Here's a summer blockbuster frightfest to start the weekend. Nina Jacobson, the high-profile Disney production executive, was in the maternity ward when she was fired this week. At least she wasn't the one giving birth. A Los Angeles Times piece about how Hollywood says "you're fired" reveals that Jacobson's partner was laboring with their third child when the exec got the bad news at the hospital.
Gee, couldn't Disney have waited a few days? Even a pink slip delivered inside a Winnie the Pooh baby blanket would have been in better taste. According to other Los Angeles Times coverage, Jacobson called her boss, studio chairman Dick Cook, from the hospital looking for reassurance that the rumors she'd heard about her pending axing weren't true. Was her job safe? Cook told the Times: "I begged to see her face to face and she wanted to talk to me right then. This was not what anybody wanted." I'll say, especially when you're in the business of selling fantasies to kids and their parents. Where's that Disney magic when you need it, Dick?
Jacobson's not the first Hollywood exec to be fired in the maternity ward, the Times notes. The late Dawn Steel was about to give birth in 1987 when she found out Paramount Pictures was giving her the boot. Is anything that the studios are dishing out on the big screen this summer as scary as that? I foresee a sequel: "The Devil Wears Prada: Maternity Ward."
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