According to the authoritative New York Post’s “Page Six,” Jon Peter’s auto-biography “Studio Head” was a case of premature ejaculation.
Leaks from the book proposal reached all the usual sounding boards before Peters withdrew “Studio Head.”
"Somehow this proposal has become a kind of Holy Grail of gossip,” Peter is reported saying in the Post, “and I have become Hollywood's 'Man Who Knows Too Much.' I have been besieged by potential lawsuits and threatened litigation by some of the most important figures in the world of show business. What's worse . . . is the fact that I consider all these people my friends . . . I want my book to be a celebration of, never an attack upon, the remarkable people I have known and worked with . . .”
Vanity Fair, printed some choice excerpts from Peter’s celebration of his friends.
“In the late 60s,” according to Vanity Fair, “ Peters caught his second wife, actress Lesley Ann Warren, in bed with Warren Beatty and chased the actor around the block, ‘instilling more fear in the serial Lothario than the rednecks who would kill his character in the upcoming Bonnie and Clyde.’
“When I ran this by Beatty,” Vanity Fair reporter Frank DiGiacomo wrote, “he laughed and told me that these assertions were ‘amusing but totally untrue.’ Lesley Ann Warren concurs: ‘It’s funny and colorful, but there’s not an iota of truth in that.’”
Barbara Walter invited Peters to her New York apartment prior to hosting a news special featuring Peters and Barbara Streisand.
“Keeping things very chummy,” Vanity Fair summarizes the book proposal, “ with no pretense of journalistic objectivity, she plied Jon with champagne and caviar, then changed into ‘something comfortable,’ leaving her bedroom door strategically ajar as she stripped down to her bra and panties, giving Jon a 20-20 view, as it were, of the Barbara W in all her glory. Whether Barbara was setting a trap to get the scoop of a lifetime, or whether she was making a sincere pass, Jon didn’t snap at the bait. One Barbra was enough, and he had a blockbuster to promote.”
Responding through a spokeswoman for Walters, the magazine reported that Walters issued a statement: “This is the most absurd, ridiculous thing I have ever heard. My only contact with Jon Peters was when I interviewed him and Barbra Streisand, surrounded by television cameras in 1976 for an ABC News special.”
Nothing spoils a good Hollywood potboiler quite as much as Hollywood lawyers. There will be no mini-series until Peters has redrafted his bio so as to make his friends in Sodom and Hollywood purr like Cheshire cats.
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