Hollywood exec’s book recalls stars, moguls

LOS ANGELES — Former Hollywood executive Harris Katleman has an eclectic, five-decade track record that could only be the result of skill, moxie and luck.

He championed the Oscar-winning film adaptation of the World War II novel “From Here to Eternity,” made the impresarios behind “The Price Is Right” wealthier and helped “The Simpsons” become an unlikely TV wunderkind. His platinum-level business circle included media tycoons Rupert Murdoch, Robert Iger and Kirk Kerkorian.

“I’m consistently, in my own psyche, amazed at what I accomplished,” Katleman, 90, said in an interview about his new memoir, which details his career highlights and the demanding, colorful industry he navigated. The book takes its title from an exchange with Kerkorian, who wanted him to head then-struggling MGM Television.

“I don’t know how to run a studio,” Katleman told him.

“Neither do I,” replied Kerkorian. “You can’t fall off the floor.”

Katleman made a success of his time at MGM, as he had as an industry novice under the tutelage of MCA titan Lew Wasserman; with game show producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and as chief executive of Fox’s Twentieth Television for more than a decade. It was often a wild ride, one described concisely and unabashedly, expletives included, in “You Can’t Fall Off the Floor” (Rosetta Books, $27.99), co-authored by Katleman and his grandson, writer Nick Katleman.

Making deals was more gratifying than wrangling stars, as Katleman’s book paints it. He recalled being assigned by MCA to ensure that the wayward Marlon Brando avoid trouble before shooting began on 1953’s “The Wild One.” Katleman and a colleague babysat the actor at his Hollywood hills house, until Brando managed a prison-style break one night with a hand-crafted rope of sheets.

His absence went undetected until Wasserman called and asked if Katleman knew where Brando was.

“Sleeping like a baby,” Katleman said, only to be contradicted by his boss: “Unless he’s got a long-lost twin, I think you’re mistaken. He just stumbled into Chasen’s.” Katelman said he was told the actor was drunk and had three women with him.

Brando had a heart of gold and good intentions, “but the man couldn’t sit alone in a room for five minutes without posing potential harm to his career,” Katleman writes.