Cagney & Lacey & Barney Rosenzweig, Part 1

Baby, Hello, and welcome to Eighties TV Ladies. I'm Sharon Johnson and I'm Susan Lambert. HadAM Here at Eighties TV Ladies, we talk about female driven television shows from Yes, You Guessed It the nineteen eighties. We are starting our dive into a new series looking at a groundbreaking eighties show for both women and television. Cagney and Lacy starred Sharon Glass and Tyne Daily and broke ground for women, seat belts, and pop culture.

This detective drama ran from nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty eight on CBS and examines both the cases and the personal lives of two female police officers in New York City who are partners and work friends. Cagney and Lacy ran for one hundred and twenty five episodes and five television movies. It was nominated for thirty six Emmys and one fourteen. Sharon Gless was nominated for six and one two, Tied Daily nominated for six and one four. In addition to being about two working policewomen, it was a show with episodes it dealt very thoughtfully with issues like cancer, racism, immigration, rape, alcoholism, and abortion.

I'm calling this episode. Two pilots, three Cagnies. Okay, it was really not two pilots. It was a TV movie and then a TV pilot. But there were indeed three Cagneys.

Yes, three actresses played Cagney over the course of these two pilots in several seasons. The first television movie was Loretta Switt from mash who played Cagney, and then for the season one it was Meg Foster, and then they basically we're going to cancel the show, and so they came back in season two with a new Cagney and it was Sharon Glass who stayed on for the rest of the season. The Lacy was always played by indeed Tyne Daily, ever impressive, steady as a rock. Our guest today is Barney Rosenswig. He is an Emmy Award winning television producer and philanthropist.

He is a creator and producer of Cagney and Lacy, as well as the Trials of Rosie O'Neill, also starring Sharon Glass. In addition, Rosenswag produced hundreds of hours of primetime television, including a dozen episodes of the premier season of Charlie's Angels, the Daniel Boone series for NBC and the critically acclaimed and award winning Our Family Dramas Christie for CBS and Twice in a Lifetime for the PACKS Network. He is also the author of the book Cagney and Lacy and Barney Rosenswig went to Powerhouse writers Barbara Avedon and Barbara Corday, his wife, to get them to write a female buddy action movie, and he's going to tell us about the incredible journey of making Cagney and Lacy into an award winning, groundbreaking series.

Welcome to the show, Barney, Thank you so much for joining us here at eighties TV Ladies. Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here. How are you excellent? We are excited to talk about Cagney and Lacy and the other shows that you worked on.

We were talking before we started recording about a little bit of your background, and you grew up in southern California. Can you talk about sort of yourself where you grew up and how you kind of decided you wanted to get into TV and movies. Well, I was second generation Angelino. My dad was a school teacher. I was interested in performing.

I was an actor in school. I was the embassy of all the shows that we put on. I was the head sir Leaner in high school and for that matter, at the University of Southern California. I think I remember my mother filling out a form for me. I was like eight years old with the YMC.

I was going to go away to camp, and they asked what my chosen profession might be. I put up a stand up comedient, wanted the YFC wanted to know what an eight year old wanted to do with the rest of his life. I have no idea but that, but that I remember. So it was back a long way. I wanted to be a stand up comic.

I wanted to and ultimately I wanted to be an actor. And my drama teacher at high school kind of a mediocre public high school, and he was a big fan of mine and he got me a scholarship. The artists attuned Chicago and I wanted to go, and my mom the biggest blow was she thought I didn't think I was good looking enough to be an actor. My mother, you know so. But in fairness, Sir Tyron Bauer was an actor, you know, Harold flo was an actor, but I was.

This was before Dustin Half, butter Jack Mittinson or any of the guy who's been looked for like normal people. So anyway, she didn't think I could do that. She said, well, she wanted to be a school teacher like my dad, and if I wanted to do acting as a sideline, get the degree, have a job, and then you can try to. So my mother was powerful, and I was dimidated enough to agree. I did LaBelle when I did her going on the way I my dad was a school as I said, a public school teacher.

My mom was almost a recluse, and I guess what would they be called, kind of a serious psychological disorder. Then she was never went out of the house. She never got a professional uni treatment or haircut. She never owned the store, bought dress. Her mother made a cut her own hair.

And I to punish them for be letting me go to Chicago take advantage of themself. I picked the most expensive universe I could find at California, which was the US's other California, which meant that my mother had to go get a job. So I didn't throw myself out of the world in seventy and I threw my mother out in and my mother got a job at Human Resource. Her mother fixed her up a dress, she washed her face, put on lipstick for the first time that I can remember, and went out. I got a judgment for her to do that, for that depressing personality, and actually then put me through college and my brothers in college.

So she was kind of an impressive dame in her own way, and I'm very grateful. So I went off to USC, and at USC, I confronted for the first time in my life, fairly organized anti seventies sc was a bastion of conservatism, White angles Saxon Backgrounds, president of the erstwhile president now chancellor university, was a genesis and a Nazi sympathizer the Nazis, but German look a little bit California interesting was Beevan Plei Schmidt and a lot of the guys who we hired were of civil so and the fraternity system was not brey welcoming, and I was gonna I'm just making the best of it. I've dated a girl at a date with a young lady, Robert, the eldest daughter, took her out and we had a good time, but she never went out with me again, and I found out later on it because her sorority fied her twenty five dollars.

Oh my god, I'm going out with a Jewish. Wow. I have no idea what they charged for Hispanics or black kids, but it was twenty five bucks for region. So that was kind of the environment. In light of all of that.

Did it surprise you then that you were admitted to USC or Oh no, No, No, there was a there was a quota system. Okay, they had a certain amount of you. No. I would never have been able to get it in today, not because of that, because I wasn't academically all enough. Now it's a very fine university.

