Word: paramounts
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...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...
...staff began having second thoughts in the late 1970s about the earlier decision. By removing the networks as sources of financing for new TV shows, the commission in effect turned production almost totally over to the major studios like Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros, and Twentieth Century-Fox, and to the big independents like MTM, Lorimar and Spelling, who are able to afford the megabucks necessary to launch a new program. That, reasoned the staff in a 1980 report, simply concentrated the program supply power in fewer hands instead of dispersing...
...concert tour-35 gigs in 17 cities-a new country waiting to be conquered. His five concerts at the Westbury Music Fair in Long Island, N.Y., which are nearly sold out, will be recorded for another album, and his Washington, D.C., appearances taped for an HBO special and a Paramount video cassette. These last two spin-offs should earn him $1 million...
...greedy geezers who did them dirt. It is the summer's lone comedy hit, grossing $30 million in its first three weeks of release. "Eddie is definitely a movie star now," says Landis. "And he's too smart not to realize how good he is." Paramount realizes too. Last week the studio signed Eddie to an exclusive five-picture deal with a $15 million guarantee. This puts him in the movies' major leagues next to Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood-"Now those guys are movie stars!" says Eddie, modest for a moment. And up there even with...