Word: lear
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...Unicycles. Yorkin and Lear's flourishing careers over the next eight years defied geometry, being two parallel lines that finally intersected. In1959, well after Lear had drifted apart from Simmons (now a script developer at Universal Studios), the new partnership of Tandem Productions was founded. The first joint venture was the movie "Come Blow Your Horn," adapted from a play by former Lear Assistant Neil Simon, which everybody agreed would be a perfect vehicle for Frank Sinatra...
...Everybody, that is, except Sinatra. When Sinatra failed to respond to a barrage of calls and telegrams from Yorkin and Lear, they hired a plane to fly over his house and sky-write their phone number. After eight months of such stunts, Sinatra agreed to do the picture "just to get you guys off my back...
...Their wives gave Yorkin and Lear a two-seater bicycle to mark the launching of Tandem. Two unicycles would have been more appropriate. After the initial box office splash of "Horn," their subsequent movies ("Never Too Late," "Divorce American Style") fared only so-so. They decided to become parallel again, maintaining a loose, collaborative relationship and splitting their pooled earnings...
...Today they kibitz freely about each other's projects, but friction is minimized because each supplies a different emphasis to the partnership. "Lear can put words in your mouth like nobody else," says Dick Van Dyke, who has starred in Yorkin and Lear efforts for both TV and movies. "Yorkin, as a director, is the ideal interpreter of Lear's writing." Lear is more preoccupied with creative matters. Yorkin, with more business acumen, is by his own admission "the heavy in financial deals...
...Lear has the sort of temperament that might be described by Archie Bunker as "hebe Hollywood egghead" ? or, if Archie knew the word, compulsive. The only eye in the hurricane of activity that he whips up around him each day is the moment when he retires to the men's room for a thorough perusal of the New York Times. One of his two outside interests is writing letters to Presidents and other political leaders on such topics as Viet Nam, the ICBM debate and school desegregation. His voluminous correspondence with four Administrations is filed in a cabinet...