I was, It wasn't. It wasn't up to the level even posted the level of My mother begged me to go to UCLA drop out of USC or U c LA will buy you a corvette, she said. Riche was a note in substantial bride in the nineteen fifties. Uh, so I was. But it wasn't, Jeff, I said, Bob.

I said, I'm going to stay there on subday. I'm going to own that efforts. And I pretty much did. I was going to say you were you were on the board of chancellors or something, and I'm a television Yeah. I was also on the board of the library, but I was I was selected as alumni of the years.

My mother was of the audience, seeing that at moment that was a baby. That's a good moment. And I became. I ran for election as for Yellow Kick which at USC. Well, this is the biggest job that I looked at.

You were, mister USC. You were solid vocation of US undergraduate. All girls send you their panties and the mail travel with the football team. It was great. And there had never been a non for turning that elected.

Never had been a Jew elected. So I got elected. I was the first Jew was and I was, if I may say so, a smash. I am for Oh, I guess for thirty years or pretty much thirty years of a row. I was a guy that invited to the Bay Area game, whether it was Stanford or account come New Union Square and had to lead everybody of the social spell out nice.

Yeah, it's generally conceited. I was the best, though I don't don't I'm not talking out of school there anybody. I did a great job. I was excited. I got a lot of job offers from insurance companies and companies in Los Angeles were salesmanship were your persona was important in terms of who you knew and who you didn't know.

I didn't. I knew that. What I wanted to do I thought was I was interested in public relations. By the way, for anybody who didn't go to law school, everybody who gonna go to law school and my group wanted to be a PR. And that's just what you wanted to do.

You wanted to make fifty thousand dollars a year. I have a little house in the valley with a confessor. We all had it. Did you get married early? And said you did?

In the fifties, it was the only way to go to bed with the girls, you had to get married. I mean it was. It's a different era. Major corporations of America would come to the university campus and they would interview five to ten people, the top kids. I was always one of those kids.

So not because of my grades, but because of my persona and what I had done and what I had accomplished who I was on the camp and I nailed those interview and the job I thought I wanted was with Procter and Gamble. The only drawback was you had to be in Cincinnati. That's for Procter and Gamble was and it was a choice job. I thought I nailed the interview. I didn't get the job.

I found out you shan't be a member of the PR fraternity consisted out of Ohio camp along to the country club, which Jews could not do it, and the same it was a true and sandwichhip still with definitely Abb Steel Corporation and my grandfather in law. So I just got married to my senior in college, very successful bank her and no problem with the Jewish grandson in law, but could not have a Jew work in the bank. That was out of the question. But that so I began to see this in real disadvantage in Jewish. I said, what can I do where it's not a disadvantage, And of course show business Kim immediately delighted.

But how to get started? And in the middle of that, I got a call from the palle Mine. They're looking for a PR guy at MGMs. I hope you don't mind. I gave him your date and I interviewed them.

I saw, I'll be Honystans. I'm interested in learning about chops. I'm interested in getting into the gates, and he said, we're looking for a pr you know, appreciate your honesty, but that's stop what we're looking. I said, well, thank you very much to look all right, I tell you what it looked like. A like a like a nice junk though no got a nice tie, a figure, nails are clean.

We'll give you if you wanted, you can have a job with the mailk So I took it, and I started in the mail room at MGM. And we are in the throes that summer a preparing for a premiere or a movie on which thing whole future of the studio is based. Most expensive movie ever made the history of MGM, the most at stake at a time when the studio was very vulnerable. This is the year of the Last Picture Show. People were running away from Schoubitz started running to it.

I was exercising when I came to understand was the philosophy of contrary opinion. When everybody in Zig's Isaac, and I've done that by now my whole program. That became a model for my life. And one day everybody who told the smart at it going to Boss's office. Howard Strickland, if you read anything about Olive.

There are several people who were always mentioned, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Samuel Goldwyn, An Howard Strickland, Steth Friends, Clark Gable, the second best friend of Spencer Tracy. He was a goodla heat guy, terrific guy, had an interesting guy, and he had a arrow awful, debilitating stutter. Could not complete a sentence at under a minute and a half. I mean, he was really bad.

I'll jump out for a moment. Years later, he went to his retirement celebration and he'd been retired for a year. It was an annual thing and he got to need to us and he had no stutter. Whoa who's going outside of the pressure of that job. Stunner went away.

Wow. So anyway, we're all at his office. I'm twenty one years old. I'm pressed against the back wall. Everybody else said, you know, I'm I'm the mail room kid.

And there's a picture plate about the fact that this Open Day Night in laws Ange in the Hollywood, California and Gypiship Theater alloutable Openday Night was a big charity and the charity was not doing its job. They weren't getting us any press at All, who was the chard the Medical School of the University of Southall. I raised my hand, excuse me, I said, I'm very familiar with everybody at US. I think I could be helpful. The movie was ben Her and I stayed Cherry arranging Coliseegum and a football game.

Half dot usc Card Studs did ben Her Card Studs. Tommy Trojan who came runing the other source wore a costume from the movie That's Where, That's Where that costume. That event nice and I became gave smash at overnight. But then what happened in that same time, for it was a rare thing. The actors were out strike, that rarest of all strikes, and they went out and they were serious, and they went out some time, and it shut the studio down, shut it down, and everybody in my department was let go except Howard Strictly and three other people.

And I ran the mail room and it was the cheapest guy there. I could stay if I continue to do my job in the mail room, continue to work out ben Hur and there were a show up on Saturdays to the group's salespeople and gives talks as if I were actually the filmmaker, and I would give these lectures about how the movie was made and all that kind of stuff. And it was because I was the world's foremost authority on Ben hur and outside of William Wiler and jarld missed and against And if I do that job, do my regular job and then do this what they call the planting job, as I was being trained to be a planter planter as a press agent plants stories with a journalist. Now, in those days there are five newspapers at Los Asian, the local Parson's top columns had a Hopperd's the top column, Jimmy Starr, Harrison Gerald, Sheila Graham.

