Lew R Wasserman

MCA Inc. Chairman Emeritus Lew R. Wasserman will be honored Sept. 29 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. President Clinton will award Wasserman the medal in a White House ceremony. Wasserman is among 12 Americans who will be honored. Others include Children's Television Workshop creator Joan Ganz Cooney, children's television advocate Peggy Charren, former Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, former Surgeon Gen. C.

The longtime secretary to the most powerful man in Hollywood said he "would roll over in his grave." Melody Sherwood, who served as Lew Wasserman's executive assistant for nearly three decades, said that the legendary studio mogul who died in 2002 would have strenuously opposed the decision to shut down the long-term-care facility known as the "motion picture home," a fixture of the entertainment industry for more than a half a century.

Walt Disney Co. and MCA have had some serious spats in recent years over hegemony in the theme park business. Just last month, MCA was so enraged by Disney's proposal to build a studio tour in Burbank that it sued a city agency, contending that Burbank made an illegal, secret deal to award a contract to Disney. Small wonder, then, that Hollywood tongues wagged when Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner and MCA President Sidney J.

Kathleen SHARP originally intended to write a book about the late Lew Wasserman, the onetime super-agent and MCA mogul who was, for decades, arguably the most influential behind-the-scenes figure in show business. During the six years she spent researching the project, however, her focus shifted a bit. Wasserman was every bit the force he was reputed to be, Sharp determined, but the power of his wife, Edie -- and Hollywood's female subculture in general -- had been greatly underestimated. "Mr.

Shares of entertainment conglomerate MCA surged in heavy trading Friday as reports circulated that long-time Chairman and Chief Executive Lew R. Wasserman underwent a second operation this week at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Analysts said Wall Street investors were reacting to concern that the health of Wasserman, 73, could make the giant parent of Universal Studios more vulnerable to a corporate takeover. MCA stock, which rose as high as $55.

MCA Inc. is quietly preparing to roll out the red carpet next week for top executives from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., its new corporate parent. Matsushita President Akio Tanii and a small contingent of executives from the Osaka, Japan-based company are expected to visit MCA's Universal City headquarters beginning Tuesday, according to people familiar with the trip. It will be their first call since Matsushita agreed to buy the entertainment conglomerate last year for $6.59 billion.

A key MCA board member and former Democratic National Committee chairman played an unusual dual role in talks that led to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s $6.59-billion acquisition of MCA Inc. Robert S. Strauss, a prominent Washington lawyer with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, represented both sides on certain matters under a special agreement between the companies.

Deep into merger discussions with RCA Corp. five years ago, MCA Inc. Chairman Lew R. Wasserman suddenly turned to his company's president, Sidney J. Sheinberg, and said: "You know, you're not going to be happy with this." The talks quickly died. That incident may carry a lesson for those monitoring MCA's current negotiations with Japan's giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.: Where Wasserman is concerned, it is a mistake to ignore the human factor.

MCA shares traded heavily Thursday following news that the company's recently ailing chairman and largest shareholder returned home from the hospital and after a decision by MCA late Wednesday to set in motion a "poison pill" plan to thwart any unwelcome takeover bid. The stock activity puzzled some Wall Street experts, who had previously questioned whether any serious bidder is accumulating shares of the Los Angeles entertainment giant.

What a way to take the onus off "Waterworld." Until a week ago, the executives at MCA Inc./Universal Pictures were preoccupied with the upcoming summer release of the mega-budgeted Kevin Costner futuristic movie. Now the collective mood has shifted to grave uncertainty about the future of the company and of the executives' own jobs. The impending sale of the venerable Hollywood entertainment giant to Seagram Co.

There have been since 1998 three major books about Lew Wasserman, totaling, exclusive of end matter, 1,421 pages. Kathleen Sharp's contribution to this pile of not entirely scintillating reading matter is novel in that it purports to be a dual biography of the man and his wife, Edie, who, the writer argues (not entirely persuasively), was his equal in Hollywood power.

It's fitting that the most candid revelation from the late Hollywood mogul Lew R. Wasserman in Connie Bruck's new biography, "When Hollywood Had a King," is Wasserman's admission that the dumbest thing he ever did was selling his beloved MCA Inc. to a Japanese electronics company in 1990. As someone who throughout his life was Hollywood's sphinx, Wasserman's confession is significant.

Lew Wasserman died last month with his legend intact, which is more than you'll be able to say for most of today's superstar CEOs. The reason was simple: He kept his mouth shut. In an era when you couldn't walk past a newsstand without seeing a smug winner's smile from some entertainment tycoon, Wasserman kept a Godfather-like code of silence, going to his grave without penning a memoir or even talking to Vanity Fair.

One by one, they stood up to tell how Lew Wasserman had affected their lives: the Arkansas governor he helped turn into a U.S. president; the Oscar-winning director whose career almost was short-circuited when he didn't hit it off with screen legend Joan Crawford; the Roman Catholic cardinal who found a non-Catholic willing to help out the church's poorer schools. Wasserman, viewed by many as the last of the Hollywood moguls, was their great friend.

With his oversized black-rimmed glasses, elegant dark suits and pristine white shirts, the late Lew Wasserman came to personify Hollywood power. Along the way, his look became an archetype for legions of talent agents today. As the former chairman and chief executive of the Music Corp. of America, Wasserman, who died Monday, not only created a way of doing business but also inspired the unofficial dress code that governs the way Hollywood agents look today.

Lew R. Wasserman, who died Monday at age 89, was the only film executive of the last 40 years whom one could compare to the great generation of movie pioneers: Carl Laemmle, William Fox, Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, Harry Cohn. Wasserman was not one of them--he came much later--but he was their equal in rank because, like them, he shaped the institutions of the industry and fashioned its culture after his image. Where he led, everyone followed.

The National Park Service director has told the chairman of MCA Inc., the owner of Yosemite National Park's main concession and the object of a possible takeover by a Japanese firm, that the federal government would prefer to keep the park operation in American hands. National Park Service Director James Ridenour telephoned MCA Chairman Lew R.

With two separate bouts of takeover speculation spiking MCA's stock in the last 11 months, the entertainment company might have expected its shareholder meeting this year to be its liveliest. But no raider or other disruptive force materialized Tuesday when all eight MCA directors--including such luminaries as investment banker Felix G. Rohatyn and former Democratic Party Chairman Robert S. Strauss--gathered in a downtown Chicago bank auditorium for the company's 29th annual meeting.

The death of former MCA chief Lew R. Wasserman on Monday rumbled through Washington almost as powerfully as it did Hollywood. In the decades from Lyndon Johnson through Bill Clinton, Wasserman probably did more than anyone in the movie industry to build the road that now runs between the two cities. Beginning under Johnson in the 1960s, Wasserman both established the expectation that movie executives would cultivate friendships with politicians and demonstrated how to do so.

When Lew R. Wasserman rose to power in post-World War II Hollywood, the studios were ruled by men with names like Mayer, Warner and Goldwyn. By the time he exited the stage decades later, Wasserman had outstripped them all. But the Hollywood he once dominated had become a place that no longer could create a mogul in such a singular mold.