Word: eisner
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...Eisner's revival of Disney has made him the current king of Hollywood and the darling of Wall Street. More important, though, is that Disney fans have begun to recognize him as a corporate hero of sorts, a long-awaited, trustworthy heir to Walt. Eisner has established himself as a charismatic, young-dad figure by appearing each week as the host of the Disney Sunday Movie, where the husky-voiced executive clowns with Mickey, Minnie and other colleagues. "This job is so perfect for him," says Dawn Steel, president of Columbia Pictures and a former co-worker at Paramount...
...each of the seven continents (he had to turn back 3,000 ft. below the summit of Mount Everest, the only one to frustrate his ambition). Wells clearly had the right stuff, especially as a financial man, but his most emphatic advice to Roy Disney was to hire Michael Eisner, president of Paramount Pictures. In eight years as the No. 2 man at Paramount, Eisner had been the wunderkind behind a string of hits, ranging from Saturday Night Fever to Terms of Endearment...
...when Roy Disney proposed a new management with Eisner as chairman and Wells as president, some company directors objected. According to Journalist John Taylor in his 1987 book, Storming the Magic Kingdom, they saw Eisner as an idea man who would be too inexperienced as an administrator and financier to handle a large corporation. The directors came close to rejecting Eisner in favor of an older, more buttoned-down candidate. But then Roy Disney's attorney, Stanley Gold, made an impassioned speech to the directors: "You see guys like Eisner as a little crazy . . . but every great studio in this...
This time creativity carried the day, and the Eisner-Wells team took charge in September 1984. The Disney board ousted Miller, while voting Roy to the post of vice chairman. The Eisner-Wells duo flew immediately to Fort Worth to enlist support from Sid Bass, whose family was amassing a stake in the company (currently 17%). Bass was so impressed with Eisner and Wells that he promised to hold the stock for five years, an unusual commitment that would make Disney far less vulnerable to further takeover troubles...
...Eisner had been a latecomer as a Disney fan. Growing up on Manhattan's Park Avenue, he seldom watched TV or went to the movies. Eisner's parents -- his father a lawyer-entrepreneur and his mother the president of a medical- research institute -- strictly rationed his pop-culture consumption. Recalls Eisner: "For every hour of television I watched, I had to read for two hours." Eisner dabbled in premed studies as a freshman at Ohio's Denison University, but eventually found better chemistry in the literature and theater departments. The first time he saw a Disney film was several years...