Dozens accuse director of sex harass
Director prowled Central Pk. for women to abuse: actresses
A Hollywood director trolled Central Park to hunt for actresses to sexually abuse á la Harvey Weinstein, according to a report Sunday.
Thirty-eight women told the Los Angeles Times that corpulent director and screenwriter James Toback — whose flicks include 1987’s “The Pick-up Artist” and 1991’s Oscar-nominated “Bugsy” — would seek out young women to assault while boasting about his Hollywood résumé.
His go-to pickup line was, “My name’s James Toback. I’m a movie director. Have you ever seen ‘Black and White’ or ‘ Two Girls and a Guy’?” the women said.
Toback, who is married and lives on the Upper West Side, would then take them to places such as a hotel or movie trailer to “audition” them — and pounce, the women told the Times.
Actress Terri Conn, who was in the TV soap “As the World Turns” for 12 years, recalled meeting Toback, now 72, on the street and agreeing to go with him to Central Park.
He took her to a secluded area and began humping her leg, demanding that she maintain eye contact, Conn recalled.
“I was shocked and frozen and didn’t know what to do,” said Conn, who was 23 at the time. “I thought if I resisted, it could get worse. He could overpower me.”
He ejaculated into his khakis, according to the now-42-year-old actress.
Onetime aspiring actress Starr Rinaldi recalled a disgusting encounter with Toback after meeting him in Central Park 15 years ago, when he insinuated that young women needed to put out to make it Hollywood.
“In a weird sense, I thought, ‘This is a test of whether I’m a real artist and serious about acting,’ ” Rinaldi said.
“He always wanted me to read for him in a hotel or come back to his apartment, like, ‘ How serious are you about your craft?’ And the horrible thing is, whichever road you choose, whether you sleep with him or walk away, you’re still broken,” she said.
Toback also allegedly preyed on young women as they worked on their acting résumés at copier centers.
He approached then-aspiring actress Sari Kamin at a Kinkos on the Upper West Side in 2003, the paper said.
He had a DVD copy of his 1997 flick, “Two Girls and a Guy,” and used it to boast to Kamin that she could star in his next movie, the woman said.
After several dinners, Toback persuaded her to go back to his hotel and take off her clothes, telling her that if she couldn’t get naked for him, how could she expect to do so for the cameras, she said. He then began rubbing his groin against her, Kamin said.
“I felt really paralyzed,” Kamin recalled. “And I asked him, ‘ Are you trying to get yourself off ?’ And he said, ‘ Absolutely.’ ”
She said she grabbed her clothes and fled.
Actress Adrienne LaValley, who has appeared on ABC’s “Quantico,’’ said that during a 2008 hotel-room encounter she
had with Toback, he began to rub his crotch against her leg.
“The way he presented it, it was like, ‘This is how things are done,’ ” she said.
When she objected, he stood up and ejaculated in his pants, she said.
“I felt like a prostitute, an utter disappointment to myself, my parents, my friends,” LaValley said. “And I deserved not to tell anyone.”
Accusations against the New York-born Toback come in the wake of shocking allegations against Weinstein, one of Tinseltown’s ultimate power brokers, accusing him of molesting and, in some cases, raping women.
While Toback isn’t nearly the mogul Weinstein is, he has an im- pressive résumé, with directing and writing credits that have put him alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
In addition to writing “Bugsy,’’ which starred Warren Beatty and was directed by Barry Levinson, Toback’s 1987 rom-com, “The Pick-up Artist,” starred Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald.
Allegations against Toback have surfaced in the past — in Spy magazine in 1989 and Gawker in 2010 — but the Weinstein case has prompted a slew of new accusers to come forward.
Toback’s dirty deeds are so well known in showbiz that there is a word for encounters with him, said New York drama teacher Karen Sklaire.
“It’s a common thread among many of the women I know,” she told the Times. “After someone mentions they were sexually abused by a creepy writer-director, the response is, ‘ Oh, no. You got Toback-ed.’ ”
Toback denied the allegations to the Times. He said either he had never met any of the women, or, if he had, it “was for five minutes and [I] have no recollection.’’
He added that his ailing health — diabetes and a heart condition — made it “biologically impossible’’ for him to have done what the women are accusing him of.
There was no answer at a Manhattan phone listed for Toback.