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Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) was CEO of The Walt Disney Company from September 22, 1984 to September 30, 2005.

Early life

Michael Eisner was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Mt. Kisco, New York and raised on Park Avenue in Manhattan. He attended the Lawrenceville School and graduated from Denison University in 1964 with a B.A. in English. He is a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. His grandfather was one of the first uniform suppliers to the Boy Scouts of America.

ABC and Paramount

After two brief stints at NBC and CBS, Barry Diller at ABC hired Eisner as Assistant to the National Programming Director. Eisner moved up the ranks, eventually becoming a senior vice president in charge of programming and development. In 1976, Diller, who had by then moved on to become chairman of Paramount Pictures, recruited Eisner from ABC and made him president and COO of the movie studio. During his tenure at Paramount, the studio turned out such hit films as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, the Star Trek film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Beverly Hills Cop, and hit TV shows such as Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Cheers and Family Ties.

Diller left Paramount in 1984, and, as his protege, Eisner expected to assume Diller's position as studio chief. When he was passed over for the job, though, he left to look for work elsewhere and lobbied for the position of CEO of The Walt Disney Company.

Michael Eisner is just a bastard. End of story.

Post-Disney

On October 7 2005, Eisner hosted The Charlie Rose Show. His guests were John Travolta and his ex-boss-turned-rival, Barry Diller. Months later, on January 10, 2006, CNBC announced that Eisner would be given his own hour-long, prime-time interview show, Conversations with Michael Eisner.

Eisner has recently invested in an Internet video distribution network named Veoh Networks ().

In March 2007 it was reported that Eisner's investment firm launched a studio, Vuguru, that will produce and distribute videos for the Internet, portable media devices and cell phones. "The entire concept here is content is king," Eisner said in a phone interview. "What will drive traffic is interest in the subject matter." The first series produced by Vuguru is Prom Queen.

Books

Work In Progress (1998)- ISBN 0-375-50071-5

Camp (2005)

Portrayals in film and television

Eisner has been parodied in television shows:

• Eisner is shown as a recurring character in the adult cartoon series, Family Guy. He is voiced by Gary Cole.

Personal life

His sons are Breck, Eric, and Anders Eisner.

In 1994, he underwent a Quadruple Bypass surgery.

Quotes

• "I always went into an area that was in last place, with a philosophy, 'You can't fall off the floor.' And I was lucky, was at the right time and the right place, with the right ideas, and each one of these areas became number one."
• "You can't succeed unless you've got failure, especially creatively."
• "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only obligation."

Further Reading

• Disney War by James B. Stewart ISBN: 0684809931

External links

• Official site MichaelEisner.com
• Michael Eisner at IMDb
• CNBC show official site with videos and transcripts Conversations with Michael Eisner
• Eisner Foundation

• 1942 births
• Living people
• American chief executives
• American businesspeople
• Disney executives
• Movie moguls
• People from New York City
• People from Westchester County, New York
• Denison University alumni