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Product Description
"If they gave out Emmys for best book about an Emmy-award winning TV series, Executive Producer Barney Rosenzweig would have another to add to his huge collection. If you love Cagney & Lacey-as I do-this is a must read. Triple love it!" -Rosie O'Donnell, comedian, actress, host of award-winning The Rosie O'Donnell Show, and co-host of The View
"Just as William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade is considered a bible for screenwriters, Rosenzweig's new memoir offers a Master Class for television producers."-Kevin Howell, Publisher's Weekly
"Cagney & Lacey ... and Me is terrific-a must-read for anyone interested in how the television business really works. From insecure stars with over-sized egos, to network executives blundering their way to success in spite of themselves, Barney Rosenzweig's chronicle of the rise and fall of the hit series Cagney & Lacey has it all: tempers, tears, greed, deceit, duplicity and sex-in short, more juicy melodrama than a daytime soap opera." -Steven Bochco, producer writer of award-winning series Hill Street Blues, LA Law and NYPD Blue
"One of Hollywood's greatest producers is also a brilliant storyteller. Barney recounts tales from the front lines of network television battlefields-with candor, intelligence and inimitable wit. If you want to know how television really works, this is the book for you"-Linda Bloodworth and Harry Thomason, award-winning creators, writer, producers and director of Designing Women
"Barney wrote a book?" -Peter Falk, Emmy-winning star of iconic television series, Columbo and twice nominated Academy Award star of motion pictures too numerous to mention
"Just as William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade is considered a bible for screenwriters, Rosenzweig's new memoir offers a Master Class for television producers."-Kevin Howell, Publisher's Weekly
About the Author
BARNEY ROSENZWEIG One of television?s most honored producers (Cagney & Lacey, John Steinbeck?s East of Eden, The Trials of Rosie O?Neill, Christy) his best productions remain daughters Erika, Allyn, and Torrie and spin-offs, granddaughters Hailey, Greer, and Zoey. Married to his third wife, multiple Emmy Award winning actress, Sharon Gless, the couple lives on Miami?s Fisher Island.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Really enjoyed reading about the genesis of the show, and all the machinations that Barney Rosenzweig had to go through to get the show on air and the constant battles he had to keep it on air. It was quite revealing about the off-air characters of Daly & Gless.
However... it's an autobiography and is therefore quite one-sided. Although the author readily admits his faults, the overall tone is constantly that the author is the injured party and everyone else is 'the enemy', which gets a bit tiresome after a while.
Its also not a 'great read' generally. He uses a lot of insider terms that mean little to a layman (and even less to a British layman), so some of the arguments with studios / networks etc. are a little difficult to understand.
Still, for fans of the show only, I'd definitely recommend it.
However... it's an autobiography and is therefore quite one-sided. Although the author readily admits his faults, the overall tone is constantly that the author is the injured party and everyone else is 'the enemy', which gets a bit tiresome after a while.
Its also not a 'great read' generally. He uses a lot of insider terms that mean little to a layman (and even less to a British layman), so some of the arguments with studios / networks etc. are a little difficult to understand.
Still, for fans of the show only, I'd definitely recommend it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
13 reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Barney's Beanery
18 Oct 2007
Format:Paperback
Barney Rosenzweig's memoirs of the 1980s are long on industry detail and short on self-examination, but that's Hollywood for you.
CAGNEY AND LACEY was credited as being the first big feminist TV show and it was hailed as such by Gloria Steinem and other pundits in the pages of MS. Magazine.
Rosenzweig was there from the beginning, after a checkered and mostly D-level career as a producer and sort of go-fer for more famous producers. He had worked his way up to a midlevel status when the job that made him notorious sort of fell in his lap. As he sees it, his then-wife created the show with another woman, and he managed to get it made and shown on the air, albeit with different stars. There was a version with Loretta Swit, another with Meg Foster, etc. Finally the lineup shifted to Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly, and after a year of threatened cancellations, CAGNEY AND LACEY became a huge hit and won Emmys for everyone involved with it.
Rosenzweig's tale of what it was like producing the show is filled with ugliness. He savages some of his writers, including the man who went on to become the renowned thriller writer Robert Crais, but he saves most of his venom for his blow by blow depiction of the vanity and ego wars between his two leading ladies. Both equally insecure, Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly come off in Rosenzweig's rendition as supremely neurotic and paranoid, each one afraid the other was getting more money, perks, or directorial attention. Gless was a blonde beauty on the model, Barney admits, of Doris Day. But could she act? Tyne Daly could act, or should I say "act" in capital letters, but was she attractive enough for TV? Neither of them ever enjoyed a single happy moment, and made everyone miserable on the set and off for years and years. As a producer, it was Rosenzweig's job to keep them content, butter them up, flatter them outrageously, promise each one that the other wasn't getting anything she didn't have, and so on.
