CHERYL LADD AND ME
The day my agent sent me to Ojai to meet one of “Charlie’s Angels” . . . or so I thought
In 2000 Travers was told, “Cheryl Ladd wants to meet you”
It was 2000, spring I think. I was working as a columnist for the Los Angeles sports magazine StreetZebra; Marina Del Rey actually. I get a phone call from my literary agent, Lloyd Robinson.
“Cheryl Ladd wants to meet you,” Lloyd said. This sounded better than a Rolling Stones song about a “Puerto Rican girl just dyyyyyingh to meet you.”
Cheryl Ladd!? The blonde bombshell from Charlie’s Angels, who was always shown in the promos in a bikini? One of the most beautiful women in the world.
She wants to meet me?
“That’s what I said,” replied Lloyd. “She like’s Once He Was an Angel.”
Once He was An Angel is my oldest screenplay, written six years prior to 2000 in 1994. It had gone through quite a bit and had, as one of its previous patrons Frank Capra, Jr. said of it, “A lot of coffee stains” on it, but it was still alive and well in 2000.
The screenplay had many roles for beautiful women. Did Cheryl see herself in one of those? Or did she wish to direct or produce it?
“Where does Ms. Ladd reside?” I asked.
The fleshpots, no doubt. Beverly Hills. Malibu.
“Ojai,” said Lloyd.
A trip to Ojai meant taking almost a whole day off from my job at StreetZebra, which was no big deal. I often worked from home anyway, or after hours long into the night. I was outside the office at sporting events, press conferences, doing research or conducting interviews, but I still misinformed my immediate supervisor, a genial fellow Trojan and ex-tennis player named John Simerson. I told him I was going to see one of my mentors Bud Furillo, a legendary L.A. sports reporter and radio personality, for a story I was working on. It was very plausible and Bud did indeed live in Ojai. He also had been instrumental in helping me write Once He Was an Angel. It was a believable connection.
But the truth is I was heading out to see America’s sweetheart, one of the sexiest blondes in an era - the 1970s - of sexy blondes with big hair: Farrah Fawcett, Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, among others.
Bo Belinsky with Mamie Van Doren
Bo
I have written extensively of Bo Belinsky and his substantial role in my life, including “Bo Belinsky and Me” right here on Substack, but a little recap is in order. I grew up a suburban California kid absolutely smitten with baseball, as a player, fan and historian. I was an excellent ball player, good enough to have a meaningful role on my senior year team named national champions of prep baseball; later the program was named “National High School Baseball Program of the 1970s” by no less a publication than The Sporting News.
But I also read everything about baseball I could get my hands on, not just contemporary baseball but the history of the game going back to Christy Mathewson. This included a 1972 Sports Illustrated article by Pat Jordan about Bo Belinsky titled, “Once He Was an Angel.” It also included a 1973 biography by Maury Allen titled, Bo: Pitching and Wooing.
The short story is that Bo was an unknown minor leaguer with a reputation as a pool and chick hustler when he threw a no-hit game for the Los Angeles Angels in 1962. This vaulted him to fame (but not fortune). The gossip columnist Walter Winchell began writing of Bo’s conquests with Hollywood starlets, models, and Playboy Playmates. Between 1962 and 1964 Bo pitched fairly well on the field, really well off the field. In an age of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Bill Russell, Johnny Unitas and Paul Hornung, more words were written about Bo than any of them.
Jordan’s article and Allen’s book described his dalliances on the Sunset Strip. I read this roughly during junior high and perhaps my freshman year in high school. I had no girlfriend and little chance of finding one. I was lonely but hungry for some female attention. I lived vicariously off of Bo, and believed that if I could make it into professional baseball, I too could get some action from hot girls. This spurred me on as much as any other motivation to be the best pitcher I could be.
So it was that I earned a scholarship to play college ball, where I was all-conference and set some school pitching records. From there I led the Appalachian League in earned run average seven starts into my first year in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization. Then I tore my rotator cuff. I spent a year scuffling in the Oakland organization before they released me.
I was no lothario like Bo, but who was? I did, however, recognize the life described to me by Jordan, Allen and in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. There were “groupies” and hot girls who made themselves available to us. Yes, it was very fun, but of course my career was over, as Bruce Springsteen once sang, “In the wink of a young girl’s eye.”
