Dennis McDougal Books

Lew Wasserman's life is a reflection of Hollywood's complex and often ruthless landscape, where power dynamics dictate success. As the formidable head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA), he has wielded influence for over fifty years, remaining largely hidden from public view. Key figures in today's Hollywood, including Michael Eisner, David Geffen, and Rupert Murdoch, owe their paths to Wasserman, the original power broker of the industry. His intense privacy and refusal to be photographed for decades contributed to his enigmatic reputation. Wasserman's ability to control careers with a simple threat—“You'll never work in this town again”—has kept his story shrouded in fear until now. His career encompasses the entire evolution of cinema, from the silent film era to the rise of television and the current corporate battles for dominance in entertainment. He mentored iconic figures like Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe, as well as modern filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Beyond Hollywood, Wasserman maintained connections with political leaders and even the underworld. Now, at eighty-five, he remains a pivotal figure, embodying the essence of twentieth-century show business. This chronicle offers a thorough and dramatic exploration of the life of Hollywood's last living studio titan.

Here is the riveting story of how a second-rate newspaper rose to national greatness, only to become a casualty of war-a civil war within the family that owned it. Told in a hard-edged, investigative style, it spans the American Century, from 1884, when the Chandler family gained control of the just-born daily, through April 2000, when they sold it to the Tribune Company. Above all, Privileged Son chronicles the life of Otis Chandler, the Times' chief architect after 1960, whose flamboyant exploits in and out of the publisher's suite changed the perspective of the newspaper, and Los Angeles, forever.Using scores of insider sources, Dennis McDougal, the best-selling author of The Last Mogul, will surprise readers with his findings, including accounts of political graft and early mob connections among one of L.A.'s most prominent families. The Chandlers, who helped establish the national careers of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and several other major political figures, controlled Los Angeles and the Times Mirror Corporation with a capriciousness that is seldom seen, even in the most dysfunctional media dynasties.Privileged Son is a thoroughly compelling page-burner that will keep readers engaged from its opening paragraphs. But it is also a numbing morality tale that extends far beyond Otis Chandler to highlight the greed that brought down one of America's richest family dynasties and one of its most prominent newspapers.

The reviewer of the Boston Globe said point "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."

Skutočný príbeh o najbeštiálnejšomvražednom vyčíňaní v tomto storočí (R. Kraft).