This element of the book just goes on and on and on and on. You feel like you were in the stars' trailers for every beef they had. Gless would complain that Daly was married to the show's director, Georg Stanford Brown (another diva according to Barney). Daly would say that Gless was getting all the close-ups. The picture got even grimmer once Barney himself started seeing past the tantrums that Gless threw on a daily basis, and started falling for her, leaving his wife and eventually making Gless his number one woman. After the way he writes about her throughout the first three quarters of the book, I'm surprised he could stomach her, much less love her. And they're still married apparently! Life is stranger than fiction and this book proves it for sure.
CAGNEY AND LACEY was credited as being the first big feminist TV show and it was hailed as such by Gloria Steinem and other pundits in the pages of MS. Magazine.
Rosenzweig was there from the beginning, after a checkered and mostly D-level career as a producer and sort of go-fer for more famous producers. He had worked his way up to a midlevel status when the job that made him notorious sort of fell in his lap. As he sees it, his then-wife created the show with another woman, and he managed to get it made and shown on the air, albeit with different stars. There was a version with Loretta Swit, another with Meg Foster, etc. Finally the lineup shifted to Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly, and after a year of threatened cancellations, CAGNEY AND LACEY became a huge hit and won Emmys for everyone involved with it.
Rosenzweig's tale of what it was like producing the show is filled with ugliness. He savages some of his writers, including the man who went on to become the renowned thriller writer Robert Crais, but he saves most of his venom for his blow by blow depiction of the vanity and ego wars between his two leading ladies. Both equally insecure, Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly come off in Rosenzweig's rendition as supremely neurotic and paranoid, each one afraid the other was getting more money, perks, or directorial attention. Gless was a blonde beauty on the model, Barney admits, of Doris Day. But could she act? Tyne Daly could act, or should I say "act" in capital letters, but was she attractive enough for TV? Neither of them ever enjoyed a single happy moment, and made everyone miserable on the set and off for years and years. As a producer, it was Rosenzweig's job to keep them content, butter them up, flatter them outrageously, promise each one that the other wasn't getting anything she didn't have, and so on.
This element of the book just goes on and on and on and on. You feel like you were in the stars' trailers for every beef they had. Gless would complain that Daly was married to the show's director, Georg Stanford Brown (another diva according to Barney). Daly would say that Gless was getting all the close-ups. The picture got even grimmer once Barney himself started seeing past the tantrums that Gless threw on a daily basis, and started falling for her, leaving his wife and eventually making Gless his number one woman. After the way he writes about her throughout the first three quarters of the book, I'm surprised he could stomach her, much less love her. And they're still married apparently! Life is stranger than fiction and this book proves it for sure.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A Great Read!
23 May 2007
Format:Hardcover
Whether you are a fan of quality TV shows such as "Cagney and Lacey," "Trials of Rosie O'Neill." "Cristy," and others or if you have wondered exactly how programs make it to our TV screens, you will find this book informative, interesting and hilarious. Producer Barney Rosenzweig outlines not only how difficult it is to get a program on the air, but many network "executives" are totally out of touch with what the viewers want, cancelling programs before they have had time to "find" their audience. "Cagney and Lacey" was a ground breaking show, won awards every one of the seven years it was on TV. Week after week it dealt with topics that would timely even today, twenty-five years since it's premiere. Mr. Rozenzweig married "Christine Cagney" (actress Sharon Gless) in 1991. Ms Gless and Tyne Daly (Mary Beth Lacey) had such a wonderful rapport, it was almost like they were destined for these roles.
The actresses and Producer Rosenzweig brilliantly "saved" the show from cancellation, twice and I am sure it was no accident that this book coincides with the long awaited release "Cagney and Lacey's" first season on DVD!
The actresses and Producer Rosenzweig brilliantly "saved" the show from cancellation, twice and I am sure it was no accident that this book coincides with the long awaited release "Cagney and Lacey's" first season on DVD!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
loves Cagney & Lacey
14 July 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I first found out that Barney Rosenzweig wrote this book I just had to have it. I loved the entire Cagney & Lacey series from start to finish including all the movies they did later. What stuff Barney Rosenzweig went through to get that show on the air. It was very interesting to read how much work is involved in getting a TV show on the air - especially a show that was cancelled and then brought back. I would higly recommend this book to any Cagney & Lacey fan. For that matter, to anyone who is curious about how TV shows get on the air.
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