Peter Bart, long one of the most powerful and controversial figures in Hollywood, was suspended Friday from his job as editor in chief of Variety, the dominant trade paper in the entertainment industry, pending an investigation of charges that he has behaved unethically and frequently used racist, sexist and anti-gay language.
The suspension, announced by Tad Smith, president of the media division of Cahners Business Information, Variety's parent company, was announced in the immediate aftermath of the publication Thursday of a cover story on Bart in Los Angeles magazine.
That story--titled "Is This the Most Hated Man in Hollywood?"--says Bart wrote and tried to sell at least one movie script during his tenure at Variety, a violation of the paper's conflict-of-interest policies. The story also says he inserted quotes in his reporters' stories, changed their facts and gave favorable treatment to friends, many of whom he came to know in his two decades as a studio executive before joining Variety in 1989.
"People who have worked with Bart say he would call his favorite sources . . . and vet stories that mentioned them, letting them make adjustments," the Los Angeles magazine story says.
The news of Bart's suspension hit Hollywood like a thunderbolt, coming less than five months after Anita Busch, editor of the Hollywood Reporter, quit her job in protest, and less than three months after Reporter columnist George Christy was suspended and subsequently made the subject of a federal grand jury investigation of his behavior. (Busch quit after the Reporter refused to publish a story about Christy's activities and Publisher Robert Dowling publicly criticized the reporter who wrote that story.)
As both the editor and the most important columnist at Variety, Bart has for more than a decade had unparalleled clout in the entertainment community. Daily Variety's circulation is only 36,000, but it's read by virtually everyone in Hollywood, and the surprising news of his suspension rocketed from office to office by phone, fax and e-mail, often among people who still hadn't seen the Los Angeles magazine story.
Paramount Chairman Sherry Lansing spoke for many in Hollywood when she said she was shocked to hear of Bart's suspension. Pat Kingsley, publicist for such stars as Tom Cruise and Jodie Foster, called Bart "an institution."
Always Talked About, if Rarely on the Record
