In movies, among other roles, in The China Syndrome he was the ruthless Chairman of the Board of the fictional company that ran the Ventana nuclear power plant, which 1 of the shift supervisors (played by Jack Lemmon) suspected of having a critical design flaw that should necessitate the plant to be shut down permanently, following an unexpected, serious, turbine trip (which, of course, happened at the same—inopportune—time as filming at the plant for a local TV station’s news special on “energy in California”); the accident was (illegally) caught on film by the anchor of the energy special (Jane Fonda) & her cameraman (Michael Douglas). As the energy company Herd’s character worked for was trying to get a second nuclear power plant, Point Conception, licensed & online at the same time as the troubled Ventana nuclear plant, his character basically was a “stop at nothing” kinda guy, including murder, once he heard the problems at Ventana were bad enough there could be a meltdown making a good chunk of Southern California uninhabitable for quite awhile, if not permanently, & still murderous once he found out the licensing of the Point Conception nuclear plant might not happen. His character ordered a car accident that injured, but was meant to kill, the sound guy who was working on the energy special with Fonda & Douglas’ characters (he was the sound guy); he was enlisted by Lemmon’s, Fonda’s & Douglas’ characters to transport a set of faked radiographs of pipe joints in the damaged facility to an anti-nuclear power meeting after Lemmon’s character’s life was threatened & because Fonda‘s & Douglas’ characters felt their lives were now threatened because of how much they knew about the damaged nuclear plant. When the bogus radiographs never got to the anti-nukes meeting, Lemmon’s character was persuaded to come speak about the issues at Ventana at the meeting. Instead, he ended up detouring to the Ventana plant because he was being followed by a hit squad from the company Herd’s character worked for & that was the only place Lemmon’s character knew he was safe. So he took over the power plant’s Control Room by taking the security guard’s gun, & demanded to go on TV with Jane Fonda’s character interviewing him about the safety issues at the plant. Herd's character was still trying to stop Lemmon’s character all the way to the end. He ordered the people Lemmon’s character worked with, who were also presumably his friends, to cause another “turbine trip” scenario to happen & interrupt what he was trying to tell the public about the safety at the plant; followed by the local SWAT team busting into the control room & shooting Lemmon’s character dead, also under orders from Herd’s character. Only the turbine trip that was caused was worse than the original 1 & it looked to have caused more damage, but not “China Syndrome” type damage where there’s a meltdown large enough to reach to China.