These are all people. I mean, Sheila Gray was you know Elf scotfid Sherle's mistress means they are people they made movies about. And he should have had their old planter of them. They were in competition with each other, and the planters therefore we're in competition with each other. We were competing to get the best story for our plant.

Well, there's only one meet person now meat, I am now planting every one of them. I take Catahoperty dinner and chase it. On Wednesday nights, I take Harrison Carroll to uh wherever he was to go racetrack. I think still Shore of the La Times to the Duck Press, downtown, those centers. I don't think it's there anymore, very famous restaurant.

So I'm getting away like crazy because they always wanted done, and I mean I didn't think It's like we had a picture called Light in the Piazza come out George Halliton. Yet Mimio just passed away and h Sanna Brotzi Uh. So Thelivia to have I had sent it over to Lurolla Parson's home screen LaRue cater to the id be at our house, and I had three musicians studying outside her looking playing the theme for me from do you think we got a good review? Your? You know?

So that's kind of what I was doing. I was a real hustler and a real showman. Within months of being there as a mailman, I was maybe you senior publicist, thank you two hundred and fifty dollars a week. So I went from forty or fifty dollars a week two fifty and months. I was thinking more money and my father, my father was a school teacher.

Was you were making a little over half then so um sort of my show. Sorry, I got started in show that is a great, that is incredible. You were twenty one, you're twenty two years wow, twenty two in December of that year. I mean I started in June and her was opened in the fall, great football season. I later discovered that I hated the anonymity of being a presage, so I thought I got to get out of here, so I went into my ball.

It was very jealous of me and his staff protectiveness. He loved us and we were his people, and he wouldn't do anything to keep us. He hated private publicists, he hated Rogers accoun Meanwhile, a new pictures coming on the lot, Paul Newland, Orge Harvey Claire, Blue, Edward g Robinson, William was Shatner when nobody knew who William Jetter was in a movie called The Outrage, directed by Marty Ritt did hud. It was then arguably the best received Hollywood movie in years, and I thought, I want that picture. It had a lot of pedigree, a lot of things to write about, a lot of things to tell stories.

I could do this job by my sleep. I'm gonna listen to be hoar stit. He goes in for a beating. Well, Martin Ritt and Paul new would have private publicists Rogers account. They want them to have an office on the lot so that they can have their publicists.

We don't need one of your publicists. And they're beating the crap out of and Howard is fighting back, stuttering through all of them, but he's fighting back. It's Dusty Kenny. It's a powerful guy, even with the stutter. Maybe because of the stutter.

This is the opposite of Bob Evans giving you should be old who talked so fashion to me verse everything's talking about an hour. It came back out of a widowing and that's what I walked into two hours office and said, I want to do this picture. Just sit here, don't don't leave. Well back down to Martin Ridd's office. I'll tell you what.

I'm going to give you my best man, that man the department, the guy who did ben Her, the guy who did a little Nita, the guy who did this that I'm gonna take him out of my department. He's going to become exclusively yours. If you're not happy in sixty days bringing Rogerson, so Marty ritts okay. So I went down to visit Marty ridd at his home talk to him. And while I'm waiting for him to come down stairs to see me, I'm looking at his coffee table and there's a magazine Films of Filming, and there's the Lad's little magazine, say he reads.

So I don't say anything. I meet Marty, we talked to get to die like each other movement and a couple of weeks later he's on the cover of Fields of Filming. It calls me, said, he'll see that sick. I said, yeah, I saw it. I went on location with and I was invited everywhere.

Every night. I had dinner with Paul Neilman, Lawrence Harvey, Clara Blow, Martin Ritt, Sidney Morris of a diver, a great Chinese summer diver who's name just went out of my head, Crufet guy, Jimmy one, m Jimmy Wall How yeah, thank you? Where we help me by that one? That was Melissa? Okay, thank you, Melissa, You're welcome.

And we had dinner together every night of the week. I am in my well. I've married the best time of my life. Listens not so bad. No one treats me badly.

No one looks down to me. I'm not anonymous at all. I am you know. Martin Ritt calls me kid, and we're having a great time because I take him to USC. I start up a series of programs at USC.

Professor at USC part time all Arthur Knight, who was the critic from the Saturday Interview and he was now a part time professor of cinema ANUUS. I got Arthur Knight to invite I had Martin Rick come down to speak to the kids to show them Martin Barney Rid ran his first movie they'd ever made. I talked about it after and I get little deliverers of little quotes that I can use the plant warmy archer or whatever. So it gets into the trade, say Blarney sapping is he goes being stroked by all these kids. How Arthur Knight thinks I'm a genius.

So I've gotten now got a conduit. I can bring you anybody I wanted that I'm doing you a great job. But Martey says to me, kid, what is your problem. I'm trying to get Bard's account to hire you, and you keep turning them down. They have now offered you twice when you're making an MGM and you've turned them down.

Why what what are you trying to do? I said, Martin, I don't want to work for us. I want to work for you. What do you mean you want to work for me? I said, I will work for you.

What MGM is? You don't have to pay me? Wo was that's less money than you're paying Rogers to count, so you'll save money on the Let me meet me, teach me how to make them. So Larry had me into every editing session. I'm sitting there hours a day and then anyone's learn how to do.

And we got the job yet. But it's all gonna happen because it's next movie is The Spy Who Him In from the Coal with Richard Burton. Caroline's gonna make the picture and I'm set and see the social prudence every's okay with. And one day we're having lunch together. I tell Howard, of course arts he is live it, live it, hoards of breaks, you know, so the opportunity of life that I gotta think other producers will cause you me against it.

