WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

SO THE EDITOR SAYS to me, "Listen, we want a story on Ron Samuels. You ever heard of him?" Well, kind of. Vaguely. Who is he? "He's married to Lynda Carter-Wonder Woman. He manages her and he manages Lindsay Wagner and he used to manage Jaclyn Smith (Charlie's Angels) and some other people, generally beautiful and female. But he doesn't just manage them; he's made them stars. And now he's parlayed these beautiful women into a production career for himself. He's just gotten some sort of six-picture deal with CBS. It sounds like an incredible story:"

First, I want to read about him. So I go to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where they have this. terrific library with little manila file sleeves filled with clips on just about everybody who's anybody in The Business. Samuel's file is kind of thin, because he's a new Somebody, but the ones on Lindsay Wagner and Lynda Carter are just chockablock full. And somehow, most of the articles are as much about Ron Samuels as they are about Wagner and Carter.

He's the "...wind propelling Lindsay Wagner ...the Wonder Man behind Wonder Woman ... the beast behind the beauties ...Supermanager...Svengali...Ziegfeld." Not only that, but he's "frenetic...brash ...a bulldog ... a whiz kid..."

Peeling away the hype, I manage to get a picture of his career. Son of a restaurant entrepreneur who hobnobbed with the stars, young Ron rubbed elbows with the famous and powerful both at home and on the golf course where he was something of a child prodigy. At 15, he decided he wanted to be an actor like his golfing buddies Clark Gable and Tony Curtis. He learned what it was like in front of the camera in those early '50s cop shows like Highway Patrol. Production he learned from Academy Award-nominated motion picture producer Aaron Rosenberg (Mutiny on the Bounty, Winchester 73) who took a shine to Samuels when they played golf together - and made him his assistant at 20th Century-Fox.

At 22, he picked up his first management client, Thelma Camacho, a singer with his good friend Kenny Rogers' The First Edition. Samuels managed her for awhile and some other variety performers (including Jaye P. Morgan) before managing actors like Robert Conrad.

Then, in 1975 when he was 32, the fireworks began. Samuels was introduced to Lindsay Wagner, then a $50,000-a-year contract player at Universal. The fateful meeting took place in Universal's commissary and, so the story goes, Samuels went up to Wagner to congratulate her on her performance in The Paper Chase, her second film role. Wagner was appreciative but dejected: Universal had just dropped her option and ABC had just turned her down for a movie role. The only job she had in sight was waiting on tables. But Samuels saw a brighter future, and after several meetings he signed on as her personal manager.

In the meantime, the great god of retribution was fooling with fate. Just before Wagner left Universal, she played Lee Majors' girlfriend in a Million Dollar Man two-parter. Their love story sent the program's ratings soaring, and the death of Wagner's character, Jaime Sommers, brought an avalanche of protest mail to ABC and Universal. The network decided they had to bring Sommers back. Universal said fine; who do you want to play her? Lindsay Wagner, came the answer. Universal, having discovered Wagner was no longer on their payroll, tried to entice the network with a name actress. Sally Field, they suggested; Stephanie Powers. ABC was implacable: it was Lindsay Wagner or nobody.

That made life difficult for Universal, but not impossible. They traced Wagner down to Ron Samuels and offered her their standard guest shot fee: $1,500 per episode for the new two-parter. Samuels said no; he wanted ten times that: $25,000 for each segment.

Who knows how much Universal sputtered. The fact is they were between a rock and a hard place. Samuels had no intention of negotiating, so Universal had no choice. Lindsay Wagner got her $50,000, the two-parter turned into The Bionic Woman, and Samuels negotiated an unprecedented deal with the studio that made Lindsay Wagner the then highest paid actress in television. It was the beginning of his legendary deal making, and earned him the title of The Man Who Shafted the Black Tower.

I read all this and I read about how he married Lynda Carter when she was playing Wonder Woman on an on-again off-again basis for ABC, convinced CBS to pick up the dragging show on a one hour prime time basis, and got Carter script approval, a chauffeur and limo, a full-time secretary, various other Cosponsored perks, and the current title of highest-paid actress in television.

Then I read about how he took on Jaclyn Smith, got her a TV movie, more product endorsements and modeling jobs, and tripled her salary for Charlie's Angels. And I see that he collects cars “not so many" he's quoted as saying, only eight-including two or three Rolls Royces, a Ferrari, a Cobra, and a custom-built limosine. And he likes to blow his money on diamonds and jewels for Lynda, custom-designed and worth so much they're kept in a bank vault. And I begin to get the picture: a real Hollywood type-loud, arrogant, and airbrushed to perfection. I'm sure he'll smoke cigars, consummate endless deals during our interview, and call me "baby" every other sentence.

The first hint I'm wrong is his office. No plush, no glitter, no beautiful starlet at the front desk to greet me. Instead, there's a secretary marked "mature and efficient," a small waiting room and a couple of Business Weeks to leaf through.

This guy Samuels reminds me of someone's nice Jewish cousin from Beverly Hills or Scarsdale or any other upper middle class community. And really, the only thing that belies his wealth is a slight overabundance of jewelry ("I like it and it's a good investment.").

But still, I know his story. And to have come so far in such a short time-he's only 36-to have accomplished such feats of derring-do in a town of derring-don'ts bespeaks an unusual man with a single-minded drive that must have started at an early age.

"No," he says. "I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a kid. I changed my mind from day to day: Should I be a golf pro? Did I want to go into the movie business? I don't think I really settled down until my father died. He was such an overpowering and dynamic man, and life was very easy for me while he was here. Although he was uncompromising and demanding and wanted me to be somebody, it was very hard for me to grow or really test myself while he was alive.

