While never asserting that she was a victim of sexual harassment, the successful writer/producer, Linda Bloodworth Thomason, penned a compelling story of dealing with the extreme sexism brought to the CBS network by Les Moonves.
"People asked me for years, 'What happened to you?' Les Moonves happened to me."
You probably know her work best for the hit show, “Designing Women,” a sit-com about four women in Atlanta navigating the struggles of running a business. Bloodworth Thomason peppered the show with her feminism, often letting the out-spoken Julia Sugarbaker (played by Dixie Carter) let loose with rants, often quite hilarious. Take this encounter, for example.
Julia also had words for Donald Trump.
Well, Moonves came to CBS, and he didn't like this sort of thing.
I was never sexually harassed or attacked by Les Moonves. My encounters were much more subtle, engendering a different kind of destruction. In 1992, I was given the largest writing and producing contract in the history of CBS. It was for $50 million, involving five new series with hefty penalties for each pilot not picked up.
Designing Women was my flagship CBS show, and Evening Shade had just been lauded as the best new comedy of the season. CBS chairman Howard Stringer and president Jeff Sagansky attended many of the Designing Women tapings, reveling in the show, quoting the lines and giving us carte blanche to tackle any subject, including sexual harassment, domestic violence and pornography. They even greenlighted an entire episode satirizing Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination. It was, to say the least, exhilarating. Little did I know that it would soon all be over.
The change had come.
By 1995, Mr. Stringer and Mr. Sagansky were gone and a new, unknown (to me) president named Les Moonves had taken over. By then, I was producing a new pilot, prophetically titled Fully Clothed Non-Dancing Women. I was immediately concerned when I heard that Mr. Moonves was rumored to be a big fan of topless bars. Then, someone delivered the news that he especially hated Designing Women and their loud-mouthed speeches. He showed up at the first table read and took a chair directly across from mine (actress Illeana Douglas, who later accused him of sexual harassment, sat next to me). Having been voted most popular in high school, I felt confident that I would be able to charm him. I was wrong. He sat and stared at me throughout the entire reading with eyes that were stunningly cold, as in, “You are so dead.” I had not experienced such a menacing look since Charles Manson tried to stare me down on a daily basis when I was a young reporter covering that trial. As soon as the pilot was completed, Moonves informed me that it would not be picked up. I was at the pinnacle of my career. I would not work again for seven years.
She kept trying, but started learning about Moonves’ conduct.
Then, I began to hear from female CBS employees about his mercurial, misogynist behavior, with actresses being ushered in and out of his office. His mantra, I was told, was, “Why would I wanna cast ’em if I don’t wanna fuck ’em?” And he was an angry bully who enjoyed telling people, “I will tear off the top of your head and piss on your brain!”
Soon, I would hear how he had invited a famous actress to lunch in the CBS dining room. Coming off the cancellation of her iconic detective show, the star began pitching a new one. He informed her that she was too old to be on his network. She began to cry and stood up to go. He stood up too, taking her by the shoulders and telling her, “I can’t let you leave like this.” She reacted, suddenly touched. Then he shoved his tongue down her throat. I know this happened because the star is the person who told me.
I am thinking that this actress was “Cagney and Lacey’s” Sharon Gless. Anyway, it was someone like her, who was not to Moonves’ taste.
I took pride in being part of a network that always seemed to be rife with crazy, interesting, brash women, from Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, to Maude, to Murphy Brown, to the Designing Women. Many of these female characters paved the way for women to be single, to pursue careers and equal pay and to lead rich, romantic lives with reproductive rights. As I walked, I noticed that the portraits of all these iconic women were no longer adorning the walls.
And what did he bring in?
He presided over a plethora of macho crime shows featuring a virtual genocide of dead naked hotties in morgue drawers, with sadistic female autopsy reports, ratcheted up each week (“Is that a missing breast implant, lieutenant?” “Yes sir, we also found playing cards in her uterus.”)
Les Moonves’ abuses went on for decades. His downfall came only recently, and Bloodworth Thomason does not expect for him to pay much of a price.
Perhaps the best we can do is thank Ronan Farrow and all the brave women who came forward to make sure a man like this is finally gone, while putting all the other sexual predators who are still in our business on notice. We are not going to stop until every last one of you is gone. We don’t care anymore if you go to jail or go to hell. Just know at some point that you are leaving.
And as for you, Mr. Moonves, in spite of the fact that I was raised to be a proper Southern female, and with your acknowledgement that I have never, in my life, spoken a single cross word to you, despite the way you treated me, may I simply say, channeling my finest Julia Sugarbaker delivery: “Go fuck yourself!”
Well said.