Metromedia

Metromedia appears in the diary as both a television outlet and the party accused of taking an idea it had rejected. The dispute was not simply about a program the diarist disliked: it concerned who had proposed the format, who received the chance to make it, and how a supposedly lively televised dinner looked once it was on screen.

Metromedia and the Rejected Proposal

On February 26, 1977, the diarist watched Metromedia broadcast Dinner with Bella Abzug and believed the program used an idea drawn from a proposal Metromedia had turned down. The show struck the diarist as boring and corny, and the perceived appropriation made the viewing especially aggravating. The entry records the allegation from the perspective of the person who believed the original concept had been refused and then used without them.

The same complaint returned in March, now attached to Dinner with Halston. Victor had urged the diarist to watch the program on channel 5, and the diarist identified it as the concept submitted to Larry Freeberg at Metromedia and rejected. When Metromedia proceeded with other people, the diarist declined an invitation to appear, explicitly because the idea had been taken. The refusal turned a dispute over credit into a visible absence from the show itself.

The Halston Dinner on Television

The program gathered Halston, Bianca, Joe Eula, Jane Holzer, Victor, and an acupuncture doctor named Giller around a live dinner, with a seven-second delay. The diarist judged the result boring. The delay became an emblem of the distance between a staged image of social wildness and what the broadcast could actually show: Joe Eula’s use of an expletive was cut, while the diarist noted the absence of cocaine and trips to the bathroom.

Victor supplied the evening’s disruptive flourishes. He removed a fake mustache, brought a plastic chicken, and prompted it to greet Andy. During an argument with Joe Eula, Victor said on air that Metromedia had taken the diarist’s idea. The moment brought the charge into the broadcast itself, turning a private grievance into part of the program’s spectacle.

The dinner’s staged abandon faltered further when guests began throwing drinks. Jane Holzer tossed champagne into the air, and Victor poured his into her lap. Meanwhile, Victor and Halston appeared to be quarrelling: Victor announced that he would no longer do Halston’s windows and described himself as an artist for hire. The camera moved in on Halston’s hard expression. The diarist’s account presents the scene as an awkward collision of television performance, personal friction, and the very lack of spontaneity the show was meant to suggest.

The Dispute Beyond the Broadcast

The perceived appropriation extended beyond the two programs. While the Halston show was on, Fred Hughes was having dinner with Freeberg at the Hermitage, at a dinner for Rudolf Nureyev. Lee Radziwill was also there, and Freeberg was said to be planning another channel 5 dinner with her. The parallel dinner made the format seem less like a single disputed production and more like a program concept Metromedia could repeat with different guests.

After the broadcast, Halston held a cast party at his home. Mick Jagger arrived and complimented Bianca on her performance; later, when he wanted to leave around four, she chose to stay. The diarist also recorded that people were angry with Victor and blamed him for ruining the show, although he had already left. Metromedia’s program thus continued to reverberate as a social event after the cameras were off: its alleged borrowing, its on-air quarrels, and its cast’s competing assessments all became part of the same account.