Bruce Lee, Woodstock And Me: From The Man Behind A Half-Century of Music, Movies and Martial Arts

By Fred Weintraub and David Fields

Fred Weintraub is the Hollywood legend you've never heard of. This visionary showman founded the landmark club The Bitter End in Greenwich Village; started the careers of Bill Cosby, Joan Rivers, Woody Allen and Neil Diamond; championed the making of the "Woodstock" film (saving Warner Bros. Pictures in the process); discovered the martial arts sensation Bruce Lee and produced the classic film "Enter the Dragon," along with forty other motion pictures with such stars as Steve McQueen, George C. Scott, Robert Duvall, Kirsten Dunst and dozens of others. In his insightful, funny, bawdy memoir, Weintraub bangs heads with foreign dictators; mobsters; movie executives; difficult stars; and red-baiting producers—and bangs headboards with a lusty succession of Sexual Revolutionary women on his fifty-year journey through the entertainment business. It's a trip you won't want to miss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984715213

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Collection.)

The information in this book is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. However, the author and Brooktree Canyon Press, its owners, employees, agents, assignees, successors, web administrators, assistants, etc. assume no liability whatsoever for any inadvertent errors or omissions in any of the content.

Cover Photo Credits*

WOODSTOCK (stage), © BZLEVINE (www.woodstockwitness.com. All rights reserved.

TOM HORN (Fred & Steve McQueen) © Solar Productions, Inc, The First Artists Production Company, Ltd. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

ENTER THE DRAGON (Fred & Bruce Lee), courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (Fred with Bess Armstrong & Tom Selleck), courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

THE BITTER END courtesy of Getty Images/Hulton Archives.

Fred & Jackie Chan, the Fred Weintraub collection.

All other photos are property of the author.

*Every attempt has been made to identify the sources of photographs reprinted in this publication and to assign proper credit. Corrections will be made in future printings upon receipt of valid accredidation.

ISBN: 978-0-9847152-1-3

Published in the United States of America

Cover and eBook design by David Charles Garfield

For Jackie.

Inspiration, intelligence and love. Who could ask for anything more?

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was a vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible. This, I did.

—T.E. LAWRENCE

Astride Flower, my favorite English Shire, who stood over 18 hands tall.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 How to Build a Dragon

My friendship with Bruce Lee and the making of Enter the Dragon.

Chapter 2 Sneaking Into the Movies

How I ushered Woodstock to the screen and saved Warner Bros.

Chapter 3 Wanderlust

From the Bronx to Greenwich Village by way of Europe, Batista’s Cuba, and Madison Avenue

Chapter 4 Bleecker Street

Greenwich Village in the early ‘60s: The birth of The Bitter End and how a brick wall became famous.

Chapter 5 Sweet Beginnings

Woody Allen, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Rivers, and others make their mark at The Bitter End.

Chapter 6 Managing Just Fine, Thank You

The ups and downs of managing Bill Cosby, Neil Diamond, The Four Seasons, and other future superstars.

Chapter 7 Highs & Lows in the Mid-Sixties

From theater director to TV personality: Shining successes and epic failures.

Chapter 8 Making Movies

Tom Selleck, Steve McQueen, and the only honest producer in Hollywood.

Chapter 9 So You Want to Be a Producer?

Despite the headaches, producing films overseas is still one of the greatest jobs in the world.

Chapter 10 The Last Analysis

Reflections on a long, adventurous life.

Epilogue

Appendix

Fred’s Filmography

Actors Who Worked With Fred

Acts Fred Managed and Showcased at The Bitter End

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

43 YEARS AGO, it was first suggested to me that I write my memoirs. The fact that I finally got around to it is entirely due to the persistence of Jackie Weintraub and a group of friends and family who have gotten so sick of my stories over the years, they threatened to exile me if I didn’t write them down, already! Some of those who have helped to keep me on the straight and narrow are (in no particular order) Judy Collins and Louis Nelson, Michael Partridge & Janice Hickey, Page Ashley, Trudy & Al Kallis, Richard Brandt, Gary Iskowitz, Manny Roth, Bill Sandell, Tom Hansen, Tom Kuhn, Paul Heller, Jake Holmes, Maxwell Meltzer, Alan Trustman, Sue Toigo & Derek Shearer, Ilene & Derek Power, David Tadman, and my children Zac, Max, Barbara, and Sandra.

