Spielberg takes heat over rest home threat

Some of the biggest noises in Hollywood, among them the film director Steven Spielberg (pictured) and actors Warren Beatty, Michael Douglas and Kevin Spacey, have been drawn into a row over the planned closure of a rest home for actors who have fallen on hard times.

All four sit on the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF), a charity launched by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and other luminaries back in 1921 with the aim of giving superannuated thespians and film industry workers a safe haven. But many feel the MPTF is not living up to its reassuring motto - "We take care of our own" - because of the Fund’s decision to shut down its historic "country home", a hospital and nursing facility on Mulholland Drive that has, in times past, provided a sanctuary for Norma Shearer and the legendary producer Stanley Kramer.

One hundred residents are due to lose their home because the MPTF is short of cash. "What bothers many people in the industry is that there's this group on the board, Spielberg and their like, who earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year, yet none of them have come to the rescue," says the Hollywood historian Marc Wanamaker. "$10m a year is nothing to these people, and it would take nothing to create an endowment to offset the losses. The money would be tax deductible."

Most of the criticism has been aimed at movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg who serves as MPTF chairman. Katzenberg gave interviews blaming the recent closure on a lack of funds. However, the Independent points out that MPTF's most recent audited accounts (which admittedly cover the years prior to the recent financial crisis) show the organisation operating at a healthy surplus.

Protestors made their feelings heard at the MPTF’s "night before" party on the eve of last month's Oscars, where a crowd blew raspberries at guests including Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo DiCaprio and Reese Witherspoon.

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