So I'm making it terrible moms, But I wanted to do have you lunch now on the executive section, Marty Britt my new boss to be, and Howard comes over and says, hey, my best guy. Marty says, two bad. So you know he's making fun of it. He's giving him the rib. Yeah, it's too bad.

Though about your movie, Mari says, what I mean about my movies? He says, Marney's the only one who knows that the about it. He wouldn't let anybody else out, and he handled everything. Since now you're taking him to Paramount, I guess your picture's just going to escape. Marney turned to Ashen and Howard walked away.

And I just saw great poker hand being played by a real expert and good. I have no chounter for that. Marris's kid. Gotta careful with her. You gotta stay here with this movie.

Lookt out later. I knew I was over. I knew I was over. What got worse was movie came out. I was a disasters able clinical.

Nobody went to the box office. I mean, probably the only movie that Paul Newman never burden Dia. The Marney Rick called me. He sounded like he was on the ledge of the Plaza Hotel and about the eleventh, like he was ready to drop down to the street, said Jid. He says, my power of position to paramount is dramatically reduced.

I can't get you the job as a STU, but I can't get you the job as a pressigent on the book. I didn't want to be a press agent. I had had a very terribly opposite experience following Marty with the director of that name. But Tony Richards won the Academy Award for Tom June, who was there to do Evelan Walls The Lump Game are strictling the same trouble At Marty, I became known as the guy who did the troubled Mounds. That's a tough place to be.

Yeah. Well, Oregon Adgens dot all the big productions, and I got all the big producers, and I got all the he said, and you could sweet talk him. Yeah, but I was. I was game for it, you know. There I was working to John Challey, Tony Richardson, Terry Southern, great novelist.

Time be Hero Bud and my next picture was going to be The Sisters Eddie Kid with Steve McQueen and Patty Hievsky and Marty Ranso so I've got to lend up. The experience with Tony Richards was so terrible, it was so demeaning, it was so incredible. For years, I walked around with a piece of paper in my back pocket. It was my speech that I was going to use what I won an Academy Award for sake Tony Richards, because had he not been such a miserable son of a b I'd still be a publicist. And that one he is.

That was the miracle is I decided not to give up. When I did win my first Emmy, I was going to say, you had noted. I did running for years. I finally got passed. I did cost the guy jobs, but he couple times he wont to work on projects of behind and I would mean, are you kidding me?

Lawful off I say that about vertrew people. So I was really done. Now I was, I would condoct be. So that's at that time, that's when the outrage failed. We can I just escaped me and said I got a move.

He called doctor Jovago, She's got to start up six months or eight months more. You want it. You could be the UNI publicist. So doctor Jivago is being shot in the cold in the snow, as you might remember. So I go in to my wife and say, look, where do you want to live one of the parish would love loved one grow.

Where do you want to go back? The kids were gold. She didn't want to do it. She was a stand up date, you know, she would have gone where I want wanted. But I thought, this is it, this is what I'll do.

It will be my career. And I got a phone call from my father in Wall. He says, I got submissions. He says, I've got television series, I got two movies. I got this.

I'm overwhelmed. I need help. I want you to come here. In my associates and h I want somebody in the family, he says, I don't want. I don't trust somebody else's now.

I don't know to this day whether my wife went to her father stepfather and said, Daddy, I don't want to go to London, Paris or or wherever, and I don't want to take the kids there. I don't want kind word. By the way, it would have been a tough job for her. Imagine yeah, uh, I mean I was gonna have a job. I knew a driver to take me around everywhere.

She's gonna have to figure out how the house in a foreign language and to get the kids in school. I don't blame her now, she says, or has told me that she never did that. But I know I'm not sisued, which in as the time is pretty pretty impressive. So anyway, I got the job and I went over there at It turns out it's one of the best success Aaron who not the most articulate together, it's a great natural teacher. I was let in everywhere, and he was a much better film editor.

Party written, and I really lured by Kraft. I could tell you there was a guy by named Joe Silver's a guy goal by Amham. I don't remember any other. I don't not even try to say out of the Department of Editing. When Fox, when I say Street Fox, he's just saying that NREL's Annik was the best film editorsy episode, and the second best was Aaron Rosen.

Now I can tell you this, I'm better than Aaron. I learned how to do better than Arren and Darrel's Annek and Aaron abow debt. That makes me the best. And I still believe that to be true. And that's was my specialty as a producer.

I began to learn how to tell a story. What do you think it was about producing as opposed to being in pr that was of more interest to you then? Well, first of all, wells clearly several things. In my day at the studio at MGM Studios, directors were transients. Writers had these little cubbyhole offices, patches on their sleep other patches on the elbows.

Producers had all the great office. They were the guys I saved, seached for it, the premiers. They were the guys who I paid real attention. I wanted to be one of them, and they really were the storytellers. The definition of a producer in those days, it's the same definition, by the way it is today for television and those and looms.

Producer who's a storyteller. He decides what story to tell to an audience. He then goes about putting together the elements to make that possible. The right writer, right adapted material, he may write it himself. The right director to direct the beer, he might directed himself.

But the first guy on the job, the storyteller, the inventor, is the producer, and the last guy on the job, the guy after the directors going out to another movie, after the writer is writing something else. Producer is still there promoting his movie, going out in the dusting, getting people to watch that pitch. I remember being a publicist. What I was going to a meeting with producer, This producer whose name is not import to your audience. They wouldn't know he is.

He's a big producer in his day. I made a picture and we were meeting with myself and a senior publicist. I was still a kid, and he says, well, good luck on this one. I haven't a clue to tell you how to sell this. As we walked out, my friend turned to me and said, why don't they make it?