&csMarker;Special thanks must go to old friends Tina Romanus, Billy Fields, David Amram, Bill DeSeta, Bob Wall, Pat Johnson, Theo Bikel, Linda Palmer, Woody Allen, Robert Klein, and the dearly missed Hilda Pollack, Bryan Sennett, and Harold Leventhal, whose reminiscences filled in a lot of gaps. And those reminiscences could not have been collected and recorded without the invaluable assistance of Jennifer Burryman and the indomitable Bea Marks.

My co-writer David Fields and I would like to particularly acknowledge the vast array of advisors and guinea pigs, whose wise council and ability to read have been of invaluable service to the cause: Bob Silverstein, Elaine Jesmer, Jonathan Kirsch, Leith Adams, David Matthews, Tom Carey, Mary Kelly, Sarah Carpenter, Carol Sigurdson, the sharp little pencil of Amy Barlow Liberatore, the brothers Garfield—Josh and Bob, and especially, my trusty guy Friday, Steve Fantasia.

F.W.

Pacific Palisades

September 15, 2011

INTRODUCTION

In the early nineties when they made the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Tom Pollock, head of MCA/Universal Studios, asked me to appear as myself. When I arrived at the Hollywood premiere, the director, Rob Cohen, pulled me aside to tell me they had to cut me out of the picture and had given all my lines to Robert Wagner.

Okay, I said. Why?

Because, Rob replied, you weren’t believable as Fred Weintraub. In my defense, I’ve never pretended to be an actor, and Fred Weintraub is a mighty difficult role. He’s passionate, unpredictable, lusty, mischievous, impatient, and larger than life. And his back story places him at the heart of more pop culture milestones than seems possible for any one man. He’s like Forrest Gump as played by Al Pacino. I’ve acted the part my entire life, and I’m still amazed that a child born with incurable shpilkes (the clinical term for ants in my pants) could accomplish so much.

I’ve been a salesman, ad man, talent manager, whorehouse piano player, club owner, entrepreneur, and horse breeder, and have been called a laid-back impresario, a legend, the most honest guy in the business, and a number of things I’d rather not repeat. At least, not yet.

Mostly, I think of myself as a showman—in the truest sense of the word. I don’t crave the limelight, but love to put on shows with those that do. In the course of my many careers, I’ve worked with hundreds of major film actors including Bruce Lee, George C. Scott, Tom Selleck, Jane Fonda, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Irving, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Yul Brynner, and Steve McQueen, and also introduced the world to some of the greatest musicians and comics of their generation: people like Neil Diamond, Woody Allen, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Bill Cosby.

Whether it’s a couple of guitars on a tiny Greenwich Village stage or a couple of big stars on the silver screen, it’s been exciting devoting most of my life to providing entertainment. But since the back half of my career has been mostly about making movies, I am known primarily, these days, as a producer. Who wants to read about one of them? Most of us aren’t so sexy. For every Robert Evans or Warren Beatty there are a hundred guys like me you never read about in the tabloids or the daily papers. We get press coverage, all right, but it’s in papers with names like Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which are to the entertainment industry what Pit & Quarry is to the stone and gravel industry and Supply Chain Manufacturing & Logistics is to whatever the hell the supply chain manufacturing and logistics industry is.

Most civilians (people not in show business) don’t even have a clear idea of what a producer does. Now that I think of it, most people in show business don’t have a clear idea of what a producer does. When a movie like 2010’s The Expendables lists seventeen of them in its opening credits—let me repeat that—SEVENTEEN producers, does the word even have any meaning? These days, there are all kinds of producers: line producers, financial producers, supervising producers, executive producers, take you out to lunch producers, and the all-encompassing associate producers, who come from the ranks of pool boys, psychics, and next wives.

But a full line producer does it all, and does it behind the scenes. Fueled by passion, intuition, experience, and street smarts, a good one is a leader; teacher; taskmaster; fixer; facilitator; father confessor; and, most importantly, crises manager. Because every film—whether documentary, western, historical drama, or romantic comedy—is potentially a disaster film. A good full line producer is a juggler, magician, and puppeteer all rolled into one—keeping twenty balls in the air, tugging the strings, and making miracles happen every day.

This is not, however, a step-by-step guide to becoming a movie producer. If anything, it’s a syllabus from the School of Hard Knocks, and the lessons apply no matter what course you chose. But if producing movies is your dream, and you’re willing to follow my lead and learn from my triumphs and failures, you may just save a bundle in film school tuition.

Whether I’ve been in the thick of things or merely on the sidelines observing the craziness around me, I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun taking to heart one of my wonderfully wise mother’s favorite sayings: Yesterday is gone, tomorrow never comes. So, if I’ve taken some physical and emotional knocks while carpe-ing the diem, well, that’s just the price of a quirky and adventurous life. I have no complaints.

