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In 1966, Alan Hirschfield tried to promote a merger between Ray Stark's Seven Arts Productions and Marty Ransohoff's Filmways. The big problem - Ray and Marty hated each other. The three men had just ordered drinks when Ray delivered a withering commentary on Ransohoff's recent movies. Stark particularly crticized Ransohoff's purchase of the movie rights to the James Clavell novel Tai-Pan. After the first course was served, Ransohoff had enough. "Ray, you've been producing shit for so long you wouldn't know a real picture if you saw one." (Indecent Exposure, pg. 98) From Indecent Exposure: "A blunt, profane man of medium height with receding brown hair, a persistent paunch, and a baritone bark for a voice, Ransohoff in years past had been called "the messiah of the New Hollywood" by Budd Schulberg and "L.B. Mayer without overhead" by Joyce Haber. His record, however, was never spectacular or consistent enough by Hollywood standards to qualify him for either label. He produced some of the most successful television series of the early 1960s, including The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. Yet the moviegoing public did not know quite what to make of his films. Whether they were intelligent and pungent (The Americanization of Emily) or pretentious and boring (The Sandpiper), they rarely were in the mainstream of commercial Hollywood blandness and rarely were commercial hits, although most earned modest amounts of money." (pg. 176)
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