Background
David Begelman was born on 26 August 1921 in New York, New York, United States. The son of a tailor, he was raised in the Bronx.
David Begelman was born on 26 August 1921 in New York, New York, United States. The son of a tailor, he was raised in the Bronx.
He served in the Air Force during the war on a technical training program. Afterwards he drifted, and went into insurance.
It wasn’t until around 1950 that he met Freddie Fields, two years his junior and an agent at MCA. That contact allowed Begelman to get work at the agency in the midfifties. He rose swiftly, and he and Fields created the Creative Management Association.
That’s when the Begelman persona developed. He was also a very effective agent who would win the loyalty, the admiration, and the affection of such stars as Judy Garland, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, and Barbra Streisand.
By the late sixties, Begelman was one of the key power brokers in the business, an immense character, with a proven record of success, widely popular. He was, as they said, “Hollywood.”
And, as if to prove that such worldly assets were what made the business work, he was invited to be president of the ailing Columbia Pictures in 1973. Since the death of Harry Cohn (in 1957), Columbia had had mixed fortunes, led by Abe Schneider, Leo Jaffe, Mike Frankovich, and Stanley Schneider. With Alan Hirschfield, Begelman gave Columbia a far better ride—for which he deserved nearly as much credit as he took. It was a time of films as diverse as Shampoo, Funny Lady, Taxi Driver; The Deep, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At the same time, almost out of habit, Begelman had been committing check fraud.
By 1980, he was the head of MGM. It didn’t last. He slipped into independent production and he made some films—The Sicilian (87, Michael Cimino), Mannequin (87, Michael Gottlieb), Weekend at Bemie’s (89, Ted Kotcheff). Nothing could stop his fall, and he was by now an older man.
In the end, he checked into the Century Plaza Hotel, took a good room, and shot himself. For years, it was said, he had carried a gun, just in case.
Though less than handsome, he dressed well and became very attractive to women. He was charming, funny, reckless, and unafraid. He lied, he gambled, and it is fairly obvious now that from an early stage he cheated whenever he felt the need. He was a limousine confessor, a man who picked up tabs and then charged them to other enterprises.