Do I have a story to tell? You bet I do. It’s what we in Hollywood call a non-linear story­—like Pulp Fiction or Lost—so don’t be alarmed if I jump around in time. From the mean streets of Fort Apache, the East Bronx, to an island fortress in Hong Kong; from a Cuban jail cell shared with cockroaches, to a stroll down the red carpet at Cannes shared with the Beatles, I’ve pretty much seen and done it all. Or at least as much as any nice, Jewish, Ritalin-deprived, Depression baby could ever hope to see and do.

For a guy without much name recognition, I’ve very possibly touched your life in some little way you’d never imagine. If you’ve ever shopped at one of 2,700 Good Neighbor Pharmacies across the country, or laughed at a comic standing in front of a brick wall, you can thank me. I helped usher in a new era of filmmaking in Eastern Europe, revitalized the population of a noble horse breed in the United States, and stood toe to toe with the mob on the mean streets of New York. And then there was that little gunrunning incident in Cuba.

How you would rank these cultural milestones in order of importance will say more about you than me.

Recently, I had the privilege of having lunch with Betty Ting Pei. If the name sounds familiar, it is because she was at the heart of one of the most mysterious celebrity deaths in Hollywood lore. I was a close friend and associate of the deceased, and the question I am most often asked is How did Bruce Lee die? I’m ready to talk about what I know.

***

Whether managing singers and crazy comedians, running a nightclub, or producing motion pictures, the secret of my success and longevity boils down to three key elements: passion, passion, and passion. Oh yes, and a fourth—blind luck.

Once we were filming in Chang Mai, Thailand. For the big scene, ten elephants were supposed to knock down a wall surrounding the city so the hero could rescue everybody from the villain. I had a wall built; found some elephants, and hired three extra cameras, each with a thousand feet of film.

The director yells, Action!

The elephants lumber up to the wall and press their massive heads against it. If the wall is supposed to collapse, it didn’t get the memo.

Cut! Back ‘em up. We’re going again. Let’s get some momentum going. Action!

This time the huge pachyderms build up a head of steam and thunder towards their objective. The ground shakes as twenty tons of raw power crash into the hastily constructed wall. It doesn’t budge. Jesus Christ! They built the damn thing like it’s Angkor Wat. Hopefully we’ll have enough film for another take.

Out of film! the first camera operator yells.

Shit!

Second operator, No more film!

Cut, cut, cut! Screams the director. Camera three, do you have enough film for one more take?

Barely, the operator calls back, If we don’t get it on thi—

BOOM! The wall crumbles to the ground like a demolished casino.

Camera three, tell me you got the shot.

Um, you didn’t say action.

I am totally fucked.

But then I hear a voice cry out, Fred, Fred! I turn around to see eighty-year-old T.C. Wang, a longtime friend and former camera operator who was visiting the set, rushing towards me, waving his own 16mm home movie camera. I got it! he was crying out. I think I got the shot! Indeed he did. The film stock was different, but the dirt and dust the elephants kicked up so blurred the images that the difference was virtually imperceptible when we blew it up to 35mm. It looked great and cut together beautifully.

That, my friends, is serendipity. It’s been my constant companion for over eighty years. Not that it’s always been smooth sailing. There have been plenty of ups and downs along the way, but I’ve never let the dips slow me down. I love Winston Churchill’s definition of success: going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

This is my success story.

Trying to remember my line in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story with Jason Scott Lee and Robert Wagner. (Photo by Jackie Weintraub)

CHAPTER ONE

HOW TO BUILD A DRAGON

I hadn’t even heard of Bruce Lee around the time I was getting my first taste of Chinese cinema. Little did I know that our association would play a major part in a cultural revolution. Before I met Bruce, every town in America had a church and a beauty parlor. Within a few short years of our meeting, every town in America would boast a church, a beauty parlor, and a martial arts studio displaying a poster of Bruce Lee.

Maybe my contribution got less press than Mao Zedong did for his Cultural Revolution, but for a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx, it was fairly significant. Who would have thought that the hyperactive son of a baby carriage salesman would ever muster the focus to accomplish anything, let alone turn an obscure martial arts instructor into an international star?

As a New York-based production executive at Warner Bros. Pictures, it was my job to develop projects to appeal to the youth market. From the mountain of potential projects sent to me weekly, I unearthed a treatment for a feature length film by a couple of writers named Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander called The Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon. It was an intriguing East-meets-Western tale of a young Shaolin monk from China roaming the American West of the 1800s, righting wrongs with pacifist, Eastern philosophy. And if that failed, kicking serious cowboy butt with nothing but his hands and feet. I liked the idea and gave the boys something like $3,800 to write a screenplay. At about that time, Warner Bros. made the decision to change their base of operations and moved me from New York to Hollywood.

