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Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) ran 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 was 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, plucked 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.

Disney

HE FUCKED UP DISNEY BY EXPLOITING WORKERS

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. Initially, this show received a zero rating (see ).

Although Eisner is the second largest stockholder in the Walt Disney Company, new CEO Robert Iger appears eager to reduce Eisner's remaining influence at the company. At the One Man's Dream attraction at the Disney-MGM Studios park, Eisner, who previously hosted the attraction's post show biography of Walt Disney, has been replaced as host by unofficial company mascot Julie Andrews. Also, all corporate portraits of Eisner at official Walt Disney Co. offices around the world have been removed, echoing Eisner's step of removing all portraits of Roy E. Disney after the "Save Disney" campaign. Eisner was the largest shareholder in Disney () until the terms of the Pixar acquisition resulted in Steve Jobs becoming the largest stockholder.

This course of events was contradicted on January 23 2006 when the board of the Walt Disney Company, on the verge of voting to buy Pixar Animation Studios, unanimously voted to re-name the Team Disney building at company headquarters The Michael D. Eisner Building.

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

Books

Work In Progress (1998)- ISBN 0375500715

Camp (2005)

Portrayals in film and television

Eisner has been parodied in several films and television shows:

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

Personal life

His sons are Breck, Eric, and Anders Eisner.

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."

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
• Jewish-American businesspeople
• Disney executives
• Movie moguls
• People from New York City
• People from Westchester County, New York
• Denison University alumni