Free Indecent Exposure by David McClintick

Begelman , was responsible for the new success of Columbia Pictures Industries.
    Hirschfield also welcomed the opportunity of the publicity to assert— slowly and strictly by implication—his independence of the Allen family and their investment banking house, Allen & Company. The Hirschfield and Allen families had been closely associated since the 1920s in Wall Street where Alan Hirschfield 's father, Norman, and Charles Allen, the founder of Allen & Company, had become fast friends as struggling, would-be tycoons barely out of their teens. Alan Hirschfield himself had worked for or on behalf of Allen & Company almost continuously since graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1959. The firm had employed him as an investment banker, giving him a chance to make a lot of money in various business deals. When the Allens took effective control of Warner Bros, in the sixties, they sponsored Hirschfield for a year as Warner's vice president for finance. When they took control of Columbia, they sponsored him as president and chief executive officer of Columbia. But while Hirschfield appreciated all the All ens had done for him, he had gradually begun to feel unappreciated by the Allens for what he had done for them. In particular, Hirschfield considered himself superior in intellect and business acumen to Herbert Allen, Jr., the firm's scion and Charles Allen's nephew, who was four and a half years younger than Hirschfield and, unlike Hirschfield, born to great wealth. Herbert had entered the family firm straight from college without training, had been made its president only five years later at the age of twenty-seven, and by the 1970s was the firm's most visible symbol. Hirschfield had come to resent the control that Herbert exercised as the most powerful member of Columbia Pictures industries' board of directors. As a practical matter, Allen & Company remained Hirschfield's boss with all that that implied about enforced loyalty to the Allen family. Apart from not particularly respecting Herbert Allen, Hirschfield felt that he had earned, by his outstanding performance as president of Columbia, a chance for more independence and freedom from Allen's control than he was accustomed to enjoying. He, not Herbert, had saved Columbia. He, not Herbert, was one of the brightest young show-business executives in the nation. Herbert knew relatively little about the entertainment business, and what he did know had given him old-fashioned views, Hirschfield felt, because it had come from old men—from Herbert's uncle, the patriarch of Allen & Company, seventy-five-ye ar-old Charles Allen, who long had been a director of Warner Bros, and a pal of Jack Warner; and from sixty-two-year-old Ray Stark, the producer of Funny Girl, The Way We Were, and other films. Stark had become Herbert's closest friend in recent years and in many ways was idolized by the younger man.
    None of Hirschfield 's feelings was stated or even hinted in Herbert's presence, however. While never best friends, Alan and Herbert always had had a close, comfortable relationship which continued in the summer of 1977.
    After the regular monthly meeting of the Columbia board of directors in New York on Thursday, September 8, Alan Hirschfield showed David Begelman the galley proofs of the company's latest annual report to shareholders, which was scheduled to go to press by the end of the month. Lavishly illustrated with color photographs, and printed on the finest paper, the report was the most expensive document that Columbia Pictures Industries had ever produced. In his introductory letter to shareholders. Hirschfield noted that the motion-picture division continued to be the major contributor to the corporation's profits. "The results are a tribute to David Begelman as he continued to provide the leadership and keen insight so vital to the continued success of our motion-picture program," Hirschfield stated. Begelman's photograph appeared on the first page of the movie