No More Tomorrows for Dawn Steel at Columbia : Movies: Resignation by studio president ends months of speculation about her fate after Sony Corp. takeover.

Dawn Steel is hobbling around these days, sporting crutches and a leg brace in the wake of a holiday ski accident. Still, insists the president of Columbia Pictures, she feels lighter than she has in years.

After months of speculation about her fate in the wake of the Sony Corp. purchase of the studio in September, it’s now official: Steel turned in her resignation on Monday from the post she has held since November, 1987, and will be staying on as a consultant for a transitional period.

“You don’t resign from these jobs . . . you escape from them,” says Steel, the industry’s first female studio chief and a former head of production at Paramount. “I feel like I’ve been let out of a cage. The higher up you get, the more administrative and less creative it is. There’s much less interrelating with film makers which is what I loved about my previous jobs. It’s a lot less about hands-on day-to-day film making. I felt completely unfulfilled.

“I don’t want to do this job another minute,” Steel continues. “I’m grateful for the opportunity and am glad I took it on, but I don’t want to read another script on a weekend. I’m tired of being the bad guy all the time, saying ‘no’ to people I like. No one calls to say, ‘Have a nice day’.”

Steel’s plans are still up in the air. Despite rumors that she has accepted an independent production deal at Disney, Fox, Universal or Warner Bros., Steel says legal considerations precluded having any substantive conversations until now. The reported $7 million in stock options she walked away with in the Sony deal gives her plenty of time to decide. Columbia declined to discuss the particulars of her departure.

“Everything is up in the air. One thing I know for sure: I won’t head back to the executive suite. It’s time to get on the other side of the desk, to exercise the right side of my brain. Another is that I won’t be teaming up with my husband (producer Charles Roven, “Heart Like a Wheel”). Working together is the quickest road to marital problems.”

Talk of Steel’s departure began to surface shortly after Sony handed the reins of the company over to producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters last October. Though Steel has a long-term relationship with them both--dating back to the time they all worked on “Flashdance” at Paramount--their presence, it was clear, would intrude upon the autonomy previously guaranteed her by Chairman Victor Kaufman.

When Steel projects such as “Skirts” and “Shining Through” (based on the Susan Isaacs novel) were placed in turnaround by the new Guber-Peters team, industry insiders were certain a change was imminent.

Though Steel will walk away with bonuses and an undisclosed cash settlement due her under the terms of her initial contract, the stumbling blocks were less pecuniary than legal--specifically a “confidentiality” clause (which Steel refused to sign) and a “no raid” provision that prevented her from taking employees with her (“negotiated down to nothing”). “The issue wasn’t money,” she says. “I would have left for nothing.”

Steel’s track record at the studio has been the subject of debate. Some critics charge that, despite the five-month writers’ strike, more films should have been set in motion. Those she did green-light, it was pointed out, were less successful than expected.

Brian DePalma’s “Casualties of War,” budgeted at $23 million, took in a mere $19 million at the box office (“a difficult film, a disappointment,” Steel admits) while “Karate Kid III” and “Ghostbusters II” grossed $40 million and $112 million, respectively. Hits, any way you cut it, but significantly less profitable than the originals.

“If you combine the grosses of Tri Star and Columbia, we finished in third place this year--a fact of which I’m very proud,” says Steel.

“I’m also proud of the talent I brought in--Michael Douglas, Cher, Mike Nichols--and the fact that we got Penny Marshall’s ‘Great Awakenings’ starring Robin Williams away from Fox. I think we built a terrific marketing group and production team.”

Her legacy? “I’d like my epitaph to read ‘Given the amount of time she had, she did the best job she could.’ Also that I’m a nice person . . . and a good mother. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that work is the major thing in my life.”