Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Agents and Agencies
LEW WASSERMAN
b. Lewis Robert Wasserman, Cleveland, Ohio, 15 March 1913, d. 3 June 2002
The man who transformed Music Corporation of America
(MCA) from the world’s strongest talent agency to one of
the largest global media conglomerates, Lew Wasserman
was for forty years generally regarded as the most powerful
man in Hollywood. Although he shunned the limelight,
Wasserman was renowned for his business acumen, his
political connections, and his ruthlessness. He was also
admired for his philanthropy and was awarded a special
OscarÒ for humanitarianism in 1973 as well as the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest
civilian honor, in 1995.
The son of Russian emigrants, Wasserman started in
the entertainment field in high school, ushering for a
Cleveland movie theater seven nights a week. Unable to
afford college, he got a job booking bands and doing
publicity for the Chicago-based Music Corporation of
America, then a fledgling agency. Impressed with
Wasserman’s resourcefulness, Jules Stein sent him and his
wife, Edith, to Hollywood in 1939 to take MCA into the
film business. In 1946, Stein named the thirty-three-yearold
Wasserman president of MCA.
Wasserman opted to take MCA out of the talentagency
business in 1962, foreseeing greater opportunities
elsewhere in entertainment. He then solidified MCA’s
position as a film and television producer by buying out
Decca Records, the parent of Universal Pictures, and by
transforming the Universal lot into a profitable theme
park and shopping complex. Afterward, MCA consistently
captured a substantial share of the box office with hits such
as Airport (1970), American Graffiti (1973), The Sting
(1973), Jaws (1975) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and
Back to the Future (1985). For years MCA’s remarkably
their money from the higher salaries their clients were
now able to command.
TELEVISION
The post-war recession in the motion picture business
was caused in no small measure by television, which
began its commercial expansion during the 1950s. At
the start, prime-time programs were produced mostly
live out of New York. As in radio, programming was left
stable television operations had more network prime time
shows on the air than any of its rivals.
MCA diversified in the 1980s, acquiring toy
companies, music companies, a major independent
television station, and an interest in a large theater chain.
The diversification strategy strengthened MCA’s existing
positions and extended the company into contiguous
businesses. Wasserman’s most successful investment was
the Universal Studios Florida theme park in Orlando near
Disney World, which opened in early 1990.
Having exercised near total control of MCA since the
death of Jules Stein in 1981, Wasserman decided to sell the
company in 1990 to Matsushita, a Japanese electronics giant,
for 6.6 billion dollars. Wasserman stayed on as chief
executive, but his plans to make MCA more competitive
were ignored by Matsushita executives. Dissatisfied with
MCA’s performance, Matsushita sold MCA to Seagram, a
Canadian liquor company, in 1995. Edgar Bronfman Jr., the
new chairman of MCA, retained Wasserman as a consultant
but he was given no real responsibilities. In 1997,
Wasserman departed MCA, marking the end of an era, and
Bronfman changed the name of the company to Universal
Studios.
FURTHER READING
Bruck, Connie. When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of
Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and
Influence. New York: Random House, 2003.
McDougal, Dennis. The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA,
and the Hidden History of Hollywood. New York: Crown,
1998.
Moldea, Dan E. Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the
Mob. New York: Viking, 1986.
Tino Balio
to advertising agencies, which bought blocks of time on
the networks and negotiated with talent agencies for
shows. Since many of the most popular shows on TV
were patterned on the variety format of live radio, the old
line agencies easily made the transition to the new
medium. William Morris, for example, entered television
in 1948 by converting its radio show, Texaco Star Theater
starring Milton Berle for NBC (1948–1956). It went
on to package other variety shows for the network
such as The Jack Carter Show (1950–1951), Your Show
74 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM