Lew Wasserman
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Lew Wasserman (born Lewis Robert Wasserman, March 22, 1913, Cleveland, Ohio - June 3, 2002, Beverly Hills, California) was a Hollywood agent and studio executive credited with first creating and then taking apart the studio system in a career spanning more than six decades. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants in Cleveland, Ohio, Wasserman started out as a booking agent for the Music Corporation of America (MCA) under its founder Dr. Jules Stein.
Under Wasserman's watch, MCA branched out into representing actors and actresses in addition to musicians and in the process created the studio system, which drove up prices for studios. As an agency, Wasserman's MCA came to dominate Hollywood, representing such stars as Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan, whom Wasserman was instrumental in helping to become president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Following the rising postwar popularity of television and the resulting near bankruptcy of many studios, Wasserman purchased Universal Studios and Decca Records in 1962 and merged them with MCA. In 1966, he singlehandedly installed Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Together they orchestrated and controlled much of how Hollywood operated, and was allowed to do business, for the next several decades. Wasserman ran the combined company for nearly thirty years before selling it to Japanese consumer electronics conglomerate Matsushita Electric in 1990.
Wasserman pocketed an estimated $350 million from the sale and remained as manager, but with vastly diminished power and influence, until Seagram bought controlling interest in 1995, which then resulted in his role becoming even more marginalized. Wasserman served on the board of directors until 1998. He died of complications from a stroke in Beverly Hills in 2002 and was interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City. He was honored posthumously with 2,349th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Friday, October 5th 2007.
His grandson, Casey Wasserman, carries on the family name in the agency business with Wasserman Media Group (WMG), which he started in 1998. Casey Wasserman also acts as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wasserman Foundation, a charitable organization founded by Lew Wasserman and his wife Edie in 1952.
Wasserman was an influential player and fund-raiser in the Democratic Party, but was also a life-long and instrumental advocate, mentor and close friend of Ronald Reagan, and maintained close relationships at the highest levels in Washington, D.C.[citation needed]. Wasserman was also known as "The Pope of Hollywood," and was the genius who figured out that an actor could make a killing via a tax windfall by turning himself into a corporation. The corporation, which would employ the actor, would own part of a motion picture the actor appeared in, and all monies would accrue to the corporation, which was taxed at a much lower rate than was personal income. Wasserman pioneered this tax avoidance scheme with his client James Stewart, beginning with the Anthony Mann western Winchester '73 (1950) (1950). It made Stewart enormously rich as he became a top box office draw in the 1950s after the success of "Winchester 73" and several more Mann-directed westerns, all of which he had an ownership stake in.
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References and external links
- the Wasserman Foundation
- WASSERMAN, Lew R. International Who's Who. accessed September 3, 2006.
- Lew Wasserman at the Internet Accuracy Project.
- Documentary on Lew Wasserman: The Last Mogul at IMDB.
- Lew Wasserman IMDB Profile [IMDB]
- Portrait of Lew Wasserman by Margaret Holland Sargent.
| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by Rosalind Russell |
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award 1973 |
Succeeded by Arthur B. Krim |
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