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 ven with his extraordinary track-record for pioneering new TV formats, Wolper out-did himself in 1976, when he scored the first blockbuster miniseries – Roots. In dramatizing author Alex Haley’s epic saga of slavery and the early African-American experience, Wolper fashioned a television event without parallel.
The 12-hour, prime-time network program revolutionized long-form television as Roots set a record as the most-watched TV program up to that date, with a 71 percent share (on its final night) and 130 million domestic viewers alone. The miniseries fetched nine Emmys and fueled viewer demand for a 14-hour sequel.
“For the wrong reason, [Roots] was right,” says Wolper, referring to ABC’s misguided rationale for airing the series on eight consecutive nights.
Network executives had been leery of spreading the epic over several weeks, as they had done with earlier miniseries. By cramming the program into a single week, they gambled that “if it was going to fail, it would bomb quickly and get it over with,” says Wolper.
Instead of a bomb, ABC had on its hands a new, wildly successful prototype for the blockbuster miniseries.
Kunta Kinte enslaved, from the 1977 miniseries, Roots. Actor LeVar Burton ’76 was a USC drama student when he won the lead in Wolper’s history-making television epic. |
Roots wasn’t Wolper’s first foray into the miniseries format. That distinction goes to his 1974 project for NBC, Sandburg’s Lincoln, a six-hour dramatization of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by poet-historian Carl Sandburg.
Wolper, however, contends that his TV adaptation of William Shirer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, could be considered the first miniseries, since ABC aired it on three consecutive nights in March 1966.
Two subsequent contributions to the blockbuster miniseries genre – The Thorn Birds (1983) and North and South (1985) – cemented Wolper’s status as the man who could orchestrate the most elaborate projects with a concrete vision and guaranteed success. Few in Hollywood, therefore, were surprised when he trail-blazed yet another epic-scale form of entertainment: the dazzling spectaculars that encapsulated the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
 olper was hardly a newcomer to sports-based entertainment. Over the years, he had made numerous documentaries on baseball, football, golf and basketball. In 1972, he had produced Visions of Eight, an innovative film chronicling the Munich Games. To make that documentary, he had assembled acclaimed directors from Japan, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, the United States, Sweden and England to shoot Olympic events in their own style and from their own perspective. Visions was released globally, winning honors at the Cannes Film Festival.
Staging live events, too, was nothing new to Wolper: he had previously chaired the advisory council to the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission.
Still, when Mayor Tom Bradley appointed Wolper vice chairman of the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee, he couldn’t have expected all that the producer ultimately delivered. Not only did the committee secure the 1984 Olympic Games for Los Angeles. Wolper went on to negotiate an astounding $225 million deal with ABC to broadcast the event.
It’s not this staggering figure, however, that most Americans remember about the Olympics in Los Angeles. Rather, it’s the sound of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue echoing through a packed Coliseum, the vision of 84 baby grand pianos, the flowing mosaic of 85,000 cards raised on cue by spectators in the stadium. Perhaps the most stunning live-televised event ever, the 1984 Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies earned David Wolper the gratitude of his nation and a plethora of awards, including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In the wake of the Olympics tour de force, MPAA president Jack Valenti called Wolper “the new DeMille,” and Univision network mogul Jerry Perenchio raved that “Flo Ziegfeld, Billy Rose an
At the 1984 Olympics opening ceremonies, a flock of pigeons circled the Coliseum as the Olympic hymn played. Wolper masterminded the grand spectacle that some dubbed “the century’s Big Show.” |
d Mike Todd couldn’t hold a candle to [Wolper].”
The next year, Lee Iacocca, chairman of the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation, asked the extravaganza-meister to bring his touch to the 1986 Liberty Weekend celebration. As chairman and executive producer of the four-day event, Wolper recruited the country’s top producers and directors to commemorate the renovation of Lady Liberty in world-class style.
The day after President Ronald Reagan and French President François Mitterand unveiled the statue, a parade of 300 ships swept through New York Harbor. This spectacle was followed by a Boston Pops concert for 100,000 and the largest fireworks display in American history. The next two days brought a political summit on liberty, a classical concert in Central Park attended by an estimated 800,000 listeners, a salute to sports and a star-studded closing ceremony in Giants Stadium.
 ut what has he done lately? With his son, Mark Wolper ’83 – now president of Wolper Productions – Wolper has continued to put out award-winning TV programs, including Queen, a six-hour miniseries based on the life of Alex Haley’s grandmother.
In addition to several TV movies, David Wolper has remained active producing feature motion pictures, such as the 1996 art film, Surviving Picasso, directed by USC alumnus James Ivory M.A. ’57; and the 1994 drama, Murder in the First, a true story about the trial that brought down Alcatraz. And two years ago, Wolper executive produced a film internationally recognized by critics as among the decade’s most enduring. L.A. Confidential made most of 1997’s 10-best lists and won dozens of awards, including Golden Globes and Oscars.
Since then, he has been working on his next major undertaking: a miniseries adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Arthurian saga Mists of Avalon, which started shooting in the summer.
Asked if there is still one story he wants to tell, Wolper responds with an emphatic “yes.” It’s the screen adaptation of One Hell of a Gamble, an account of the Cuban missile crisis seen from both the Soviet and the American sides.
“That week was the only time when the world was close to coming to an end,” he says, leaning forward excitedly. “There was a real possibility... The President was prepared to go underground.”
He knows just how he would tell the story. “I’d open with the Bay of Pigs,” he begins, and goes into a polished pitch. He walks around his desk, pulls a thick, three-ringed binder off a shelf and casually flips it open.
“You’ve heard of the Freedom of Information Act?” he asks, a gleam in his eye. Across the top of each page are the words “TOP SECRET,” crossed out with black marker. The binder turns out to be a CIA report on the disastrous 1961 invasion.
Wolper’s excitement is contagious. This is a man who loves to tell a story. And he shows no signs of slowing down.
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