Sweet Success

I have noted that two of the trade paper reviewers inferred that the show lacked "insight reporting"; well, they are absolutely right ... I am not a competent reporter . . . and furthermore, I am not interested in a low-rated artistic success. This "depth in focus" type of programing gets lots of applause from critics, but not enough viewers to field a baseball team . . .

In full-page trade-paper ads, TV Producer Jack (Bold Journey) Douglas talked back to his critics--and his words had the authority of success. Last week he announced details of the sale of 'his new TV series, Sweet Success, to the Independent Television Corp. for international syndication. Douglas has also peddled enough other new shows to land enough business for his production company (estimated net worth: $2,000,000) to keep it busy for four years. The Douglas operating formula, E+E=$$$ (education+ entertainment = dollars), was paying off, and if the Douglas critics did not like it, they could lump it.

With wide-eyed envy, the first episode of Sweet Success reported the rise of Don Loper, a onetime ballet dancer, who gives up the stage for dress designing. To Producer Douglas, the critics' sneers seemed almost unAmerican. "Something's wrong in this country right now," says he. "With the beatniks and all, it seems fashionable to be a failure. In Sweet Success I'm going to show people who are successful because they worked hard, and people who live well because they enjoy it."

Picketing Promoter. At 38, Douglas could well be talking about himself. He remembers little about his early childhood except that his real name is Jonathan Aivaz (pronounced Avis), that he was born in Iran in 1921, first son of a millionaire Assyrian camel-caravan operator, and that his family fled to France during anti-Christian riots in the early 1920s. By 1928, the Aivaz family was in New Britain, Conn., flat broke. There were seven youngsters to feed by then, so Jonathan never finished high school. He worked his way across the country as a movie pressagent, wound up with a small "chitchat and music" program on a Seattle radio station, and a new name--no one could pronounce the old one.

Drifting south to Los Angeles, he went to work as a TV announcer. Within a month, the station was hit by a strike. Douglas' reaction: he conned three actors off the picket line and sold them (complete with sponsors) to a competing channel.

Four years later, after borrowing some film footage from Colonel John Craig, a latter-day Richard Halliburton, Douglas sold a series of adventure shows. Since then, I Search for Adventure has found pay dirt in everything from elephant hunts to mountain climbing. Douglas followed up with Golden Voyage, an unashamed imitation of old-fashioned movie travelogues, then tried an underwater series called Kingdom of the Sea. By 1956, when he started Bold Journey, another version of Search, Douglas was one of the best markets a traveling movie photographer could find. His own camera crews ranged the world, reporting on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Japanese geishas, the far valleys of Pakistan. Their efforts built still another show: Seven-League Boots.

Whatever territory his travelogues roamed, Douglas collected the awards and ratings that are the hallmarks of TV success. Eventually he was reminded that he had always wanted to make a show about success itself.

Saccharine Sale. The fact that the critics find Success too saccharine bothers Douglas not a bit. He has sold it, and the big (6 ft. 2 in., 191 Ibs.), bass-voiced producer who acts as his own narrator is more than satisfied. "In this business," says he, "you gotta go, and you gotta go with what you've got." What Jack Douglas has got is a $50,000 salary, an additional $50,000 that he earns as a performer, and the proud knowledge that if "I really needed it, I could pay myself $250,000 a year without missing it."

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