Word: susskindly
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Manhattan's own David Susskind, successful producer of safe-at-home TV classics and voluble critic of TV's lack of daring, has been, to use his favorite verb, denigrating Hollywood for years. "Hollywood has an advanced case of intellectual leprosy." he says. "It is sterile and bland. a place of languor and procrastination, of overwhelming provincialism." Hollywood's responses are equally engaging. "Susskind." says Oscar Levant, "is salami dipped in chicken fat." Yet there was Susskind. out in the Hollywood provinces last week, and not just to carry the battle to the enemy's home...
...Susskind has flirted with Hollywood in the past, but he had insufficient power to make his presence felt. After fruitless chats with M-G-eminence Benny Thau, he came away saying: "The only thing we have in common is breathing." His current mission, as he sees it. is to light Hollywood's way out of its cultural cave. After A Raisin in the Sun, he has contracted to do three more films for Columbia, is considering doing the life of Evita Peron, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Rich Boy and Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow...
Angles & Bells. Hollywood, for its part, isn't going for the angle. Groucho Marx, not even bothering to make his bark witty, summed up one school of local opinion by calling Susskind "this phony New York intellectual." In a Daily Variety column. Humorist Max Shulman wrote of "Mr. Susskind, the noted television trailblazer. who gave us a video adaptation of The Bells of St. Mary's." Susskind sniffed: "People mention these things to me. but I absolutely refuse to read the local papers and the trade papers. I only read the New York papers...
...denigrate Susskind's success. Culturally, he may be a would-be explorer who has so far been little more than an exploiter, but financially at least he is the producer phenomenon of modern show business. He will produce $30 million worth of TV shows this year (up $12 million from last year). Partly because he is a perfectionist and partly because his better writers are buried like in Westminster Abbey, his shows will usually be good ones. Meanwhile, his East Coast flacks are putting out the word that "Hollywood has fallen at David Susskind's feet...
...three dates; in his office he keeps photographs-even an oil portrait-of assorted musky ladies of close acquaintance. He talks with espresso-shop idealism about TV, but he matches much of that talked idealism in his work. With far more non commercial daring than a David Susskind, he brings audiences a lot of the variety and vigor that TV once promised. Something less than television's first saint, he at least, in the words of one of his directors, "compulsively avoids the obvious...