahogany doors. As Joan continued to rant, she pulled out a bottle of whisky, poured it on her hand, lifted her skirt, slid her hand down into her underwear, and wiped.

      Joan locked eyes with my father. You never know who I might meet tonight, she said. Then she winked and walked out.

      Sex, bad guys, good guys, and, yes, naughty gals were as much in the movie business as they were in the news. It was a fast time in Los Angeles, and Hollywood kingpins walked the streets with a swagger. They were idol makers and controllers of the lives of many.

      In 1947, the Jaffe Agency was swallowed up by the music-booking and talent agency Music Corporation of America (more commonly known as MCA), and with that merger, Dad moved to the MCA offices at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills—bringing his biggest clients with him. Thus began my father’s enduring friendship and business association with future movie studio mogul Lew Wasserman, who was promoted to president of the company by MCA co-founder Jules Stein within a year of Dad’s arrival.

      Enter Jay Kantor.

      When Jay left the Navy as a young man, he moved into a one-bedroom apartment on Palm Drive, south of the MCA offices. He had no idea that,

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