I say Hollywood, but that doesn’t really mean anything geographically. Technically, my new digs were on the Warner Bros. Studio lot, which is actually in the San Fernando Valley, just down the street from NBC’s main studios in beautiful downtown Burbank and within spitting distance of both Walt Disney and Universal Studios.

I got into the movie industry the same way I got into most of the endeavors I have taken on in my life, by a sort of divine serendipity that deposited me in the right place at the right time. I soon fell in love with the business and wanted to learn all I could about making movies. It was the early 1970s, 5 years BV (before video), and my insatiable thirst for a film education led me time and again to the cushy seats of the Warner Bros. screening room, where I could not have had a better teacher than veteran film editor Rudi Fehr.

Rudi had started at Warner Bros. in 1936 as an assistant editor and over the years worked his way up to main editor, cutting such classics as Watch on the Rhine, House of Wax, Key Largo, Dial M for Murder, and Prizzi’s Honor. Like most of the old-timers in the industry, Rudi had a deep and abiding love for movies. He and his boss, Jack Warner, would spend the end of every day watching the rushes of every movie in production and making notes. Such a level of commitment by executives is virtually unheard of today.

By the time I met him, Rudi had advanced to Head of Post Production, but he was still gracious enough to teach a green executive the language of film and filmmaking. My textbooks were the amazing catalog of classic and contemporary films housed in the Warner Bros. vaults. Those and Rudi’s guidance, expertise, and encyclopedic knowledge of movies were the only film school I needed. (The passing down of knowledge came full circle when several years later, his daughter, Kaja Fehr, an accomplished film editor in her own right, took my class in Full Line Production at UCLA, where I was an adjunct professor.)

I told Rudi about the script Spielman and Friedlander were working on and had him spool up some of the Chinese chop socky films that were becoming popular in Asia, but which had so far gone little seen in America; except, perhaps by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. For the most part, the films were a mess: unbearably long with incomprehensible stories, bargain-basement production values, and insipid, badly dubbed dialogue. But in the last ten minutes of each film, there would be some kind of battle where a single heroic martial arts master dressed in white would take on a swarm of black clad attackers and defeat them all with lightning fast kicks, flips, and punches—knocking my socks off in the process. By the time Spielman and Friedlander presented me with their finished draft, I was sold. Now I just had to sell the Warner Bros. honchos on the idea of a kung fu western.

That, like kung fu itself, was easier said than done. Even Ted Ashley, my best friend and head of the studio, passed on the film. The general consensus was that the public would not be willing to accept a Chinese hero. But I was convinced of the viability of the genre and believed in the script itself, so I wasn’t about to give up.

The Kid From Hong Kong

One day my good friend Sy Weintraub (no relation), who had made his mark in the late fifties by taking over the Tarzan movie and TV franchise, said to me, Look Fred, I know you’re hooked on this martial arts stuff, and I don’t blame you. I’m into it myself. In fact, I’m taking kung fu lessons from this young Chinese instructor. You’ve got to meet him.

That’s how I first came face to face with Bruce Lee. Although chest to face would be more accurate, since at 6’2 I towered over the 5’6 martial artist and sometime actor.

Bruce, the son of an accomplished Cantonese opera and film star, had appeared in a number of Chinese films from the time he was small child until he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of eighteen. While supporting himself as a martial arts instructor, he managed to snag some television guest star work, often playing martial arts instructors, as he did in Longstreet, where he trained James Franciscus’ blind detective to defend himself. But his most attention-grabbing role was that of Kato, the badass valet and chauffer to Van William’s Green Hornet on the short-lived series. Never was the term sidekick more apt. It is said that Bruce actually received more fan mail than the show’s star.

At the time I met Bruce, I had never seen any of his TV work. To me he was just a sweet, bright, well-spoken young man, who was extremely knowledgeable about his craft (martial arts, not acting) and anxious to apply his skills to a movie career. Unlike the other Weintraub, I never took lessons from Bruce; I had no interest. But we did bond over our mutual love for Chinese chop socky films.

On one occasion I invited Bruce to join me for dinner with California Democratic Senator John V. Tunney, who I had also met through Sy. It wasn’t because Bruce had any special interest in politics that I set up the meeting. John Tunney’s father was Gene Tunney, the undefeated Heavyweight Boxing champ of the 1920s, the man who defeated the great Jack Dempsey…twice. Bruce was a student of boxing and a huge fan of the Champ. He surprised the Senator with his extensive knowledge of the elder Tunney’s career, naming what round he won or lost in every single fight, and explaining how it was the thinking boxer’s style that made Gene such a good fighter.