Real life
I returned to college for two years at the University of Southern California, where I graduated and met my wife. I went to work on Wall Street, got married, had a daughter, and bought a house. The Army JAG Corps paid for me to go through law school, and I wrote speeches for Republican politicians in Orange County. I was even targeted by the likes of Governor George Deukmejian to run for Congress, but my wife divorced me and I had a spell of bad luck rivaling the crew of Apollo 13. From golden boy to loser in a matter of years.
I escaped to Europe, living a nomadic Hemingway-esque existence, and then took one last shot at a “normal” career. Unfortunately, the sports agency I started was Jerry Maguire minus the happy ending.
During that time, we represented Bo Belinsky, then in his 50s. Bo had pulled his life together. Once an alcoholic, a drug addict, homeless and suicidal, through A.A. and Jesus Christ he had regained his life. We helped him arrange to sign at card shows and old-timer games, never making a dime off him, but he had stories.
Travers career started because of something Robert DeNiro may or may not have said
“Hollywood wants to make a movie about my life,” he said. “I met Robert DeNiro, who said he remembered me from growing up in New York. He wants to make a baseball version of Raging Bull.”
A light went on in my head.
“I took some classes in the film school at USC,” I told him. “I got an A in a screenwriting class. I want to take a shot at writing a screenplay about your life.”
I was 35, had no money, my business and career were going down in flames; all the while I had a nine-year old daughter to support. Writing a screenplay on a wing and a prayer did not seem like a good career path, but I had passion. That and faith in Christ was enough.
I wrote the script in a month. Incredibly, both Pat Jordan and Maury Allen allowed me to use their work without being paid, agreeing that they would get credit when the movie got made. Bud Furillo, who first made Bo famous by writing about him, also was very helpful to me. Incredibly, it was noticed by Frank Capra, Jr., son of the It’s a Wonderful Life director. Within a year of writing it, I was a professional screenwriter.
Hollywood
Eventually, we had an issue with Bo over life story rights and Capra dropped the project, but he liked me and hired me to write five screenplays within a five-year span. I was living in Hermosa Beach and actually paying my bills. Eventually I decided to augment my income writing high school copy for the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Daily News when in 1999 I heard about a job writing sports for StreetZebra. It was a start-up, tied to an Internet web site at the height of the on-line revolution. When I started there were nine employees. A year later there were several hundred manning offices in Los Angeles and Chicago. I covered the USC beat and wrote a monthly “Distant Replay” column about great events in Southern California sports history. One of my colleagues was fellow Substacker George Cuddy. My first piece was about Bo Belinsky.
Cheryl
That was when Lloyd called and told me Cheryl Ladd was interested. She was still smoking hot. In case you do not believe me check her out in the TV show Las Vegas, where she plays James Caan’s wife, and that was several years after my trip to Ojai.
So I got an address and consulted a Thomas Guide. I had no cell phone. The directions consisted of a lot of “take a right at the barn with two cows,” and the like. Ojai is off the beaten path. People think, oh it’s near Ventura. It’s not near anything. It is where once-famous people and crooks and disgraced celebrities go to hide. It was two hours from L.A. I figured an hour, a ride up the coast. Yeah, maybe but then you get off the freeway and make your way into the mountainsides, past barns with two cows out front.
Finally I arrived, with my script and some supporting material in a brief case. I knocked on the door and Ms. Ladd’s assistant directed me to a guest house to wait for the great lady. The room had memorabilia from a lifetime in Hollywood. Photos of famed directors, including Marty Scorsese, plus actors and producers. An Oscar for her role in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. A couple of Tony awards.
I did not know she had been in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, much less won an Academy Award; not to mention I had no idea she had been a Broadway star. I was confused and beginning to question everything when a middle aged woman walked in the door.
“Hello,” she said. “So nice of you to drive all the way out here.”
Over the next half an hour I had a conversation with this lady. Was this really Cheryl Ladd? Could Cheryl Ladd really look like this, only a couple of decades or so after killing it with bikini shots on Charlie’s Angels?
