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The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood

Name: The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood
Author: Dennis Mcdougal
ISBN: 9780306810503

by Dennis Mcdougal, Dennis McDougal

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Overview

The reviewer of the Boston Globe said point blank: "Over the years, I've read hundreds of books on Hollywood and the movie business, and this one is right at the top." As the elusive, tyrannical head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) until the 1990s, Lew Wasserman was the most powerful and feared man in show business for more than half a century. His career spanned the entire history of the movies, from the silent era to the present, and he was guru to Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, and to a new generation of filmmakers beginning with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. For more than four years, Dennis McDougal interviewed over 350 people who knew the man with the giant dark horn-rimmed glasses—colleagues, relatives, rivals—and drew on tens of thousands of pages of documents to produce this extraordinary and first-ever portrait of a legend and his times, a book that the New York Times Book Review called "thoroughly reported and engrossing" and that the Daily News called, simply, "a bombshell."

An unauthorized examination of the former head of MCA.

Synopsis

Now in paperback-the Los Angeles Times best seller: the acclaimed and decidedly unauthorized portrait of the "Godfather of Hollywood"

Ronald Grover

. . . There's little that's new [in The Last Mogul], and McDougal, who never interviewed the press-shy Wasserman, relies heavily on other published accounts. -- Time Out New York

About the Author, Dennis Mcdougal

Dennis McDougal,an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times for more than a decade, has won scores of journalistic honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards. He lives in Long Beach, California.

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Editorials

Ronald Grover

. . . There's little that's new [in The Last Mogul], and McDougal, who never interviewed the press-shy Wasserman, relies heavily on other published accounts. -- Time Out New York

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Originally founded as a talent agency in 1924 by Jules Stein, an erstwhile Chicago ophthalmologist, the Music Corporation of America reached the pinnacle of its power from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, when it perfected the art of delivering complete "packages" to film and television companies. These pictures were not only produced by MCA but also featured stars repped by the "Octopus," as the company came to be known. MCA's market domination was so complete that in 1962, the U.S. Justice Department made the company to choose between the talent agency and its production facilities. It chose the latter. Lew Wasserman, named MCA president in 1946, often played bad cop to Stein's good cop by trying to milk every cent from any negotiation, while Stein excelled at soothing a star's or studio exec's bruised feelings. McDougal (Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business) had no access to Wasserman, but here puts hundreds of interviews and secondary sources to good use, combining crack business reporting with plenty of Hollywood gossip. As MCA becomes a "rapacious behemoth," McDougal focuses on the dark side of its business dealings (e.g., its alleged ties to organized crime), at times veering into innuendo, as when speculating that MCA had a hand in the death of Marilyn Monroe. Although the company remained a force in the movie and TV business, its strength was never the same after the 1960s, and Wasserman's days as a true Hollywood power broker faded after he sold the company in 1990 to the Japanese electronics firm Matsushita. McDougal has produced a feisty behind-the-scenes account of the multimedia empire MCA was in its glory days--a status no Hollywood studio has attainedenjoyed since. Pictures not seen by PW. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Hollywood connections. Mob connections. White House connections. Like Wasserman himself, this story of the man who for years was the powerful head of MCA has it all. From a former prize-winning investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Ted Loos

The rags-to-riches story of how Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman, two sons of Jewish immigrants, became the ultimate behind-the-scenes Hollywood power brokers is told in Dennis McDougal's thoroughly reported and engrossing book. -- The New York Times Book Review