Weinstein Sex Assault and Harassment Scandal Splatters Greenwich First Selectman Race. Litvack Was HR Corporate Executive When Payments Were Made to Victims.
Poor Sandy Litvack. How was he to know? How were any of them to know? They were just rumors. The Greenwich Democratic candidate for First Selectman ballyhoos his highflying career in human resources at Disney and then along comes the public horror of his longtime colleague Harvey Weinstein’s sex scandal. Litvack highlights his career at Disney on his campaign website at a most inopportune time.
The 81 year old Litvack was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Disney as of April 30, 1991, according to his campaign website. Livtack was promoted to Executive Vice President Law and Human Resources. In 1993, Disney purchased Weinstein’s Miramax production company and the marauding Weinstein was part of the deal. The next year, Litvack was promoted to Senior Executive Vice President and Chief of Corporate Operations with everyone but the CFO reporting to him. During the Weinstein years, Litvack joined Disney’s Board of Directors and then became its Vice President in 1999.
Disney sold Miramax for $660 million in 2010.
Litvack wasn’t George Clooney, Matt Damon, or Meryl Streep (each of whom has issued carefully worded statements on Weinstein’s outrages). No, Litvack’s job was to make sure Disney’s employees acted within the norms of a civilized society. One person who has no excuse for not knowing about the Weinstein outrages is Sandy Litvack.
“Why?” Litvack wrote in the online Greenwich Free Press. That’s what voters most often ask him. Why, indeed. Why didn’t you stop the relentless assault of women by Harvey Weinstein while he was at Disney? It was, after all, “an open secret.” The kind of secret Litvack was in the best position to investigate and stop.
For a Hollywood assessment of Litvack, here’s a 2008 take by the essential Nikki Finke.
More: The New York Times story that broke open the sordid history of Harvey Weinstein includes details of settlements with victims that occurred while Weinstein was at Disney-owned Miramax.
Here’s one example from that October 7th story:
In the fall of 1998, a 25-year-old London assistant named Zelda Perkins confronted Mr. Weinstein. According to former colleagues, she and several co-workers had been regularly subjected to inappropriate requests or comments in hotel rooms, and she was particularly concerned about the treatment of another woman in the office. She told Mr. Weinstein that he had to stop, according to the former colleagues, and that she would go public or initiate legal action unless he changed his behavior.
Steve Hutensky, one of Miramax’s entertainment lawyers, was dispatched to London to negotiate a settlement with Ms. Perkins and her lawyer. He declined to comment for this article.
Greenwich voters will want to know more. They may be particularly interesting in Litvack’s philosophy on non-disclosure agreements, since that is one of the tools that allowed Weinstein to continue his wicked ways–with the assistance of Disney and other corporate leaders.