Cliff Robertson, RIP

Cliff Robertson has died, one day after his 88th birthday.

He won an Oscar for his role in Charly, about a mentally retarded man who is rendered temporarily brilliant by an experimental operation. He had Jack Lemmon's role in the original live TV production of Days of Wine and Roses.

Begelman embezzlement case

But Robertson was blacklisted from working in movies for years in the '70s and '80s after he reported a forged check someone wrote and cashed in his name.

It seems that David Begelman, head of Columbia Pictures, wrote a $10,000 check to Robertson then cashed it himself. Robertson got a W-2 for it----they were going to tax him for the money Begelman stole. Robertson reported it to the police who determined that the check was forged by Begelman.

Later, an investigation by the studio found that Begelman had embezzled at least another $65,000. It's assumed that the actual amount was much, much higher.

Nothing happened to Begelman. He was sentenced to community service---he produced a short anti-drug film. They even let him keep his job at Columbia. He was only fired when the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in. Columbia was a publicly traded corporation and they couldn't have an admitted thief in charge. Begelman was quietly fired from Columbia, but he immediately went to work at MGM. But Cliff Robertson, for the crime of reporting this corruption, was blacklisted by the tightknit gang running Hollywood. He even received death threats and had to have police protection.

A reporter covering the story discovered that Begelman had not, as he had claimed for years, graduated from Yale. He never attended Yale. The reporter who discovered this said that the Hollywood establishment was more upset about this than they were about the massive fraud and embezzlement.

Begelman had a long history of this. He had stolen several hundred thousand dollars from Judy Garland when he worked as her agent. This included checks made out to "cash" that were endorsed by Begelman and large amounts of money paid out for "protection". Garland didn't have guards or private security. A 1963 Cadillac convertible given to Garland as partial payment for her appearance on The Jack Paar Show was registered to Begelman----Garland didn't even know she had been given the car.

Begelman got another $50,000 out of Garland by claiming that someone was blackmailing her. The blackmailer had a photo, Begelman claimed, a semi-nude photo of Garland in the hospital. Garland wrote a check for fifty thousand dollars which, it turned out, went to a holding company that was owned by Begelman.

Begelman finally had the good taste to kill himself in 1995 when he was 73. He was depressed that his embezzlement days were over.

Robertson made a bit of a comeback. He became the spokesman for AT&T and made more movie and TV appearances. But a look at his filmography shows how his career suffered. He was blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment that rallied around Begelman.

You can read all about this case in a book called Indecent Exposure by David McClintick.

You can watch a long interview with Cliff Robertson on You Tube. He discusses his long career:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngnMwLN4cjo&feature=relmfu