March 7 - Michael Eisner

Image courtesy hollywoodreporter.com

On this day, in 1942, Michael Dammann Eisner was born Mount Kisco, New York. Michael came from money. His mother was an heir to the American Safety Razor Company. His great-grandpa Eisner owned a successful clothing company. Becoming a businessman was his destiny. But first, of course, he had to suffer through living on Park Avenue in Manhattan and attending private boys' schools (which can actually be a living form of hell at times). Michael graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio in 1964 with a degree in English. Wait, what? In English? That's right. Michael is more of a liberal arts creative type than a traditional business man (which makes some of what's to come even more painful, but I get ahead of myself).

Image courtesy hollywoodreporter.com

Michael began his career in television programming. He spent a little time at NBC, did a brief stint at CBS and then, just to round out his resume, became Assistant to the National Programming Director at ABC, where he settled in for a while. By 1976, he'd risen to the rank of Senior Vice President in charge of Programming and Development. At this point, Barry Diller, who'd first hired Michael into ABC before leaving for Paramount Pictures, lured Michael away from the television network. His new title was now President and CEO. Paramount flourished under Michael. You may have heard of some of the things they produced during the Eisner years: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ordinary People, Star Trek films, Grease and Beverly Hills Cop. Paramount was no stranger to the small screen either, bringing us Happy Days, Lavern and Shirley, Cheers and Family Ties. As marvelous a time as it was at Paramount in the late Seventies and early Eighties, across town, another studio was having a much different experience.

image courtesy jimhillmedia.com

Since the deaths of its founding pair of brothers, the Walt Disney Studio had not been doing well. By 1984, the company was on the verge of being taken over, split into pieces and sold to the highest bidder. If that had happened, Disney would have ceased to exist. Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, had cobbled together a coalition of investors to stave that scenario off and brought in Michael from Paramount (who was actually looking for a new job, having just been passed over for promotion) and Frank Wells from Warner Brothers to be CEO and President, respectively. The move literally saved the company from extinction.

Image courtesy muppet.wiki.com

The coming of Michael and Frank was like the second coming of Walt and Roy. Michael took control of the creative side of Disney while Frank concentrated more on the financial side. Michael even became the public face of Disney by hosting a new version of the long running anthology series, The Wonderful World of Disney, just like the founder did. He hired Jeffrey Katzenberg as head of the film division which helped jump start the Disney Renaissance. He created Touchstone Pictures to broaden the types of movies the company produced. And, as profits began to rise, he began buying up other entities, including ESPN and his old employer, ABC. Moving into the Nineties, everything looked so rosy for Disney under Michael that he formulated a ten year vision he called the Disney Decade, with ambitious plans in every sector. That is, naturally, when things began to unravel.

In 1994, Frank was killed in a helicopter crash. Around that time, Michael suffered a massive heart attack. Katzenberg lobbied for Frank's position, but Roy Disney threatened a shareholder fight if he got it, so Katzenberg left to start his own studio, Dreamworks, poaching as much talent as he could on the way out. Michael brought in Mike Ovitz as President, but Mike only lasted 14 months before getting a massive payout to leave, sparking lawsuits that dragged on for a decade. And to top it all off, EuroDisneyland, which had opened in 1992, was hemorrhaging money and threatening to drag the whole company into the pit of despair.

In the midst of all this turmoil, Michael began making serious missteps. He added the role of President to his duties for a time, which meant that he was in charge of creativity and finances, never a good plan. He failed (and some would say refused is actually the word we're looking for) to create a succession plan. Without great people in charge of individual business units, he began trying to micromanage everything himself, slowly squeezing every ounce of creativity out of the company. Television efforts on ABC began to fail. The film division put out a string of flops. In animation, not only was the renaissance over, but Home on the Range failed to turn a profit. Disney's California Adventure opened to terrible reviews and would take years to become something worth seeing. And eventually, Roy, the man who'd hired Michael in the first place, had had enough.

A very public, very ugly battle between Michael and Roy (who was utilizing a website for his side called savedisney.com) began in 2004. Roy managed to get a whopping 43% of shareholders to vote against keeping Michael on the board of directors. The fight would continue for another year until a beleaguered Michael reluctantly agreed to resign a full year before his contract expired. Although he says that having Bob Iger, the company's current leader, in place convinced him to tender that resignation, there's evidence that the board made Bob his replacement whether he liked it or not. On September 2005, Michael severed all formal ties with the Walt Disney Company after more than two decades of both magnificent high points and devastating low points.

Since leaving Disney, Michael has done all right for himself (helped in no small part by the stock he took with him). From 2006-2009, he hosted his own talk show on CNBC, Conversations with Michael Eisner. He's created an investment firm, The Tornante Company (it's the Italian word for hair-pin turn), that owns an English soccer team, half interest in the Topps Company (the baseball card folks) and produces a hit show on Netflix, Bojack Horseman, among other ventures. In 2010, he published a book, Working Together, describing the great partnerships he (and others) has had over his lifetime and why partnerships succeed (too bad he couldn't remember that advice in the late Nineties). And it's not like his relationship with Disney has remained completely sour. In 2006, the Team Disney building in Burbank was renamed the Michael D. Eisner Building.