The Last Mogul

Lew Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood

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by Dennis McDougal

Type

Biographies

Subject

Others persons > Lew Wasserman

Keywords

Lew Wasserman, producer

Publishing date

1998

Publisher

Crown

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 560 pages
6 ½ x 9 ¾ inches (16.5 x 25 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-517-70464-1
978-0-517-70464-6

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Book Presentation:
Lew Wasserman's life story is the story of Hollywood, the "you scratch my back, I'll stab yours" Hollywood that movie fans may hear about but rarely see. As the elusive, tyrannical head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA), Wasserman has been the most powerful and feared man in show business for more than half a century. His story has remained largely unknown, until now. . . .

Michael Eisner, David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ted Turner, Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch: the men who run Hollywood today had the way paved for them by Lew Wasserman, the original Hollywood power broker. Intensely private and so low-profile that he wouldn't allow press photographers to take his picture for decades, Wasserman ran his beloved MCA with an iron fist. His story has never been told before for one overriding reason: fear. For more than fifty years, he has been one of a handful of Hollywood giants who could say, "You'll never work in this town again," and make it stick.

His career spans the entire history of the movies, from the silent era, through the age of Louis B. Mayer and the studio moguls, to the dawn of television, and up to present-day Hollywood, where money, microchips, drugs, and multinational politics dominate the corporate power struggles for control of the American entertainment industry. He was guru to such legends as Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, as well as a whole new generation of film magicians, beginning with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Confidant to presidents and popes, Wasserman also had ties to the underworld. Even today, at eighty-five, he remains the Godfather of Hollywood.

The Last Mogul is the probing, thorough, and dramatic chronicle of the life of Hollywood's last living studio titan, the man who has come to personify show business in the twentieth century.

About the Author:
For more than a decade, Dennis McDougal covered Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times, chronicling celebrity courtroom dramas, including Art Buchwald v. Paramount--the landmark battle for the profits from actor Eddie Murphy's hit comedy Coming to America. Buchwald v. Paramount exposed sleazy studio accounting practices and resulted in McDougal coauthoring the best-selling Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business. McDougal, who was nominated for an Edgar Award for In the Best of Families, has won more than fifty journalism honors, including the Knight Fellowship from Stanford University and the National Headliners Award. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Long Beach, California.

Press Reviews:
...McDougal does a workmanlike job of piecing together Wasserman's ascent... -- Business Week,

The tone of the book is journalistic, tough and adversarial. Despite McDougal's admiring words for Wasserman as an industry leader whose reputation for fairness settled several serious Hollywood labor disputes, the author leaves no doubt that he believes the accusations against MCA over the years were not unfounded; there was fire where the smoke arose. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Charles Champlin

See the publisher website: Crown

See the complete filmography of Lew Wasserman on the website: IMDB ...