Lights! Camera! Inaction!

By Gerald Clarke

The Big Celebrity Show on Pico Boulevard

It looked like a rehearsal for Celebrity Allstars. Rarely have so many famous TV and movie names come together in one spot: Carroll O'Connor, Erik Estrada, Ed Asner, Henry Winkler, Cheryl Ladd, John Forsythe, Telly Savalas, Alan Alda, Hal Linden, Walter Matthau. But the actors who gathered last week in front of the 20th Century-Fox studios on Pico Boulevard were not playing roles. They were marching up and down Pico as part of a strike that has stopped production of most new TV shows and feature films.

Since it began July 21, the strike has halted work on about 50 TV series and more than 20 films, including those being shot on location. The cast and crew of MGM's Rich and Famous, starring Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset, were called home from Manhattan. MTM Enterprises, which had finally been persuaded to shoot an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati in Cincinnati, was forced to stop after only two days. "It took us three years to get them here," wailed Mari Barnum, Ohio firm bureau manager. "If we run into weather problems after the strike is over, the whole thing goes down the drain." Some feature films have already been canceled. The only ones now shooting are those, like On Golden Pond and Ragtime, whose producers agreed beforehand to whatever terms are negotiated.

The next casualty of the strike may be the fall television schedule. If the work stoppage continues beyond mid-August, all three commercial networks--PBS is not affected--will probably have to push the season's premiere from mid-September into October. Some series, such as ABC'S The Love Boat and CBS's Lou Grant, completed several episodes before the strike began; many others, like CBS's Dallas, have none in condition to go on the air.

Not wanting to give information--or comfort--to the unions involved, the networks refuse to say what they would do if the season is delayed. But it does not take a Fred Silverman to surmise that they would depend heavily on old movies, news, game shows, sports events and, of course, reruns-- lots and lots of reruns. NBC has an advantage, if it can be called that, in having more unacted shows than the other two networks: Real People, Speak Up America and Games People Play. It also has TV rights to the World Series, which opens in early October.

The strike may go into extra innings. The last walkout by the actors ran for six weeks in 1960. This one could go on even longer, for both sides know that the out come will determine, for years to come, how the industry will divide the profits from the new technology: pay TV, video discs and video cassettes. "It is important that this strike not be minimized," says Winkler, almost unrecognizable behind a thick beard. "Ninety-eight percent of actors aren't as fortunate as I am. If we don't do this now, we won't get our just due down the road."

Actors have always felt that they have not received their fair share of the profits from movies shown on TV and shows in syndication. "Some of the most creative people in Hollywood are in accounting," comments Linden wryly. The actors, nearly 89% of whom earn less than $10,000 a year, are determined to get a better deal on profits that the networks and producing companies make from pay TV and all the other new gadgetry. They want 6% of all such profits, beginning with the first dollar. The producers are offering 3.6%--but only after the show or movie has played the circuit for as long as two years.

The industry argues that the actors' demands may inhibit the new markets, which have barely got off the ground. "It doesn't make sense for an industry which is just getting started to give away money from the first dollar," says Industry Spokesman Philip Myers, a Fox executive. "We say: Give us a chance to get the industry started first."

Nobody, in any event, seems in much of a hurry to settle. Ed Asner growled that the producers were acting as if "they'll bulldoze the studios into parking lots. We'll wait for that. We're gonna be out here if it takes all summer." It just might, and come fall, parents may be able to answer that eternal question of child hood: What did people do before they in vented television? --By Gerald Clarke. Reported by James Willwerth/Los Angeles

With reporting by James Willwerth/Los Angeles

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