Then he was right, I got it right right. You have to know who you're making the movie for. He's got a are your audiences? You have there a reason for making that movie. Otherwise you know way you're making because it's a book that somebody else had in you and said, you know, oh, you are the storyteller.

You know who your audiences, you know who you have to talk to about. So I learned that was I learned that Alfred Isshcott could direct a musical any time you water to be HOTSP director. Everybody wanted to alvercaf He said, I wanted to do a musical if they'd let him do it. But Alfred Hescott the producer, would you let him? Because Alfred Heshcott the producer knew every of the musical.

Every time the leading lady opened about the same people would expect her to scream. Walt Disney was a producer. I can't leave a director of Walt Disney movies OVID. But everybody knows a Disney movie what they see. Did you see me that way with pandro Bourbon?

Did you see me that way with the Arthur Freed? It used to be that way with Joe Pasternack. These guys all had a signature, They all had a certain clid of movie they be. And that's what I wanted to do. And that's, by the way, what it was at television.

I was. They don't call it that. They called it at us and they called the show runner right, the guy who runs the show. Right. Proliferation of credits is so out there.

Everybody's called a producer now, you know, Yeah, they are twenty producer credits out. It's embarrassing. I fought for years against the pollibration of credits. Lousy Bow ultimately came up with another name, which is never on the street, but everywhere in the industry knows who it is. Showrunner.

I wasn't showman. I'm the guy who said Christie Jaggey wouldn't say that. I'm the guy who approved every final edit, who approved every music, You approved, every actor, every costume, everything. I deentegated some stuff that was my show. The television producer was kind of the owner of the show.

That's right, and that made it very very different producer huge, like a different different way of how television come made. Huge. Can you talk to that a little bit, because you you kind of produced across into kind of the new worlds of the writer producer. Basically, when I began at Jellivision for Aaron Roseberg, as you may remember by Earliers and the television series Aaron had, it's a series called Daniel bood A thess Parker. I remember it.

I watched it. There you go and he said you check the job. He says, you're ready, you're at I'll pay you a thousand dollars a week. So I just quit a job for thirty five thousand, not being to get paid fifty thousand. So I said, wow, I should look.

I said, we'll talk about hi when you get back. I said, So. I read a couple of scripts. They were just horrific. And I went and up to my wife, who was all excited about like having this job.

And I remember she was in the john and I went in and I threw the script at her feet and I said, you read this, you still want me to do it? When you finished, I said, I'll do it. She came out to her credit said it's still solful. You don't have to do it. I understand why you want, so I should thinking about it.

You know I could fix this. I could do this better. It's gonna be a learning experience. I'm gonna get paid for it. So yeah, I think I'm so.

Nara Roseberg returns, and I said, I was debating whether or not to wear a scoon skin chap when you walked in the room. You didn't get the joke. I said, I'm telling you I'll take the job. First out. It wasn't his chopped off Aaron Rosenberg going twenty percent of the show, as Parker owned thirty percent of the show, and I had a phone call for Barrett.

The decision is going to be fest Parkers. He's on his way down to see you. You or two other guys. Good Luck told me unprepared for speed, it battens out prepared as you can get. I did you know I'd been booning up of the series for my own purpose, thinking I had the Jobles walks into my office and we have a nice conversation.

He watched it, know if I'm my own man, And I talked to him about that, and I told what I think it's wrong with the show. Oh, he's a great star. He's not being served well by the material and what I see it. But I see the future being what I think could be done with. And thanks me, and he leads, I got two other guys that you guys have and two other guys.

A night about seven o'clock phone range, Tammy says, hello, boss, and I had the job. Nice. Now I'm going to tell you one more Daniel Boone story because I think it's because it tells a lot about producing. What it's all about. I'm preparing scripts, I'm learning it in the job I'm learning for It's just a picture of good batter and different asked me forty six minutes long.

And I've got a lot of people working for me or spies from Fest Block. An associate producer and a hand of the story department. Both were iired by Fest's agents, and they were in fesss and I know they're telling him whatever they're observing. Jim Aubrey, who's an CBS, had come out in TV Guide that week or the week before, and CBS won six of seven nights on television. Only night they didn't win Thursday night on NBC.

That was Daniel Boone seven o'clock. They begin to Harry Mason and again to Dean Martin Show. And we were golden in those days. We watched television in the way America we got mentest overmal control. Three channels, three networks that was it.

No Fox, no Netflix, no no Amazon, no cable nothing, three networks at a couple of local stations, one episode a week, one episode a week, and oh yeah, no streaming. And you didn't have a real control, so you didn't get out of your chair and jeson channel. So what you tended to do was you tended they found out when you watched the show at seven o'block at night. Just kept it there and you did just one show letter to another. That was the version of streaming the old day.

Yeah, so Jim Abbery said, this situation is no longer tolerable for us. CBS is gonna win Thursday nights. It's gonna be called double Feature Night at CBS. And simmer on Strip was Stu Whitman, who was a B movie star. They were done television.

Simmer Strip is going to be the most expensive show ever made for network television. Paul King was said to see me, Yes, Bill Paidey liked it to run that show. Doctor run it from the network perspective network exactly. So he's having lunch with Fess Parker and he tells Fess Parker, get ready to pack your lunch. This is over.

They're coming for you. They're coming for you, and this show is fabricous stabbings. Don't never see that you liked best. Parker goes into a deep depression and Cliff Bowl comes and tells me, so the pipeline's going to work both ways. That's good.

So I called Paul King and said, Paul, press the hell out of my star. Let's go it on tell him and told him about sever're on strip. I told him that it's it's the best thing that's ever happened passing. I told him we got a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars per episode of budget. I had one hundred and fifty thousand bake lyishu.

So I said, wow, that's a lot of what I said. Who were hiring for directors? They were all directors I could hire. We are hiring for writers, Well you do? Writers are available to be my price?

