CBS Plans Miniseries on Nussbaum of Steinberg Case

WASHINGTON —  CBS Entertainment has set itself the task of making a 4-hour miniseries out of one of the more unattractive stories of the decade: how Hedda Nussbaum, a onetime book editor, came under the thrall of a disbarred New York lawyer Joel Steinberg, endured 11 years of beatings at his hands and stood by while he fatally beat the couple’s illegally adopted 6-year-old daughter, Lisa.

A murder charge against Nussbaum was dropped in exchange for her testimony against Steinberg, 47, who is serving an 8- to 25-year prison term for the fatal beating of Lisa.

The deal was arranged by CBS News’ “West 57th” executive producer, Andrew Lack, and Nussbaum’s attorney, Barry Sheck. Lack will produce the movie for the CBS Entertainment division, part of the deal he made with CBS News recently when he signed a new contract after being courted by NBC News

A source at CBS Entertainment said Friday that the miniseries could be ready sometime late in the 1989-90 season.

CBS sources said Friday the network paid “considerably less” than $100,000 for the deal, which includes access to hundreds of pages of personal diaries Nussbaum has kept since she was 15.

Nussbaum, 46, is a patient at a Westchester, N.Y., psychiatric hospital. She is scheduled to be released soon and reportedly has been looking for a furnished apartment near the hospital. Steinberg is appealing his first-degree manslaughter conviction. He was sentenced 3 weeks ago.

In addition to the diaries, Lack told the New York Daily News, “there’s an enormous amount of material she has kept as a result of her legal and medical problems that’s going to be the basis for much of the story I hope to tell. I want it to be an honest and compelling account of who this woman is and what happened to her.”

In 7 days of testimony at the trial, Nussbaum related how Steinberg would punish her by forcing her to beg for food, sleep on the floor and take ice water baths. She suffered 16 broken ribs and injuries to virtually every part of her body during the 11 years of the relationship, which ended Nov. 2, 1987, when Lisa was found unconscious in the couple’s Greenwich Village apartment.

NBC reportedly had been “active” in trying to secure rights to Nussbaum’s story. An ABC spokesman Friday would not comment on whether his network was planning a dramatization of the case, or on reports that ABC would make its own miniseries based on Susan Brownmiller’s “Waverly Place,” a novel loosely based on the case.

One big question remains for CBS Entertainment: how to promote such an unpleasant 4 hours of TV.

Bob Shanks, a veteran U.S. producer and writer, took over Sunday as executive managing director of Channel 10 in Australia, one of three privately owned national channels Down Under.

Shanks has signed a 3-year contract with the Sydney-based TV channel, owned by Frank Lowy, for a job equivalent to president and chief executive officer in the United States.

In 1987, Shanks served as creator and executive producer of CBS’s “The Morning Program,” starring Mariette Hartley and Rolland Smith, which debuted in January but was replaced in late November of that year by “CBS This Morning.”

Shanks, who previously served as an executive vice president at ABC for six years, helped create both “Good Morning America” and “20-20” for that network. Most recently, he wrote four made-for-TV movies for CBS Entertainment, which were co-produced by his wife, Ann Shanks, as well as two PBS specials.