Bruce and I were becoming good friends. Although it was not lost on me that for an ambitious guy like him, having a buddy who was also an executive at Warner Bros. wasn’t such a bad thing. As I got to know him better and had the occasion to catch up on his TV work, it became clear to me that Bruce was the perfect fit for the Spielman/Friedlander script, which was now being called Kung Fu, and we talked about it a lot. Unfortunately, I was still having no luck selling it as a feature, so I decided to try a different tack and approached Tom Kuhn, Warner Bros. Head of Television Programming (and my future production partner).

Tom, I said, when I first phoned him to pitch the idea, "I’d like to talk to you about a show I’m developing called Kung Fu."

Tom was dubious. You’re pitching a series about a Chinese restaurant?

Fortunately, Tom is a smart guy and once I gave him the details, he understood immediately why I was so enthusiastic about the project—but he also knew it would scare off most TV network executives. There’s only one guy in this town who will get this material, he said, and that’s Barry Diller. Diller, the hugely successful Head of Development at ABC, was considered to be the father of the made-for-TV movie. As Tom predicted, Diller fell for the script and immediately ordered a pilot. Kung Fu was on its way, but there was still the issue of casting.

I was as enthusiastic as ever to put Bruce into the role of Kwai Chang Caine, but was still meeting with resistance from the powers that be. So I sent Bruce to Tom Kuhn’s office to introduce himself. It was a meet and greet Tom is not likely to ever forget. Most actors show up to auditions with a résumé and an 8 x 10 glossy headshot. Bruce showed up with one extra item: his nunchucks. For the uninitiated, nunchucks are two wooden sticks, not unlike police billy clubs that are attached end to end by a short length of chain or rope. In the cramped confines of Tom’s office, Bruce, a master of the weapon, gave Tom an in-your-face demonstration, flailing the lethal sticks with mind-boggling speed, grace, and dexterity. Bruce didn’t need to punch Tom in the gut to take his breath away.

What the fuck was that! Tom asked me after the interview. That was Bruce Lee, I said, "What do think about him for Kung Fu?"

He’s amazing, Tom gushed. I’ve never seen anything like that. But getting him the lead is still going to be a long shot. He might be too authentic.

To my continued frustration, Tom was right. The powers that be had a hundred different reasons why Bruce was wrong for the part: he was an unknown, he was short, his English wasn’t good enough, he lacked the necessary serenity to play the role… But at the end of the day, there was really only one reason. In the history of Hollywood there had never been an Asian hero—unless you count Charlie Chan. But even that iconic Chinese-American character was never popular in films until he was played by Warner Oland, who was not only Caucasian, he was Swedish, for chrissake. From Oland on, only white guys played Charlie. And that dubious tradition was carried on into Kung Fu when David Carradine landed the role of Kwai Chang Caine. Bruce was crushed. Even his lightning reflexes were powerless to keep the opportunity of a lifetime from slipping through his fingers.

Whether Bruce was the victim of institutionalized racism or just one of the legions of actors who on any given day lose a coveted part, I felt almost as bad as he did about the Kung Fu affair. Bruce had a unique and extraordinary talent. He believed with a passion bordering on arrogance that he could conquer the American film market if only given the chance. I, for one, shared that belief. There had to be a way to get him the shot he deserved. 

One day Bruce came to me in an agitated state. Fred, I don’t know what to do. Golden Harvest, a production company in Hong Kong, is offering me $6,000 to make a film in Thailand, and they want me right away. 

The answer was suddenly clear to me. That’s great! I said. Do it!

But it’s so little money and such a big step backwards, he lamented. I would be giving up. If I sign the contract I may never get another chance in the States. I’ll be stuck in Hong Kong forever.

No, I said, this is just the break we’ve been looking for. What we’ve needed all along is quality footage of you doing your thing. Studio executives don’t have much imagination. They have to see it to believe in it.  Bruce was still unsure. 

Look, I said, America isn’t going anywhere. Go to Thailand and send me footage I can show to the brass. I believe in you, and if you’re half as good as I think you are, they will too.

So Bruce went to Thailand to film his first starring role in the Hong Kong chop socky flick, The Big Boss. Within a year he was the biggest box office draw in Asia. How do you like them egg rolls?

Marshalling the Art

While Bruce was becoming a star in the Far East, I had undergone a transition of my own from studio executive to