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native of Beverly Hills,
worked his way up by cannily turning little-known starlets into
million-a-year stars. Not only Lynda but also Charlie's Angel Jaclyn
Smith and Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner have benefited from his
deal-making talent. |
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Lynda's
transformation from Wonder Woman into a variety performer has taken only
18 months. CBS plans to air her first singing-and-dancing TV special
this month. Her nightclub act has left them cheering at Caesars Palace
in Las Vegas. And she is preparing for a string of TV movies, feature
films, record albums and perhaps even a new series. Her poster,
displaying the blue-eyed beauty in a keep-'em-down-or.-the-farm pose
(see page 52), was the top seller of 1978. |
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Behind all these
deals as executive producer, adviser and part-time Pygmalion is Samuels.
And behind Samuels-in a quick change worthy of Wonder Woman
herself-stands Lynda in still another role, investment gadfly. Not long
after their marriage, she reasserted' a longstanding interest in
personal finance, impressing on Ron that their newly ascendant income
was being taxed far more severely than it needed to be. Soon both of
them were spending their evenings delightedly running for tax shelter.
The pair recently talked to Joseph S. Coyle of Money about their
relationship, personal and business. |
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 How
did it happen that Lynda, the performer, got Ron, the businessman,
interested in personal financial planning?
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 Lynda:
My brother, who's a general agent for Guardian Life Insurance, has his
fingers in a lot of pies, and he got me interested in investing before I
ever knew Ron. So after we were married, and during long periods of
downtime when we were not shooting Wonder Woman, I started getting
involved again and gradually I became more assertive.
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Ron:
Lynda got me much more interested in the technical aspects of our money
than I'd been before. I was involved in making deals, in going from one
thing to the next. Then she said, "Wait a minute. What are we doing to
protect our income? Let's talk about tax planning, pensions, savings,
investments." That's something I never wanted to sit still for; I'd get
antsy every time. |
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| Describe
yourselves financially. |
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| Lynda:
Very conservative. |
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Ron:
We don't invest in stocks at all, and we're careful about debt. When we
want to invest in something, we take out loans on money we already have
in the bank. So instead of paying an interest rate of 16% or 17%, we can
borrow money at two percentage points above the rate we receive on our
savings. |
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| How
did you become aware of such things? |
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Lynda:
We have a team of tax attorneys and accountants who give us expert
advice. They're helping us build a foundation for investing as opposed
to our just wantonly going out and buying this land or that apartment
building. |
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| What
kind of investments has this expert advice led you to make? |
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Ron:
We bought a horse-breeding ranch in Malibu. It's a business, there are
tremendous tax benefits, and it's also something we enjoy. We're excited
about breeding horses, we love the land and it's only 30 minutes away.
That property alone is worth $5 million now, and real estate people tell
me it will be worth a couple of million more in a few years. |
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| What
else do you invest in? |
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Ron:
We feel there is nothing better than buying land. Property keeps going
up if you invest in the right areas. So we've bought some condominiums
in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area. We just bought a 5,000-square-foot house
in Palm Springs. Our house here [in Beverly Hills] has about doubled in
value since we bought it less than two years ago. I also like jewelry,
so since I've known Lynda I've invested in diamonds-not just for her to
wear, because they're usually in the bank. They've appreciated a lot. |
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Lynda:
We're buying the condominiums purely for investment, and we're getting
in on the ground floor-we bought some units when they were just breaking
ground. We can either lease them or turn them over. They don't require a
huge cash outlay since we can borrow most of the cost. And they provide
us with tax benefits or income or both. |
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| Have
you invested in anything else more for fun than for profit? |
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Ron:
I've collected cars-several Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari, a Cobra, cars like
that. I've done it as a hobby since I was a kid. We haven't lost money
because it's an appreciating market, but today I would not say, "Go tie
up a quarter of a million dollars in cars," because it's foolish. I've
liquidated all the cars except four. |
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Lynda:
He doesn't lose money on them, but when you talk about over $200,000
worth of cars, that's a little ridiculous. Are you learning some
lessons? |
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Ron:
We've learned to make a lot of smaller investments. And then if
something doesn't work you're not hurt as badly as some people who put
everything' into one basket. Invest as much as you can afford to lose so
