STEIN, Benjamin (Jeremy) 1944-

(Ben Stein)

PERSONAL: Born November 25, 1944, in Washington, DC; son of Herbert (an economist, presidential advisor, and writer) and Mildred (a homemaker; maiden name, Fishman) Stein; married Alexandra Denman (an entertainment lawyer), June 22, 1968 (divorced, 1974; remarried, September 7, 1977); children: Tommy (adopted). Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1966; Yale University, LL.B., 1970. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—Lois Wallace, Wallace & Sheil Agency, Inc., 177 East 70th St., New York, NY 10021.

CAREER: Writer, lawyer, teacher, and actor. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Washington, DC, trial lawyer, 1970-73; speech writer for President Richard M. Nixon, 1973-74, and President Gerald Ford, 1974; Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, member of editorial page staff and author of a column about popular culture, 1974-76; creative consultant and scriptwriter for Norman Lear, 1976-77; writer, beginning 1977. Practiced as a poverty lawyer in New Haven, CT, and Washington, DC; testified before U.S. Congress. Consultant to LAACO, Inc. Columnist for Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Los Angeles Magazine, New York, E! Online, American Spectator, and King Features Syndicate. Instructor at University of California— Santa Cruz, 1973; member of adjunct faculty at American University and Pepperdine University. Committee on the Present Danger, member, beginning 1982. Television actor, appearing in the movies Mastergate, 1992; The Day My Parents Ran Away, 1993; (voice performer) Santa vs. the Snowman, 1997; (voice performer) Breakfast with Einstein, 1998; Men in White, 1998; and Casper Meets Wendy, 1998. Cohost of the game show series Win Ben Stein's Money, Comedy Central, 1997-2002; and Turn Ben Stein On, beginning 1999; also appeared in the series The Wonder Years, 1989-91; Salute Your Shorts, 1991; (voice performer) Bruno the Kid, 1996; Match Game, 1998. Guest actor in episodes of Charles in Charge, 1987-90; MacGyver, 1991; (voice performer) Animaniacs, 1993; Full House, 1993; Earthworm Jim, 1995; Tales from the Crypt, 1995; Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, 1995; Married … with Children, 1995; Freakazoid!, 1995; The Marshal, 1995; (voice performer) Duckman, 1996-97; MurphyBrown, 1997; Total Security, 1997; Hercules, 1998; (voice performer) Rugrats, 1998; The Hughleys, 1998; and Shasta McNasty, 1999. Also appeared in commercials, including advertisements for Clear Eyes, Oldsmobile, the board game "Sorry!," and Office Max. Film appearances include The Wild Life, 1984; Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986; Planes, Trains and Automobiles, 1987; Frankenstein General Hospital, 1988; Ghostbusters II, 1989; Easy Wheels, 1989; Soapdish, 1991; Honeymoon in Vegas, 1992; Me and the Kid, 1993; Dave, 1993; Dennis the Menace, 1993; The Mask, 1994; Richie Rich, 1994; North, 1994; My Girl 2, 1994; Mr. Write, 1994; Miami Rhapsody, 1995; Casper, 1995; House Arrest, 1996; and A Smile Like Yours, 1997.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gold medal, Freedoms Foundation, 1979, for a column on work in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner; Daytime Emmy Award, outstanding game show host (with Jimmy Kimmel), 1999, for Win Ben Stein's Money.

WRITINGS:

(With father, Herbert Stein) On the Brink (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

Fernwood U.S.A.: An Illustrated Guide from the Folks Who Brought You Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

The Croesus Conspiracy (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.

Dreemz (nonfiction), Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

(Under name Ben Stein) The View from Sunset Boulevard: America As Brought to You by the People Who Make Television (nonfiction), Basic Books (New York, NY), 1979.

(Under name Ben Stein, with Herbert Stein) Moneypower: How to Make Inflation Make You Rich, Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

Bunkhouse Logic: How to Bet on Yourself and Win, Avon (New York, NY), 1981.

'Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug and the Dreamer (nonfiction), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1982.

The Manhattan Gambit, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1983.

Her Only Sin, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Financial Passages, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1985.

Hollywood Days, Hollywood Nights: The Diary of a Mad Screenwriter, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Tommy and Me: The Making of a Dad, Free Press (New York, NY), 1998.

How to Ruin Your Life, Hay House (Carlsbad, CA), 2002.

(With Phil DeMuth) Yes, You Can Time the Market!, Wiley (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of television scripts, including Diary of a Stewardess.