"Then he died and all of a sudden I realized, `I'm here all alone. I've got to make something of myself. That's when my drive changed. But I've never been driven by the need to make money so much as the need for self-identification. I wanted to accomplish something, to contribute'"

Samuels remembers looking around at the personal managers in town and realizing how unqualified they were. Many of them landed their positions through some sort of nepotism. And most of them had little experience or idea of how to deal with an actor on a professional level. That, Samuels says, is his strong point. "I can play a scene with an actor and direct him in it. Or I can watch the dailies and say, `This doesn't work; play it that way: Actors are totally vulnerable and childlike in many ways. They need someone to tell them `you can't do this' or `you have to do that’"

Having noted the paucity of managers of his strengths and experience in production and acting, Samuels threw himself into the void. He paid total attention to every detail of his clients' careers-dressing them, rehearsing them, and sculpting their public images. He played them like yo-yos, having a sure instinct for what they should do, when, and for how much.

He's now turning that same total involvement to his new career as a producer. Ron Samuels Productions started with The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel. A couple of writers, Doug Schwartz and Michael Berk, brought him the script they had written about real women in the Appalachian Mountains. Schwartz and Berk wanted Lindsay Wagner for the lead; Samuels was the obvious deal-maker. But when he read the script, he was fascinated. "It was the first piece of material I'd read and immediately said, `I'm going to do this’"

He swung a deal with Columbia Pictures Television to co-produce, and in his first try, delivered CBS's highest rated movie of the season. "It was like playing in the U.S. Open the first time you've held a tennis racket," he says. "And winning."

His high was so great, he sloughed off all his management clients but Lindsay Wagner and Lynda Carter and set about assembling a slate of, at the moment, six projects, most of them for CBS.

The only part of the production pie Samuels hasn't put his fingers in yet is directing. But give him time. Right now he's so busy working on this and that, he doesn't want to stop long enough to devote himself to just one project. "But someday I'd like to direct," he says. "And I think I'd be really good at it because I understand actors so well. Basic camera techniques are something all directors use; the hook to being a really good director is being able to communicate with the performers and the viewers."

Samuels' almost total involvement in his productions harks back to his training with Aaron Rosenberg. "In those days, producers did everything. There was a whole different breed of talent then. They could write, direct, cut, everything. They weren't just dealmakers."

And Samuels doesn't want to be just a deal-maker. "My ego and credibility are too involved to just walk away and say, `Here, you guys, make me this movie: "I make a decision and then I go for it, make it happen. That's what made Fred Silverman so successful. He's a man you can go to and, right or wrong, he'll say yes or no. Insecurity and lack of commitment have made for a lot of corporate problems in this business. "People in the business know that I don't say things arbitrarily. If I say something, it's because I believe it's the right thing to do. And once I commit myself, I follow through. I'm an uncompromising person. I've always believed right is right and wrong is wrong. And when something is right, I'm not going to let someone else tell me it's wrong."

Now right here I better stop and tell you that Ron Samuels does not come off arrogant. His "uncompromising" is not that of "I want it my way because I want it my way." He's a measured thinker, an intelligent man who knows his profession. His "uncompromising" is "I've made my judgment and I won't settle for anything less."

Take his famous Universal coup, for instance. He didn't set out to shaft the studio. He took advantage of a situation to get Lindsay Wagner what he believed she was worth. "I told them they would pay her the same as they would pay a male star or else they couldn't have her. I wasn't in there to negotiate."

Nor was he going to negotiate with CBS when they wanted to do Meg Laurel as a two-hour movie. "It was too important a film to push into two hours;' he says. "It had to be three hours or we wouldn't have done it at all."

Just as Universal came out golden (from the profits of Bionic Woman) after "doing it Ron's way," so too did CBS. That contested third hour of Meg Laurel was the most successful-earning a 50 share-of the entire film. And now, there are some Go films which are being developed in the new three-hour format. Each successive time Samuels has forced his point and come out a winner, he's added another brushstroke to the portrait of a champion.

Samuels also says he's uncompromising in his choice of properties to produce. He is not interested in whether a script is commercial but whether it has, for him, value. "I want to make films that are important, that have something to say, and that are made by filmmakers. I have no desire to make a film like, say, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, even if I knew going in it was going to be highly successful. I've got to do something I can be proud of artistically. Then if it's well done, it will also be commercially successful.

"I like pictures that make a statement. If a film is a character study, it has to be about a really interesting character. If it's about something that happened to people, I want viewers to be able to relate to it. The material has to be special."

Of course, in this area Samuels can well afford to be uncompromising. He has gathered around him a small syndicate of backers who have put $10 million away for him to use if he wants to do a project and can't get other financing. The Hollywood Reporter made, much of this "syndicate" but according to Samuels, who is naming no names, "They're just a couple of friends of mine who have a lot of faith in me. They stepped up and said, `The money is there for you if you want it."

He hasn't touched the money yet and doesn't intend to unless he's sure the project will be successful. "Their friendship is too important to me to jeopardize it on a whim."

I arrived in his office armed with a list of questions culled from What Makes Sammy Run?, designed to reveal his burning lust for the spoils of tinseltown. Instead, I got: What's he most proud of? His wife. What's he hungry for? Peace.

"The peace comes from satisfying my need to test myself. [ think it's really important for a man to do, to put himself on the line and see what his worth is. It has nothing to do with a particular career. It's the approach to life and the gusto you put into it. I go at life with a fire and a fury and a temper. But I don't have any particular goals. I'm not driven to be president of a studio or anything like that. I just want to grow and be the best I can at what I do.

"And in five years, I would like to be sitting on a ranch with Lynda and our children and our dogs and horses. For me, that's really where life is at." Perhaps it reads hokey but, you know, I believe him.