Jon Peters puts tell-all memoir on hold
By IANSSunday, May 24, 2009
NEW YORK - Hollywood producer Jon Peters has pulled plans to release an explosive memoir detailing tinseltown’s most torrid secrets after he was threatened by a series of lawsuits from some of the industry’s biggest players.
Imdb.com reports that the “Batman” boss had agreed a $700,000 deal with Harper-Collins Publishers for his insightful tome, titled “Studio Head”, which blew the lid on the behind-the-scenes goings-on of stars including his ex-girlfriend Barbra Streisand.
In the book’s proposal to the publishers, which was leaked to New York gossip column PageSix, Peters claimed Streisand had a string of affairs with her co-stars Robert Redford, Ryan O’Neal And Kris Kristofferson.
He also alleged she was sexually abused by Hollywood movie mogul Ray Stark as she prepared for her breakthrough performance in 1968’s “Funny Girl”.
But the tell-all book has not gone down well with Peters’ peers - a string of legal threats have forced him to scrap the memoir in its entirety.
In a letter to publishing director Michael Morrison, obtained by PageSix, Peters writes: “I must decline your current kind and generous offer to publish my autobiography… circumstances far beyond my imagination have caused me to remove the project from the marketplace at this time. Unfortunate leaks of the proposal have created a firestorm in the press, from PageSix to CNN and seemingly every other gossip page and entertainment news show in between.
“Somehow this proposal has become a kind of Holy Grail of gossip and I have become Hollywood’s ‘Man Who Knows Too Much.’ I have been besieged by potential lawsuits and threatened litigation by some of the most important figures in the world of show business.
“What’s worse… is the fact that I consider all these people my friends… I want my book to be a celebration of, never an attack upon, the remarkable people I have known and worked with.”
But Peters hints in the letter that the furore will not prevent him from releasing his memoirs in the future - insisting he wants to “work on this project privately and quietly”.