Why did she like my screenplay? She subscribed to a fax program - remember those - Lloyd employed in which he would fax log lines of his client’s scripts to a long list of fax numbers in and around Los Angeles. It was incredibly hit or miss, mostly miss. Somehow, according to Ms. Ladd, she saw it and, I swear she said this, “It aligned with my astrology prediction for the day. I got a good feeling about it and decided to look at it further.”
No, she had not been a baseball fan much less followed or even heard of Bo Belinsky. No, she had not actually read the screenplay. Some algorithm of letters or words had aligned with the stars on her astrology chart telling her to pursue this further.
This had led to a phone call to Lloyd, who called me, and sent me to Ojai looking to revive what by then was really a failed Hollywood career. My real future, obviously, was in sportswriting.
It was around this time that Ms. Ladd’s assistant directed her to a phone call. I had already figured I was not speaking to Cheryl Ladd but rather Ellen Burstyn, who had also been in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I was ready ask her how badly Bill Friedkin had injured her back dropping a chest of drawers on her in The Exorcist went I went back to that Oscar and looked at it more closely.
Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Diane Ladd
There I saw it was not Cheryl Ladd, but Diane Ladd. In some ways it should have been better. Diane Ladd was a famous, successful star. Cheryl was kind of a one-hit wonder whose fame was based on her killer good looks, less likely to drive a film into production, but of course it was a disappointment. Any fantasies I may have had about hooking up with one of Charlie’s Angels was off the table.
Other than the astrology chart, Diane had absolutely nothing else to say about my script or its viability as a project. It was a whim, nothing more. She thanked me and I was back on the road, maneuvering past a couple more barns with two cows out front until I found the 101 Highway complete with rush hour traffic back to L.A.
I still joke with Lloyd, God bless him, about the time he told me, “Cheryl Ladd wants to meet you.”
I last saw Diane Ladd playing some old cooze on an episode of Ray Donavan. To this day I have a hard time differentiating her from Ellen Burstyn, but not from Cheryl Ladd.
Post-script
StreetZebra went under less than a year later. The story went that a couple of sales guys were in Chicago when the company folded up its tent over night, and like CIA agents on a black ops mission gone bad, were forced to pay their own way back to L.A.
Bo Belinsky died a saved man one year later and any chance his story would make the screen died with him. A script I wrote about World War I was literally bought by Edgar Scherick and James Woods around the time this all happened, but that project got blown up by lawyers and agents at ICM. A book I wrote about a famous USC football game became subject of a Hollywood bidding war around 2006-07, but 17 years later Lloyd tells me he has never in his long career going back to 1964 seen a project have its option renewed so many times without getting made.
James Woods or somebody pretending to be him called Travers in 2024 to “buy” a script Woods was ready to produce in 1998
To add insult to injury, in April James Woods called to tell me he wanted to make my World War I epic. It turned out either a guy using A.I. to sound like Woods made that call, or Woods himself was insane, drunk or off his rocker . . . or some other explanation? Either way, he and his agent disavowed the whole thing and I never got any answer at all as to whether it was Woods or, if not Woods, he and his agent have shown zero desire in getting to the bottom of who was using the actor’s name, Twitter account and voice to make deals in his name.
My movie career in a nutshell.
Oh well, I never cheated anybody. I forgave the many who cheated me. I maintained faith in God. I wrote 30 published books, many about USC football history, and made a good living.
Hollywood? Leave it to the pornographers, the child rapists and the Satanists who populate its immoral nether regions. Leave it to Jeffrey Epstein and P. Diddy and their ilk. As for me, to quote Vincent D’Onofrio as the murdered screenwriter in The Player, “What can you do? Me? I can write.”
Steven Travers is a former screenwriter who has authored over 30 books including The Last Icon: Tom Seaver and His Times. He is a USC graduate and attorney with a Ph.D who taught at USC and attended the UCLA Writers’ Program. He played professional baseball, served in the Army JAG corps in D.C., was in investment banking on Wall Street, worked in politics, lived in Europe, and was a sports agent before finding his calling as a writer. He has written for the San Francisco Examiner, L.A. Times, StreetZebra, Gentry magazine, Newsmax, Substack and MichaelSavage.com. He lives in California and has one daughter, Elizabeth. He can be reached at USCSTEVE1@aol.com or on Twitter @STWRITES.