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Authors: Barney Rosenzweig
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first ended in their agreement to meet the actress.
The next morning Tyne Daly and I convened for breakfast at Dupar’s, a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley. Aside from some pleasantries at her interview a few weeks before, this was our first conversation. I tried to distract her from being nervous. A half hour later, we held hands as we walked across Ventura Boulevard to the offices of CBS movies for television chief William Self.
Tyne had to be tense. You could never tell. I’ve known her now over twenty-five years, and I still can’t discern when she is acting off-stage and when she’s not (maybe it’s because she is always acting). Anyway, she was easy and charming in the interview. Self, Frankovich, and the rest were affable but noncommittal as Tyne and I left the office together at meeting’s end.
It was later that afternoon I got the call from CBS . “Go ahead with your choice. Tyne Daly is approved.”
We were Toronto-bound.
The first Cagney. Loretta Swit and me on the Toronto location in 1981.
Photo: Rosenzweig Personal Collection
The shoot was one of the most pleasant of my career. At that time, working with CBS as opposed to ABC was like trying to compare Tahiti with the Gulag. The writers’ strike had development at a standstill. My Paramount offices would therefore be closed for the duration. For the first time in many years, I was allowed to focus on what was at hand. What a contrast to the way my life had been just months before.
John Steinbeck’s East of Eden had aired on ABC just weeks prior to our production start. It garnered extremely high ratings and pretty good critical notices. The pilot of American Dream debuted while I was on location in Toronto to not such high numbers but universally enthusiastic praise. Both received a fair share of award nominations. 8
Director Post got us through our twenty-day schedule with alacrity (especially noteworthy since he had a crew that in those days was not nearly as experienced or efficient as a Hollywood company). Ted may not have been the best casting for this type of material, but he listened and tried to give me what I asked for; I’m plenty grateful for that.
We finished in Toronto and moved on to Manhattan for two days of whirlwind photography in order to get as many of those typical New York settings with our principals in the foreground as possible. Dick Rosenbloom had worked with award-winning director Joe Sargent on Hustling . 9 He passed on to me what the director had taught him about how and where to design the maximum amount of shots in order to effectively convince the viewer that the film they were seeing was entirely shot in the locale in which that story took place, despite having a very limited time at the site. Basically, it came down to concentrating the bulk of on-site filming at the very outset of the piece in places that were clearly identifiable, in order to firmly implant in the viewers’ mind that what they were seeing had been shot in its entirety “on location.” When Cagney & Lacey aired on CBS , friends of mine who lived in New York chastised me for being in town for so long and not making contact. They were astonished when I told them the company was only in the city for two days.
One old New York friend I did contact while in the Big Apple was Michael Fuchs, a rising young executive with the then-burgeoning pay cable system HBO. Michael was a tennis-playing buddy of mine, and I phoned upon my arrival at LaGuardia to ask if he was free that evening for dinner. He wasn’t. He had a date and was doubling with another couple. Then, after a beat, he asked, “Why don’t you join us?”
I thanked him, but said I didn’t want to be a fifth wheel.
“Nonsense,” came the reply, “these are old friends of mine … you’ll enjoy yourself.”
I tagged along, positioned at the restaurant—as luck would have it—between the two women. Michael, having ordered the several course Chinese feast, became more and
The next morning Tyne Daly and I convened for breakfast at Dupar’s, a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley. Aside from some pleasantries at her interview a few weeks before, this was our first conversation. I tried to distract her from being nervous. A half hour later, we held hands as we walked across Ventura Boulevard to the offices of CBS movies for television chief William Self.
Tyne had to be tense. You could never tell. I’ve known her now over twenty-five years, and I still can’t discern when she is acting off-stage and when she’s not (maybe it’s because she is always acting). Anyway, she was easy and charming in the interview. Self, Frankovich, and the rest were affable but noncommittal as Tyne and I left the office together at meeting’s end.
It was later that afternoon I got the call from CBS . “Go ahead with your choice. Tyne Daly is approved.”
We were Toronto-bound.
The first Cagney. Loretta Swit and me on the Toronto location in 1981.
Photo: Rosenzweig Personal Collection
The shoot was one of the most pleasant of my career. At that time, working with CBS as opposed to ABC was like trying to compare Tahiti with the Gulag. The writers’ strike had development at a standstill. My Paramount offices would therefore be closed for the duration. For the first time in many years, I was allowed to focus on what was at hand. What a contrast to the way my life had been just months before.
John Steinbeck’s East of Eden had aired on ABC just weeks prior to our production start. It garnered extremely high ratings and pretty good critical notices. The pilot of American Dream debuted while I was on location in Toronto to not such high numbers but universally enthusiastic praise. Both received a fair share of award nominations. 8
Director Post got us through our twenty-day schedule with alacrity (especially noteworthy since he had a crew that in those days was not nearly as experienced or efficient as a Hollywood company). Ted may not have been the best casting for this type of material, but he listened and tried to give me what I asked for; I’m plenty grateful for that.
We finished in Toronto and moved on to Manhattan for two days of whirlwind photography in order to get as many of those typical New York settings with our principals in the foreground as possible. Dick Rosenbloom had worked with award-winning director Joe Sargent on Hustling . 9 He passed on to me what the director had taught him about how and where to design the maximum amount of shots in order to effectively convince the viewer that the film they were seeing was entirely shot in the locale in which that story took place, despite having a very limited time at the site. Basically, it came down to concentrating the bulk of on-site filming at the very outset of the piece in places that were clearly identifiable, in order to firmly implant in the viewers’ mind that what they were seeing had been shot in its entirety “on location.” When Cagney & Lacey aired on CBS , friends of mine who lived in New York chastised me for being in town for so long and not making contact. They were astonished when I told them the company was only in the city for two days.
One old New York friend I did contact while in the Big Apple was Michael Fuchs, a rising young executive with the then-burgeoning pay cable system HBO. Michael was a tennis-playing buddy of mine, and I phoned upon my arrival at LaGuardia to ask if he was free that evening for dinner. He wasn’t. He had a date and was doubling with another couple. Then, after a beat, he asked, “Why don’t you join us?”
I thanked him, but said I didn’t want to be a fifth wheel.
“Nonsense,” came the reply, “these are old friends of mine … you’ll enjoy yourself.”
I tagged along, positioned at the restaurant—as luck would have it—between the two women. Michael, having ordered the several course Chinese feast, became more and
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