that if it doesn't work out it isn't going to destroy you. |
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| As
Lynda's manager and producer, don't you invest in her work? |
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Ron:
We're taking an ownership position in all the properties we're
developing together-Lynda's musical special for CBS, another three-hour
film for CBS, the full-length movie we're doing, and so on. We will own
the negatives, and that's where the big money is-as the shows are
rebroadcast again and again over a period of years. In the case of the
CBS special, for instance, we took a deficit position-assuming full
responsibility in case we went over budget. We also get the benefits of
bringing it in under budget, and we own the negative as part of our deal
with the network. We also put $200,000 of our hard-earned money into
Lynda's Las Vegas act. I said to her, "This is an investment just like
buying property." It was even better because a week and a half after we
opened, we had already made that $200,000 back and the act was there to
use for another couple of years-costumes, music, everything. |
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| Would some
other producer have handled Lynda's shows differently? |
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Ron:
We put the money on the screen instead of in our pockets. For instance,
you could have done the special with 17 musicians; we did it with 27. We
didn't take big salaries up front. It's an investment in Lynda's career. |
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| Lynda:
I'm blessed that my husband is also my manager. I don't have to worry if
the people representing me are trying to take advantage of me, or just
don't care, or had a headache that day and didn't really feel like
working, or a million other things. I mean, Ron can't get away with
anything. Of course, sometimes it can wear on you emotionally. I'm so
close to him, I know what he goes through, waking up in the middle of
the night or staying up all night long. That part isn't easy. |
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| What
happens when you disagree about something important? |
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Ron:
We make the decisions jointly. But if it comes down to a final decision,
Lynda will defer to what I have to say as the man of the house. |
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That
sounds like an old-fashioned arrangement. Do you have any new-style ones
like a prenuptial agreement or owning your property separately? |
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Lynda:
Things like that offend me. I married one person and I'll never marry
another. It has to work, because there is no other choice. |
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Ron:
Everything is shared. I would never live any other way. We work
together, we're married, and if money became the preoccupation of the
relationship, then we'd have no business being married. We'd just be in
business together. |
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| You've
done pretty well on that level, though, haven't you? |
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Ron:
On her first season as Wonder Woman, Lynda was paid $3,500 an episode.
By the time she did her last season, I had renegotiated her contract up
to more than 10 times that-over $1 million a year. That was a record for
a woman in a TV series. And during the five years the show was on the
air, it barely broke into the top 30. The show needed her more than she
needed it. |
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| Any
regrets? |
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Lynda:
No. I am a big girl and I'm athletic but I'm not impenetrable, I'm not
Wonder Woman, and I'd like to do something that has some social effect
on people. Like Lou Grant and Quincy. Those two shows deal with the
issues-they're informative as well as entertaining. |
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| Aside
from hammering out deals, what does Ron do to further your career?
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Lynda:
He gets involved in everything. He spent two hours inspecting every
available picture of me for the poster. He picked this shot of me in a
shirt tied up above the waist, and I said, "Oh, God, it's so corny." And
it became the top selling poster for a year and a half. |
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| Ron:
I look at everything. If Lynda's taping a talk show, I'll look at the TV
monitor and if the angle is wrong I'll go over and tell the cameraman to
move the camera. People ask why I'm being so difficult. And I say, "Wait
a second, it's not you who will be on that screen for an hour and a
half, it's her. Now move the camera." |
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| Are
there things you're not going to let Lynda do for the sake of her
career? |
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Ron:
A lot of things. We're holding down on exposure. Too much of it is like
chocolate cake. Give somebody enough and they'll throw up. We've also
turned down many endorsements because I didn't feel they were good for
Lynda's image. |
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| Do
you think things might have gone so well if you and Ron hadn't met? |
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Lynda:
I don't think it would have happened the way it happened. Maybe it would
have been another five years. I do what I do because I love to do it and
I have ambition. He does what he does for the same reasons. |
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Ron:
People say, "You got lucky." We didn't get lucky. We're hard-working
people. When Lynda was filming Wonder Woman, she would get up at five in
the morning, work all day and record an album afterward. It seems the
harder we work the luckier we get. |
