Foxless Lady

Sherry with a twist

In her three years as the first female president of a major U.S. film studio, 20th Century-Fox Productions Chief Sherry Lansing, 38, has overseen exactly one big box-office hit: Porky's, a pickup from an independent film maker. But that commercial success was far outnumbered by such turkeys as Monsignor, Making Love, Six Pack and Author! Author! In The Verdict, starring Paul Newman, Fox finally has a critically acclaimed smasheroo, but Lansing will not be around to reap the rewards. Last week she resigned her post, which paid $300,000 a year, plus bonuses.

Fox Film Corp. Chairman Alan Hirschfield told TIME that Lansing had not been forced out, yet he did not sound dejected. "She came to me and said she had another opportunity, and she felt it was best for her and best for the company that she take it," said Hirschfield. "We agreed it was the right thing for her and the right thing for us."

Lansing said that for legal reasons she could not talk about the opportunity for at least a month. There was speculation, all of it wrong, that she was headed for a top position in a new studio to be formed by CBS Inc., Time Inc.'s Home Box Office and Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures. Better guesses had her going to or starting an independent production company, where Tinseltown's big money is now.

Lansing's appointment as the boss of Fox films was regarded as frivolous when it was announced in January 1980, a "figurehead" move, as another female film executive described it at the time. A former math teacher (in the racially tense Watts district of Los Angeles), Max Factor model, actress (with John Wayne in Rio Lobo) and $5-an-hr. script reader, Lansing moved to Fox from Columbia, where she had risen quickly to senior vice president of production.

At Fox, Lansing learned fast but was reportedly frustrated by insufficient authority to do her job as she saw fit. Said one acquaintance: "It was a very unhappy situation, which is not unusual in this business." She was overruled by superiors, for example, in her attempts to get Chariots of Fire distributed by Fox. Instead, it was distributed by Warner Bros, and the Ladd Co., became a box-office smash and won an Oscar as best picture of 1981. With The Verdict, a film about an alcoholic Boston lawyer's malpractice case against a Catholic hospital, she guided the project from start to finish and deserves credit for its success. That accomplished, Lansing announced her departure. Said she: "What better time is there to go out than to go out on a hit?"