Word: warners
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with cancer, checked into a Los Angeles hospital in late 1992, he registered as George Bailey, the self-sacrificing common-man hero of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. No doubt that was how the man who masterminded the merger of Time Inc. (which owns TIME) and Warner Communications wished to be perceived. But the Steve Ross who emerges in Master of the Game (Simon & Schuster; 395 pages; $25), New Yorker staff writer Connie Bruck's intelligent and fascinating biography, is composed equally of George Bailey, Don Corleone, Felix Krull and Oskar Schindler -- Steven Spielberg has said Ross...
...opportunity until he married a woman whose father owned a string of funeral parlors. Within a few years, Ross expanded the company's businesses to include car rentals, parking lots and cleaning services. In 1967 Ross acquired a powerful talent agency, and two years later, he bought the faltering Warner Bros. studio...
With Ross expertly stroking egos, Warner prospered astonishingly, but his highly personal, unbusinesslike style had its darker side. Bruck provides the most detailed account yet of an illegal cash-skimming operation at the Mob-run Westchester Premier Theater in the 1970s. Ross's best friend, Warner executive Jay Emmett, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud arising from the scheme, and Bruck leaves the unmistakable impression that Ross himself was deeply involved, which Ross steadfastly denied. (Ross cut off Emmett summarily when Emmett began cooperating with the prosecution...
...silver-tongued Ross always extricated himself from dicey situations and moved on to the next play in a bigger game. The 1989 merger of Time Inc. and Warner was his triumph. Personally, he reaped $193 million in stock from the deal, and while, technically, Time was acquiring Warner, and Ross and Time chief Nick Nicholas were to be co-CEOs, Ross quietly maneuvered himself into supremacy by dazzling the board with promises of a rich future. He then orchestrated a coup in which the directors ousted Nicholas...
...only thing Ross couldn't wheedle to his own advantage was cancer. On his deathbed, unable to ply his wiles, he was superseded at Time Warner by Gerald Levin. Superseded but not replaced. Ross was the inimitable master of the art of seduction. From Spielberg to the Time Inc. board, he convinced others that he wasn't a venal capitalist -- he was really George Bailey...