Where your guest stars Webby? There was those three actors Joel all people like I thanked him. Every listen, where's all the money go? And then it dawned on me stunts and horse falls. All the one is will be going into stunts.

Say look when you should say? Everybody else has said called the writers, and I said, we're going to introverse this show. I checked a beat with someone. We're gonna do shows of character, who Lobbie Dick only his old bear instead of a whale, an individual coast to town like the Rainmaker, how he producing shorthand now influences everybody's lives. These scripts began him to get because he were about something pretty dark good.

I called Joel, WII ask you who was the best writer I'd ever met in Hollywood? Won an Oscar? I called him at Joel, I hear you want to direct? He says absolutely. I said, how bad?

What do you mean? How bad? Is how bad? He wanted direct? So want a direct?

Bear Bay, I said, write me three Daniel Boones and you can direct if you have the best Dannie Mood scripts you have earned out of your life. And going over now with the strit scripts, siboy didn't good actors any and oustar who winning actors now coming because arts are good and incidentally, because they're small, pictures are cheaper. We're not not only going overbudget making shows below the wed Best Parker's best friend on the show's ten White, the stuntman. Ted White made two hundred fifty dollars a week plus stunts. On an average week he would make eleven hundred twelve hundred oars.

So when he stunts at the fights and this show, Daniel maybe smacks somebody once we really gets out of sorts. He has one drug guy made. Yeah, Daniel Boone was like mcgiver. He solved problems. Yeah, Ted White's now making two hundred fifty dollars a weekend.

Ease that happen, and he goes to best Producer. You got, He says, the next thing, You're always going to have Dannie Bulle laughter around the force in a case, so best Parker doesn't come to best Parker goes shar Rosenberg. Aaron said, what the hell are you doing? And I told me my philosophy of contrary opinion. I told him about Cimbarans Strip and I was doing the oppice and he looked at me like helmets the matchase.

His eyes went heavenward and he said, show is going to get chancelled anymore. So where ship is going to take him? He says, Stuarts drive with your own flag block. He walked out of my office. I'm seeing the rest in season.

I'm here the show now at summertime. You don't go on the air until late September. I'm gonna vacuum, and everybody on the show knows that we're going to be destroyed. I don't know what I'm doing, and that cimar on Strip is the hit of a lifestyle. I am exhausted.

I go to my doctor. He says, I'm putting in the hospital. You're like twenty eight. I'm working eight nineteen hours a day, seven days a week, sleeping at my office, no one. I have no allies.

I'm alone. Pru won't talk to him. I says, shoot me up, doctor, excuse me. Multiple vitamin B shots every other day. Literally, when I go home at night, I opened the hood of my car to make sure a bomb is him.

That's how I was Onion Crew in the days when the unions were tough. I am literally checking by car for bombs. People have been chilled at Hollywood for less, so that's the pressure. I was in September Clubs Simoon Striple premiere a week before Daniel. I sit in my office, which was a very grand office.

You got your big office art center, sercize idem. I don't know everybody my office, very nice office, and I turn on the show. There it is great blasted music, savtist music and red letters simmer on strip all done in this kind of looks like a like fin seed material, classic Western stuff. And there's a seat a open country. There's Stu Whitman scratching his beard like this, and then they cut to forty dots.

Forty dots on television in nineteen sixty eight. On a nineteen Ish television screen, twenty horses of twenty riders looked like forty dots. I know. And there's stew Whitmen scratching his beard, and I know that next week I got fest part that you to place his son doing the boy scout Vanuel in the woods and the willingness fathers sons stuff. It's glorious And I am smiling, and I walk out of my office and the art director production of Intertential.

What do you think, boss, I said, gentleman, we are a very art ship. Following week the ratings come out. We are number nine in the country and Simmer Odds strip is canceled. The following I was gonna say, I've never heard of Simon that I sure have heard of Daniel Boone West Parker, West Parker Caman to see graduate. He says, Boss, I will never doubt him again.

And I said, does that mean I can fire some of the people around here so you can do whatever you want to view the boss and I walked down to the office. I fired two guys down the hall, the ones you thought to put a bomb in your car? The spies. Wow, now I have failed in my life. So far, so good.

I gotta tell you, I think you like being in it. In the there's no way out of the situation. And then look, spoots, I won. Well, I like to win if you like to win. All right, we're gonna have to take a break so we can drink some water and um, but we're gonna come back and we gotta get to Cagney and Lacy show.

But I this has been amazing because we're like a I went to USC so I totally get anything you're talking about. And then again, Sharon and I are both like movie buffs. So this has been pretty amazing. So let's take a break and then we're gonna come back and we'll see everybody back here, or we'll hear everybody back here in a minute. Sounds good, All right, welcome back, there you go.

So we got to talk about Cagney and Lacy writing Cheen, we've never done. Draw up abravadon and Barba cool day, abandon all season old pro political activis. He's the one who wrote war is about healthy children and other olymic things. The famous piece of the time was Everywhere. Barbara wrote that, and she wrote many many comedies, and she went into business with this young girl in her early twenty middle twenties, Barbara Cordey, who was a former press agent from New York, come out here to be a writer.

And they met through political activism and I hired them right their first drama and uh, one day I had a phone call saying, I don't know what the protocol is. Uh, I don't dam the over for dinner if you'd like to biddlin. And this is Barbara Corday, Barbara Cordey, and I said, look, your protocol is fine, I said, but I said, you're a working woman. I'm a working guy. Why don't we go out to dinner.

From that moment on, Barbara douchy on the right man. So we did. We to dinner and our second date, it's a movie. We went to see Scentible Woman Out the Word with Albacino with Victorial Gossip, black and white Italian movie. She with post World Wars, comedy of the sexiest.

