Hollywood pulls the plug on hospital for retired stars

[IndianaGreen]

Hollywood pulls the plug on hospital for retired stars

Charity's 60-year-old nursing home faces closure over $10m losses per year

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles

Tuesday, 10 March 2009


HULTON/GETTY AP

Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple were among the stars
who attended the opening of the Motion Picture Relief
Fund hospital

Back in the days when film studios were run like family businesses and Hollywood was just another small town, the movie industry's founding fathers created an organisation to look after employees who'd fallen on hard times.

The Motion Picture Relief Fund, launched by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and other luminaries, began in 1921 with a coin box where backlot workers would deposit spare change. It grew into one of America's most star-studded charities, with a $120m turnover, and a quaintly reassuring motto: "We take care of our own."

Lately, however, the organisation – now the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF) – has been dragged into a fierce controversy, in which famous board members, including Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, Michael Douglas and Kevin Spacey, are charged with a lamentable failure to take care of their own.

The dispute revolves around a decision to close down the MPTF's historic "country home", a hospital and nursing facility on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills. For 60 years, ageing actors, entertainers and film industry workers have come to this once-leafy part of the San Fernando Valley to live out their final years.

Citing a $10m (£7.2m) annual operating loss, and saying that the facility was threatening the entire charity's solvency, the MPTF recently decided close down the home, putting 290 employees out of work, and leaving its 100 long-term residents facing an uncertain future.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hollywood-pulls-the-plug-on-hospital-for-retired-stars-1641034.html

[Journeyman]

1. My godfather lived out his final years at the Motion Picture Home. . .

good times, for him and me -- he was well-cared for, and I got the opportunity to meet dozens of fascinating people, some actors and entertainers, but mostly old crew members. Lot of great stories.

I thought it was one of the best benefits an industry could provide its people, to care for them and keep them safe when they were at their most vulnerable. And it was rewarding for the residents, too, as they got to spend their time with people who'd worked in the same field as they and shared so many common memories.

I'm very sorry to hear the home will close. It'll have no impact on my life, but it's sad to think another avenue of support has closed for an entire segment of this community.

[global1]

2. You Mean To Tell Me That The Hollywood Bunch Can't Raise $10 Million ......

per year to keep this place going? Some of the stars make $20 million per picture. Hell - $10 million is chump change for the collective group of Hollywoodians.

[IndianaGreen]

4. I am baffled that the last audit showed a healthy surplus. What happened to it?

Fiercest criticism, however, has been reserved for Jeffrey Katzenberg, the film mogul in charge of DreamWorks, who serves as the chairman, and therefore figurehead, of the MPTF Foundation.

Katzenberg gave interviews blaming the recent closure on a lack of funds. However, the MPTF's most recent audited accounts (which admittedly cover the years prior to the recent financial crisis) show the organisation operating at a healthy surplus. "What bothers many people in the industry is that there's this group on the board, Katzenberg, Spielberg and their like, who earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year, yet none of them have come to the rescue," says the Hollywood historian Marc Wanamaker. "$10m a year is nothing to these people, and it would take nothing to create an endowment to offset the losses. The money would be tax deductible."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hollywood-pulls-the-plug-on-hospital-for-retired-stars-1641034.html

Katzenberg and Spielberg were among the investors bilked by Bernie Madoff. I wonder if that is a factor.

[aquart]

6. There's something very wrong here.

Of course, if the surplus were invested with Madoff... But I didn't see the MPTF on the list of victims.

[aquart]

3. How could they do this?

This wasn't worth raising money for?

[DCKit]

5. It will be.... now.

Anyone who doesn't step up is going to be talked about and, in this case, not all publicity will be good.

[the_chinuk]

7. ZOMG ... Spielberg ALONE could solve this problem in ten seconds by writing a check!

All that $$$ going to celebrities? What are they doing with it?

Oh, yeah Adopting third world babies ....