Word: geffen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrants, Geffen showed no taste for academics. At New Utrecht High School, where his senior yearbook predicted he would be a dentist, Geffen finished in the bottom tenth of his class. But he was inspired by business, an interest nurtured partly by his mother's proprietorship of a bra-and-corset shop. After dropping out of two colleges, he padded his resume with a fake degree from UCLA and landed a job as a mail- room clerk at the William Morris talent agency. (He still faults the company for requiring that credential...
...Geffen started his own label, Asylum, in 1970 and became the leading purveyor of the California Sound. Among his artists: Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne. After selling Asylum to Warner Bros. in 1972 and running it for three years, Geffen spent an unsatisfying year as vice chairman of Warner's movie division. "I had to deal with bureaucracy and politics. It just didn't work," he explains...
Then came a traumatic change in his life. Geffen developed a bladder tumor, which doctors removed and declared to be malignant. Believing that stress had contributed to the cancer, Geffen, then 33, decided to change his priorities. Canceling his subscriptions to Variety and Billboard, he began teaching business courses at Yale and UCLA, collecting art and investing in real estate. After four years in his new life, he consulted cancer specialists for a second opinion and found that the first diagnosis had been incorrect: he was fine...
...Geffen wasted no time moving back into show business. In 1981 he started Geffen Records under an arrangement in which Warner Communications financed the fledgling company and distributed its products. As Geffen launched his second career, his colleagues noticed a difference. Says Mo Ostin, chairman of Warner Bros. Records: "David is still incredibly tough and ambitious, but he softened considerably after the cancer scare. He's far more concerned about people than in his previous incarnation." Before long, Geffen signed up the likes of Elton John, Peter Gabriel and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He branched into theatrical ventures...
...Geffen's entertainment mill is still working overtime. To buttress his roster of established stars (among them: Don Henley and Jimmy Page), he is breaking in such new musical talent as Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians and the Australian ingenue Kylie Minogue. Geffen has three films under way, including Men Don't Leave, starring Jessica Lange. His next Broadway candidate is Miss Saigon, a musical by the composers of Les Miserables...