The audience was having a good chime and well, I was laughing. So I noticed out of the corner of my eye sort of like a blair and I looked over and Barbara was white knuckling the chair, she said, and I leaned Olden and I said, are you all right? She said, this baby ugliest those sexes still I have ever seen. I said, what will eat? There's no She says, watch later, we'll talk now.

Sexist was not a term. I was about fifties bailif centerosexual male. I don't know an awful lot about terms like that, and I was kind of baffled by it when I sat there and aren'ly the biggest miracle of my life happened about that. It was an epiphany, and the women weren't women. There were a sitting Jews, and my mind's are and what I was watching ve the was anti submitted.

He said, up again, I had ever seen, and I understood that was the hypnopot that moment I got it, understood what would be done, and my life changed that moment on It got me thinking about it, looking for it. So that's a sad story. Barbara used to say, Barney's not a feminist, so he gets and I got it. I like the other line that you mentioned in your book, which is her paraphrasing actress Lee Grant. I've been married to a chauvinist and married to a feminist either one took out the garbage.

She also came up with the most supportant line in terms of what changing laced about. She said, to show about two women happened to be cops, two cops who happened to be women, And that was the essential. So that's what we were doing. And so let me ask you this, because we've talked about this about all our shows, and I'm just gonna jump up front. Usually we wait till later.

But did you set out to make a feminist show? Oh? I sat up to make a show, I said, I know, well, I set out to make a Paul Little Robert Redford buddy movement. Barbara told me to read a lot of books. One of the books was Laye Askills from Rubbers to Rape, History of the treatment of women in the Moment.

It's a fabulous book. Should I recommend anybody who asked about it? And even if Gabratt, maybe you should read it again. I believe it was in that book where I got that. Never the history of movies to television has there been a buddy movie for women.

There's never been a Paul Newland Robert Redford. I thought, why don't make one. So I wanted to make a move out of televisions. And it wasn't I it was a comedy. It was a little light.

It was like you know. And I went to Ed Sealdman, my friend, and he said to have maybe Cops. Isn't sure why not? So Barbara Jabbad said he wanted to do it in New York because it was funny of the California. I said, why is that?

We're the k or funny? So that's why I was in New York. All right, So how does the buddy comedy cop movie become TV movie starring the brother Sweat and Time Daily? All right, well we could sell it's the only person in the movie business white Sherry Lancing. Sherry Lancy got it.

She went to her boss or then boss Danny Melding, and she chipped, buy anybody chipts. Throwing her out of the said you gotta see these dousiness And Fionny said, all right, just to play Katy, I'll give you a million. Make this movie for a million and a half dollars by charl Welsh and h and Margaret So you gotta beat well, first of all, couldn't buy those two women those days, for they had helped up. Even if you could, I would make it with them. And it was silly now.

In fairness to me, Danny Milden knew something because like how Welsh wanted to become a pretty actress and and Margaret got her Chops, A Cardinal Knowledge and other movies. At that time they had done none of that. So it was feminist in that sense. I knew that a breakthrough woman. But it wasn't well made, very obviously poor in those days that show that movie it was only a mail john.

Everything about being a cop. It's mail orient and the men didn't like them. The men gave all the scut jobs. Well, in that sense, it was a feminist so I knew that we were doing that. Arber send the movie is going to pass you by.

I was Selvin's. So I went to every television and I tried to sell it as a comedy rama. Failed, And I went tried to sell it as a drama comedy It's a different group of people. Failed, And then went to CBS last place because I had released Connection, and Peter Frankevitch Southern of the Famous Strike called me up insteady, this is a television that a seriously, I should take me to our serious people. Peter little Over, I've done that.

You turned me down. This is damage. You're my last, so I'm not going to turn you down. I like Snake. I chased Barbara with Corde with me to CBS.

We pitch a new plot and he buys. We made the movie Some Call at a Pilot Toronto and it was a big hit. The right swit tyned daily And again, I'm very excited you shouted in Toronto. And I found that out from reading your book, because it really does look like you shouted in New York. And I know you did a couple of days in New York, got two or three days.

I learned from Dick rosenliber was an executive at bill Ways who had to learn from Joe Sargeant. It's very fine how to make a move and you look like you shot it somewhere else. And the way you do that is all your report location stuff. In the first four or five pages. Do you have anything left over?

You get maybe Pepper and Suz or twice later. But if you established you went him over, you got him, you can miss it. They're in New York at the beginning, of and they're in New York. Not a building is a building. I actually really love that opening to the movie because it does feel very New York in the seventies or eighties for the audience that hasn't seen it yet.

Lacy picks up Cagney from her one night stand and then they're driving to work and they see somebody basically running out of a building that's clearly stolen something clear the thief, and so they pull over and they go to chase him, and he runs into dashes into a building when somebody is walking out of their apartment, and then they have to buzz to get into the building. So they're trying to buzz somebody to let them into the building, and meanwhile another person basically steals Lacy's car of the police officer's car while they're trying to get into the building to chase the other thief. It was it was just like a lot of layers upon layers, and it was really quite lovely and you're like, oh, I totally buy this is New York City.

And there's just so much character in that first opening. Well that obody was written by at Join. So you make this TV movie and it airs and what happens next? Well, couple finished before it airs. You should know that we were in New York to shoot two or three days.

We were so convincing and didn't it so well with people friends. Somebody called me when the show was over. Gare months later said, Uh, how come you here in New York for it? Shouldn't need to call me, as you know, for forty yet out, but I need to call one person props called my friend Michael Hughes was the head of HBO. We used to my tennis together with the bells.

See Michael hasn't up in town for a day. When I have dinner, nice, I gotta have double daddies, because he's like, why don't you come along? So I did nothing else. He's sitting there talking to the husband of the one of the women about some movie the guy's making. They said, a play for HBU, and I'm sitting Betweth the Truman one.