SIDELIGHTS: Stein wrote his first novel, On the Brink, in 1977, with technical assistance from his father, Herbert Stein, a former chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Drawing on recent historical facts and events, the novel combines economics and suspense in a story about the disastrous effects of runaway inflation. The year is 1981, and the head of the Federal Reserve Board, who admits, "I am no economist," nevertheless convinces the president that economic prosperity lies in increasing the money supply to keep up with the rising cost of living. At the same time the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raises the price of oil from $20.00 a barrel to $38.00, and inflation skyrockets. Wonder Bread is $2.99 a loaf, bacon sells for $22.00 a pound, the stock market crashes, and anarchy seems imminent. When it becomes necessary for the government to issue "megabucks" in million-dollar denominations the scene is set for a demagogue to take over America. "Impending Disaster novels with crazy Presidents can grip us because extrapolation of recent reality is all too easy," observed Adam Smith in the New York Times. "So I can say honestly: I could not put down On the Brink. I wanted to see where those wild characters, the prices, would go…. As plotters and pamphleteers the Steins are brilliant. Their Disaster is truly frightening."

Stein published two books in 1978. The Croesus Conspiracy, his second Washington novel, is a political story about a scheme to reestablish the Third Reich. The novel's fictional characters, including a short, stocky, German-born secretary of state, a power-hungry presidential candidate, and their billionaire patron, bear resemblance to certain real-life personages. In the same year Dreemz was published. A memoir-diary of Stein's first year of living and working in Los Angeles, the book is, according to the author, his favorite work. In Dreemz Stein recounts his escape from the eastern establishment to life in the western sun. New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the book "a stunning little portrait of what life must be like in the city of angels." At the end of his first year in Los Angeles, Stein lived in a Spanish-style house complete with palm tree and drove a Mercedes Benz 450 SLC with a personalized license plate that read "DREEMZ." Nevertheless, he points out, "The cars and the girls and the Spanish house are only the outward appearances of the dreams that have come true in L.A. For me, L.A. means doing and being free."

Among the opportunities that life in Los Angeles provided for Stein was a job as creative consultant to television producer Norman Lear. It was from this occupational vantage point that Stein developed the thesis that forms the basis of his book The View from Sunset Boulevard: America As Brought to You by the People Who Make Television. Exposing the myth that popular culture as represented by television is a mirror of national dreams and nightmares, Stein maintains: "The super-medium of television is spewing out the messages of a few writers and producers (literally in the low hundreds), almost all of whom live in Los Angeles. Television is not necessarily a mirror of anything besides what those few people think."

After conducting long and candid interviews with forty of television's most important writers and producers, Stein concluded: "The fit between the message of the TV shows and the opinions of the people who make the TV shows was excellent. Moreover, the views of these TV people were so highly idiosyncratic and unique that they could not possibly be the dreams of a nation. It was like thinking that a taste for snuff movies or Beluga caviar was the general taste of a nation." Additionally, "In Mr. Stein's view," noted a New York Times Book Review critic, "the Hollywood-formed ideas aired on the nation's screens run counter to our traditional folk culture, in which Americans are said to revere small towns, successful businessmen and soldiers, and to have no sympathy for criminals and the poor. The new television culture violates the oldfashioned virtues."

Presenting an "alternate world" juxtaposed to reality, primetime television, observes Stein, broadcasts daily that businessmen and other high-level people are bad, while workers and rebel cops are "the salt of the earth and smart, too." Also, on television, small towns hide evil beneath their superficial veneer, while big cities are portrayed as basically cheerful, friendly places to raise children. Supporting his contention that television posits an alternate reality, Stein writes: "In the thousands of hours I have spent watching adventure shows, I have never seen a major crime committed by a poor, teenage, black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican youth, even though they account for a high percentage of all violent crime." Some critics reviewed the book favorably. Washington Post critic James Lardner commended Stein for asking "fresh questions about commercial TV and its treatment of crime, wealth, religion, and daily life."

Following The View from Sunset Boulevard, Stein returned to the subject of inflation in a second collaboration with his father. The result was Moneypower: How to Make Inflation Make You Rich. A nonfiction self-help book, Moneypower offers advice on investments and financial strategies for use in hyperinflationary periods. According to Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times, the book advises "in ways that seem entirely practical, and which ought to be clear even to someone who has trouble balancing a checkbook."

Stein once told CA: "I advise all prospective writers to try medicine instead or else try the shoe business. The same qualities that make a writer—sensitivity and awareness—make him vulnerable to torture by publishers and producers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Stein, Benjamin, Dreemz, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

Stein, Benjamin, The View from Sunset Boulevard: America As Brought to You by the People Who Make Television, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1979.

periodicals

America, April 7, 1979.

Library Journal, May 1, 2003, Patrick J. Brunet, review of Yes, You Can Time the Market!, p. 132.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 18, 1979.

Nation, March 10, 1979.

National Review, September 2, 1977; February 16, 1979; July 6, 1979.

Newsmakers, Issue 1, 2001.

New Yorker, December 19, 1977.

New York Times, May 17, 1978, Adam Smith, review of On the Brink; January 23, 1979, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Dreemz; January 8, 1980, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Moneypower: How to Make Inflation Make You Rich.

New York Times Book Review, July 3, 1977; February 18, 1979, review of The View from Sunset Boulevard.

Saturday Review, May 26, 1979.

Washington Post, February 25, 1979, James Lardner, review of The View from Sunset Boulevard.

West Coast Review of Books, May, 1978; November, 1978.*