DANCE FEVER- PART TWO

"Whte Man Speak With Forked Tongue"

The Indians often said this in the old movie westerns. It was their way of saying you cannot trust what the white man says.

I thought of those words often in my dealings with Merv Griffin, when I was hired to conceive the show and produce a pilot for “DANCE FEVER”, cashing in on the disco raze.  The weekly series ran in syndication for almost 10 years.

       We couldn’t get John Travolta to host the series, but we could get Deney Terrio, the guy who taught Travolta his dance moves in “SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER”.  To open the show, Deney performed a little dance number with two pretty dancers we called “Motion” .

The format was simple enough- on each episode four couples would compete in short dance routines to be judged by a rotating panel of  celebrity judges. At the end of the season there would be a playoff with a Grand Prize Winner. It was the low-budget predecessor of “DANCING WITH THE STARS”.

       My deal was made by my agents at William Morris who also represented Merv: I would get a Created by credit as well as a royalty on every show produced plus 15% of net profits from the series.

        One day, when the pilot had been shot and edited, I passed the editor in the hall. I made a joke about making sure my name was spelled correctly. He replied, “Your name isn’t on the show.”

      Yikes!  I immediately screened the finished pilot. Merv’s name was on it,  but not mine. I reminded my agent at William Morris of the deal we had made with Merv‘s company.

        The President of Merv Griffin Entertainment responded that they were willing to give me credit as the Producer of the pilot. He acknowledged other terms of my deal had been discussed, but insisted they had never been agreed to. What was worse, my agent had never spelled out the terms in a deal memo.  

      It was the word of my agent at William Morris  against that of a major client who was paying the agency huge commissions.  “DANCE FEVER” was sold in markets all over the country. In those years, a syndicated series ran for 39 original episodes each year  plus repeats. I was beside myself.

Finally, in desperation, I took my case to The Writers Guild of America- West, of which I am a long standing member. They backed me totally, threatening to file a class action suit against Merv Griffin Entertainment. With the show about to debut all across the country, Merv was not willing to risk a messy law suit.

I finally accepted a compromise. I did not get my Created by credit; Merv took it. Instead, I agreed to an end credit on every show reading “Production Services Provided by Ernest Chambers Productions.”

      I did receive my 15% of net profits from the first season, but never again. Over the years, more than 300 shows were produced plus a handful of Specials and the show never again showed a profit.

Later I hired an independent analyst to go through the books at MGE, but he could not discover any irregularities. There is no sleight-of-hand like studio accounting.

      I was, however, paid my royalty for all 390 episodes produced. For almost 10 years, I never read a script or ever showed up in the studio, Just as well because Merv could not  stand the sight of me.

I learned later from Merv’s secretary, that he fumed every week when he had to sign my royalty check. And that’s why we did not speak to one another for 10 years.

          So how did I get to be his VP for Film and Television?

This is best illustrated by a story I once heard about Jack Warner, when he was running Warner Bros. studios. Back in the 30’s the screenwriters were organizing their union, what became The Writers Guild of America. Prior to that, writers often got no credit on a film. Producers would give a writing credit to whomever they pleased, a brother, a son, a girlfriend.

The writers formed picket lines around the studios. Jack Warner saw one of his writers on the picket line and is reported to have said, “I will never hire that sonuvabitch again………..until I need him.”

Next: How Merv and I became close friends and colleagues till the end of his life.