Word: paramount
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sunset Boulevard (Paramount) is a story of Hollywood, mostly at its worst, brilliantly told by Hollywood at its best. A daring film by ordinary movie standards, it is the last collaborative fling by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder at a specialty they have made their own: playing hob with convention and getting away with it. It also brings Actress Gloria Swanson back to the screen, after a nine-year absence, in a performance that puts her right up in the running for the first Oscar of her 37-year career...
...Paramount). Groucho is the one with the pointed mustache and glasses who pulls most of the wisecracks. Harpo is the one in the curled peruke whose zany glee is never accompanied by a syllable. Chico is the tough one. Zeppo is handsome and does little. They are the Marxes, the funniest brothers in the U. S. In this adaptation of their musicomedy, a better piece than their first talkie (The Cocoanuts), the plot about a stolen painting is brought scornfully to light once in a while, and then merely to prove that they had a plot to ignore. Romantic songs...
...earliest and flashiest corporate conglomerateurs, a master of the unfriendly takeover. Starting with a small auto-parts company in 1958, he assembled an incredible array of disparate businesses into Gulf & Western Industries (1982 sales: $5.3 billion). Bluhdorn eventually bought some 100 companies large and small, ranging from Paramount Pictures to publisher Simon & Schuster to New York City's Madison Square Garden. In one six-year period, he brought 80 firms into what became jokingly known as "Engulf and Devour." Bluhdorn died in February at 56 after a heart attack, and his successors are in no mood to keep...
...divestitures were just the latest ordered by Davis, who went to Gulf * Western from Paramount in 1969 and took over immediately after Bluhdorn's death. Davis had earlier moved to sell off $650 million of company-owned stock in 30 companies, leaving the conglomerate with some $150 million in such holdings. The money was used to bring down the company's mountain of debt to $1.2 billion. Davis then also sold Gulf + Western's 21.4% stake in Brunswick, the sports-equipment manufacturer, for $97 million...
Pointless mixing of dissimilar firms now seems finished at Gulf & Western. Says Shearson/American Express Analyst Scott Merlis: "Few of their businesses were related to their other businesses." Instead, the company now seems determined to focus sharply on a few areas: consumer products (apparel, Kayser-Roth; home furnishings, Simmons), entertainment (Paramount) and financial services (Associates Corp...