top of page
Writer's pictureFrank LaLoggia

AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS: EPISODE 10: FRED SILVERMAN, DAVID GEFFEN & CHER

Updated: Aug 29, 2023


Lots of stories to tell regarding the journey that led to LADY IN WHITE: I dedicated an earlier post to the passing of LYNN STALMASTER, the legendary casting director who cast LADY IN WHITE. In that post, I described how we met. I'm going to skip that background here and jump to the subject at hand.

A couple of months after arriving in L.A., late summer of 1974, I set-up a meeting with Lynn Stalmaster and a screening of my short film, GABRIEL, for him to see. He was impressed enough with my performance in the film to ask if I thought I could do a Puerto Rican accent. At the time, he was having a hell of a time finding the lead for a CBS/WARNER BROTHERS sitcom pilot titled SALT & PEPE. The show's premise centered around an idealistic Puerto Rican kid who marries into a black family. NBC was riding high at the time with their hugely successful CHICO AND THE MAN, starring Freddie Prinze, and CBS was hoping to cash in with a similar, mixed race comedy series.

I responded to Stalmaster's query as any hungry, young actor would: “Sure! Puerto Rican accent? No problem!” Lynn gives me the script and instructs me to go home, work on it a bit, and come back the following week to read for him. So, I come up with the brilliant idea of hiding a cassette recorder under my jacket and deciding to visit a very rough Latino bar in downtown L.A. while clandestinely recording the conversations within. I'm certain that if I was discovered, I wouldn't be here to write these words!

I returned to Lynn's office the following week and read for him. He immediately set-up a meeting for me with the Producer of the show, Duke Vincent, and the head of Warner Brothers Television, Sylvia Gold. I remember being so revved up during the reading that I actually hopped upon a coffee table in the room and back down again in what I thought would be an appropriate character driven move.

Vincent & Gold were sold. I was their man. What followed, however, was a month of hand wringing on the part of Fred Silverman, Head of Programming at CBS, regarding my ethnic background. Freddie Prinze was playing a Chicano in his hit series when he was actually half Puerto Rican and half German and NBC had taken a lot of flack about this from the Chicano acting community. So, Silverman insisted that Vincent keep trying to find an actual Puerto Rican to fill the roll

. They finally came across a young singer that someone had spotted accompanying himself on a guitar in a local coffee shop. He was Puerto Rican but he wasn't an actor. They hired an acting coach to try to bring him up to speed and worked with him for a number of weeks. Finally, a live feed audition for Fred Silverman was scheduled for the two of us. The audition took place at CBS Television City on The Jefferson's set. My competition performed his audition first as I watched from off stage. I felt a bit sorry for him as he was stiff and unconvincing. Acting just wasn't his “thing.” Upon completing my audition, I left convinced that I wasn't going to get the part.

I took a walk down Beverly Boulevard and gulped down a chocolate shake to ease the pain. I return to my car in the parking lot at CBS and am about to leave when the Producer, Duke Vincent, comes running towards me yelling “Where the hell have you been!? I've been looking all over for you! You got it!” Silverman had chosen me, after all.

We rehearsed and shot the show at Warner Brothers. What followed was the typical waiting game. Silverman would be making the decision as to whether the show would get “picked up” and we would go to series in a few weeks. And the decision was.... No go. Silverman had passed on the show.

Almost immediately after I had heard the news, I get a call from Duke Vincent who asks me if I would stop by his office for a chat. He sits me down and tells me that he wanted to explain to me what had happened. He wanted me to know that Silverman had passed because he hated me in the show. When Duke asked him why, he said “That fucking kid reminds me of David Geffen!” Duke didn't want me to feel that my performance was at fault. Silverman's decision had nothing to do with that. It had to do with my resemblance to DAVID GEFFEN!

“So, who the hell is David Geffen!?”, I asked. Duke explained that David Geffen was a record producer (Geffen Records and later the “G” of Spielberg's production company “SKG” (Spielberg, Katzenberg, Geffen). Silverman blamed Geffen for the break-up of SONNY & CHER when he (Geffen) and Cher began fucking each other. THE SONNY & CHER SHOW had been Silverman's number one triumph on CBS. The show fell apart as a result of their affair. On top of that, Silverman had the hots for Cher and was hoping to get into her pants himself but Geffen beat him to it.

AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS: GYPSIES, TRAMPS & THIEVES




8 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page