Charles Bluhdorn

"It all began when Leonard Goldenson placed an urgent call to speak with Len Goldberg. Len wasn’t in the office, and Goldenson needed someone from the program department in *his* office immediately, and there I was. Goldenson said, “Please come up right away. I have Charles Bluhdorn in my office.”"

"There was a long pause, and he said, “Stay where you are. I’m coming over right now to straighten this out.” Charles Bluhdorn coming to my office. Couldn’t be. But, half an hour later, he strode into my office, almost violently threw off his jacket, sat down, and began to tell me in ever-increasing volume how he had bought “that stinker company Paramount” with borrowed money and that it was secured by the contemplated sale of these films to television. So he had no room to change the deal by a nickel; or, he said with a devil’s smile, not a nickel more than 10 percent."

"Charles Bluhdorn (pronounced *blue-dorn*) was one of the great industrialists of the twentieth century. In his late and most exuberant thirties, Bluhdorn had just bought Paramount Pictures, and he was in Goldenson’s office more than ready to deal. Actually, he was desperate: Paramount had been declining for years, making one expensive dog of a movie after another, which opened the door for the always rapacious Bluhdorn to take it over."

"“This is a sympathetic film about a communist, and while you may think it’s amusing for a capitalist company to do this, I work for a protocapitalist, Charles Bluhdorn. I don’t talk to Charlie about decisions to make a movie or not make a movie, but for this one I have to. I can’t put Gulf + Western in a position of being taken by surprise by the controversy this film will cause.” We were still very much in the Cold War with the Soviet Union (it would be ten more years before it would collapse). When the idea was put to Bluhdorn, he surprised us by saying that of course Gulf + Western would support the movie. He said the greatest thing about America is its tolerance, even encouragement, of open discussion on any subject."

"Meanwhile, the news had indeed upended the town. Not since the 1930s had anyone skipped so seamlessly from heading one studio to heading another, and no one had ever been given $3 million in salary (that figure also leaked out). The entire creative core of Paramount was now at risk of leaving, and while the studio had a decent backlog of movies, there was real concern that this mighty hitmaking machine would cease to function. It had been taken for granted that Paramount was the most stable and best-run studio; no one outside a very few knew how unstable the relationship had been between me and the head of Gulf + Western after Charles Bluhdorn died."

"Now, I’ve played that moment in my head many times over the years. It wasn’t a flush of hidden courage that came over me; I was still someone who would change almost any of my opinions to please a powerful person. But fairness and honesty were the only solid principles my generally absent father gave me. This raging energy ball named Charles Bluhdorn had somehow bamboozled my venerable old chairman into accepting this ludicrous deal. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right and I was loudly and righteously angry that he might get away with it. I stood my ground. He got up, screaming, and strode toward the door. “I’m going up to Goldenson’s office, and we’ll *see* if he’s actually going to renege on the deal!” Calmly, I said, “I don’t think you want to confront Mr. Goldenson, since you’ve taken such advantage of him. Maybe instead of yelling at me, you and I should just sit down and see if we can find some other way to solve this.”"