Volume 50, Number 11 · July 3, 2003
The Don of Dons
By Larry McMurtry
When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence
Connie Bruck
Random House, 512 pp., $29.95
Lew Wasserman, longtime head of MCA-Universal, a man thought by many to have the sharpest and best-disciplined business mind ever to exercise executive power at a major American movie studio, died just a year ago, of a stroke, after having been a sometimes distant but always respected presence in Hollywood since the early Forties. His family, faithful to his orders, buried him quietly on the very day of his death, but eventually, with some reluctance, allowed a memorial service to be held; the reason for their reluctance was the shabby treatment they felt he had received, in the last decade of his life, from three successive owners of the great company he had labored so carefully to build. The owners were in turn Japanese (Matsushita), Canadian (Seagram), and French (Vivendi). We'll get to the shabby treatment in a bit.
Review, 3495 words
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