Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,505

This is the grave of Sumner Redstone.

Born in Boston in 1923, Redstone grew up in a Jewish family in that city. His actual name was Sumner Rothstein. He would later change it to hide his Jewish identity in the 40s. He claimed his father told him to do it, the rest of the family said he lied about that and did it himself. The family was already getting pretty wealthy when he was a kid. His father owned a theater corporation based out of Dedham, which was the forerunner of National Amusements, the movie theater company that still exists and is still in the family today. There were other theater investments as well, nightclubs, things like that. So Sumner grew up with money and he took over the family businesses eventually.

Redstone went to Boston Latin and then to Harvard. He learned Japanese in college, which made him useful to the military when the war on Japan began. In 1943, Redstone followed his professor who was tasked with establishing a training program for the Signal Intelligence Service in Arlington, Virginia. Redstone enlisted in the Army as a second lieutenant and was promoted to first lieutenant before the end of the war. He worked with the SIS and Harvard just gave him his degree. After the war and military service ended, Redstone as off to Georgetown Law but then he finished at Harvard Law, getting his degree in 1947.

At first, it looked like Redstone would go into the law. He was a fast riser. He immediately got a job clerking on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He also taught labor law at the University of San Francisco Law School. I guess that must have been his specialty in law school since he had no practical experience in the matter, not that this stops many law professors from pontificating. In 1948, he then took a job with the DOJ’s Tax Division, working in the appellate division. He did that for a couple years, went into private practice in 1950, then joined a major law firm in 1951. He represented said firm before the Supreme Court in Holland v. U.S., representing clients accused of tax evasion after not making adjustments to their taxes after their income skyrocketed. He lost the case, but his principle that the government had the burden of proof in proving tax evasion was later adopted by the IRS as general policy.

So Redstone was a young lawyer on the fast track. And yet, he gave it all up to the work for the family theater business. Northeast Theatre Corporation had grown a lot in recent years and his father still ran it. Basically, Redstone decided to take his family’s regional empire and turn it into a national one based upon his legal knowledge and many connections in both government and private industry. He reorganized the business as National Amusements in 1959 and became its CEO in 1967. In the first ten years of joining the company, it expanded from 93 screens to 250, and this before the multiplex that makes these numbers look paltry.

By the late 70s, Redstone began to take his theater empire and invest in media companies directly. This started with him buying a 5 percent stake in Fox after the success of Star Wars. He realized its potential to make endless money and he made more than his share when he got that right. He started buying stakes in many other studios as well. Then he went after Viacom, which had begun as a spin-off from CBS over syndication of television shows back in 1971, but by this time also owned MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as Showtime. Redstone went full corporate raider here, engaging in the 80s beloved tactic of the hostile takeover, which he succeeded in winning in 1987. He nearly didn’t make it this far. In 1979, he was severely burned in a hotel fire in Boston and had over 30 hours of surgery. Mostly recovered though.

After taking over Viacom, Redstone, who had a shark like appetite and about as much interest in the families of workers he hurt through his feasting as an actual shark, went after Paramount. That company was more openly up for sale and Redstone had a bidding war with a couple of other evil capitalists, Barry Diller (puke) and John Malone, finally winning it with a $10.1 billion bid. Is that all? He threw $10 billion of debt on Viacom to make this happen, which was the classic move of the late 20th century vulture capitalist. Though vultures at least provide a useful thing to the world, whereas capitalists don’t. In any case, Redstone helped manage this by throwing off assets under Viacom’s control, such as Madison Square Garden and Simon & Schuster. It also helped that Paramount went on a big run of success with releases such as Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, and Forest Gump. There were more purchases, of Blockbuster for instance, which also at that time included Aaron Spelling’s production company and a huge category of films owned by that company. At some point though, I do find detailing the various purchases of capitalists rather tiresome and repetitive.

In 1999, with the Clinton administration serving business as much as any lapdog Republican they could want, the FCC changed its regulations to allow the same company to own multiple television stations in the same market. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if this is the rule that allowed Sinclair to spew its right-wing crap across multiple stations in every market, but if so, I am going to blame Clinton for that too. In any case, what this did was allow Viacom and CBS to join up through a merger, with Viacom buying the network for $37 billion. They split though in 2005. Redstone remained CEO of both companies.

Redstone ended up being the old rich guy who just wouldn’t leave the job. His cognitive abilities declined in old age, as they do, and he just wouldn’t step away for someone else. Good thing that never happens in American politics, let’s say, these days. He was finally forced out by the companies in 2016, when he was 92, after a geriatric psychiatrist declared him unfit to work. He managed to hold on for another four years though, dying in 2020 at the age of 97.

Redstone was worth $2.6 billion at the time of his death. Redstone’s descendants still maintain the majority of ViacomCBS, which is now Paramount Global on the way to OmniCorp next year or soon. Also, the succession battle over all of this reminds one of the actual show Succession. Redstone had a huge ego and constantly fucked people over, including his own children, who he offered the company to and then took it away, depending on his whims. There were also the young girlfriends who had to get big settlements and all that good stuff.

Sumner Redstone is buried in Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit others of the scumbag capitalist class of the late twentieth century, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Donald Trump is…..still alive. That seems unfortunate. Lee Iacocca is in Troy, Michigan and Fred Joseph is in Andover, Massachusetts. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.