Turns out it's a New Yorker who was moving to Los Angeles and who was a great friend. This is his friend of Harvey Ship had a CBS. She finds out. But I don't know Harvey Ship, he says, all or do she when you're on those airs. What am I left?

She's hadding editor in sheets of Miss Vegas. He's still in my heart. This is nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one. Yeah, yeah, what are you doing in New York? She said to me about So I tell her what I'm thinking in New York, she says, I'm interested in that.

We wind up on the cover of Miss Pegas, the show that asked the question can women beat buddies under pressure? And a little piece of glorious side If you like this show right to see me, yes, this is important stuff. We get to La and I am now a movement. They should know that making movements it's a long and paint. You start off with a pure idea.

I have this beautiful idea how buddy will be for when? And I got two women know their stuff. You then begin a whole series of compromises with electrical current, mechanical equipment, the crew director, the god, will the sun and shine or will the rain? And each of these things require a compiable. Now, the fewer compromises you make, the better your movies.

You're going to make compiables, and the first reaction you have up on seeing your move assembled together, and the director's cut is to think, if you can get to the bathroom in time to vomit, or you go to vomit right direction, you will set out to raise a child, become a Harvard Medical School graduate, and you wind up with a fourteen year old drop out who does drugs. The trick is the movie maker. The trick is to remember throwing up. You never remember it's still in your child, and you find a way fall in love with it all over. Barbara Abadad, she is in dismay it tears.

This is at the director's cut screening. I saved the director and as you were working the pre The reason Barbarrabbit was tears was not because somebody missed a joke, or because the production looked it looked like we spent much Mouney out of them see or this Cassie didn't worked. I was were all too professionally. She was in tears. So as the very things she said we all set out to do, we had sabotaged.

Cagmy was strident and unlikable. We told everybody, if you said you're good to love, women can do this just like men can do. And we had just proven the opts all the men who said women can't be buddies going to be proved, can't make this kind of a movie. And what the flaw was, I regret to say. It was a woman who were very hard for us, the Rtta Swift, the Rha Swift, became a television star as the foil on Mash.

She was the one nobody liked. She was the one that guys made fun of, tortured, and we loved it as an audience. That's what she was good at. Now she might have been able to direct it out of that. She was a star, and our director never heard him.

He just let her be Loretta. And Loretta was playing utlips for the Canny Union. So I said to the editor, I want you to play the entire move Loretta's back over her shoulder where the master a show us a little of virgie. So we'll come back to that later. Right now, that's your assignment.

Take ten days to do that. So the whole movie was recut with that, and then I refined, and that was the movie. Now Dick rose Will sees the movie Avadodes, Barbara Abdod says, comes over. It gives me. I says, you are a genius.

I cannot believe. And Dick Rosel, I've never seen a vestigation like this in my life. They love them, but it's not that good. I don't want to be embarrassed by this good. I'd like to rental rule at twenty six three Fox Well, I were a family and friends come.

So that's what we did. Rather came of your agent time King and family and friends, full house, two hundred people. They laughed in all the right places, they cheered and all the right places. And I thought, it's interesting. You can say the music too doesn't work.

Instead the photography isn't a plus. You say a couple of actors are all They shouldn't say that the right change of little flavier, but you can't say it is incredible. Nobody said I don't believe to women, and I thought, that's the college. That's what I've been loving, because that's what they were saying to you when you were trying to sell it, that two women can't do this. That's right.

And Gloria asked the question, can women be buddies under pressure? And they do it? And they could. That's what the movie proved, and that's what I fell in everywhere in the same reaction women audience sharing, and I said, we are onto something. The movie goes on the air.

Oh then they come to me pros Asians, fill boys and they started talking about all the things are going to do parties, who streams? Are that a fellow us? Again, it's one champagne, one thing. Get this Miss magazine, or gets the shelves, Get five hundred copies of these bags and send that every editor in the country. So Bartie, Miss Magazine doesn't sell that many issues.

It's not going to be a bigod deal. Thanks, It's an opinion making publication. New York Times will be attention as warious stidens, Washington Post will be attentions. This magazine says, watchings, And that's what we did. And we had a forty eight share, forty eight percent of the people in America watching television watch that shit.

A monumental version. And by the way, Laurena Sweet was fantastic in it. So whatever you did for her, she comes across great good. I have a susp how have to see who yet? And aftermid I was a little skeptical of her before I saw it, and she was great.

She's fantastic. It does not feel like hot lips. Right, it really does feel like a different character. We cut those things out. It works.

We don't like the mola, but she shouldn't be I know everybody close to me, I said, Lena, I said, you're in every scene. I said, it's like a variety show. Yep, you gotta hear the host. He had let the audience get tired of me. She doesn't talked to me today.

I don't always because I wrote that story, or whether because String feels I should have waited for her like Kake, you know, and I would have been waiting two years. So don't wait. Yeah, that wasn't gonna wait. All right, so it comes out it's a huge, huge hit. Then what happens.

We're gonna have to make this a two part right, Okay, we're going to have to end part one of our interview here, but our listeners will be tuning in next episode for part two. Our rest of our interview with Barney Rosenswig talking about Cagney and Lacy. We hope you'll come back and listen to part two. It's going to be just as fascinating as part one. Our audioography for today includes two websites.

The Cagney and Lacy official website is at Cagney and Lacy dot com, and then Barney Rosenswag site is at Barney Dashcagney and Lacy dot blogspot dot com. Find out more about us on the website Eighties tv Ladies dot com. Help support our show at Patreon dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies. Thank you so much for supporting this show. We cannot do it without you.

Be sure to tune in to part two of our interview with Barney Rosenswag, the creator of Cagney and Lacy. We look for to listening to our next episode with you. We hope Eighties tv Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century city and so pretty to the city. God