Sumner Redstone, media mogul who built up Viacom and was ‘a force of nature’ – obituary

Sumner Redstone, who has died aged 97, was an indefatigable US media tycoon who coined the phrase “Content is king” and – until his capacities faded – maintained iron control of a business empire that encompassed CBS, Viacom and Paramount studios.

Redstone’s first venture, inherited from his father, was a chain of New England drive-in cinemas called National Amusements. As he expanded the business in the 1950s and 1960s, he formed his core philosophy that the content – in this case the quality of the movies the chain was able to show – was far more important for profit than the channel of delivery, namely the location and comfort of the theatres.

His demands that studios should make their best films swiftly available to smaller distributors like himself led to a landmark court case in his favour in 1958.

He became a minority shareholder in several major film studios – including 20th Century Fox, in which was said to have bought 25,000 shares from a payphone across the street from the cinema after seeing its smash-hit Star Wars in 1977.

It was not until 1987, however, when he was already 63, that he moved into the big time in his own right with a $3.4 billion takeover of Viacom, which syndicated programmes made by the broadcaster CBS and was the market leader in cable television.

It also owned channels such as MTV for music videos and Nickelodeon for children, as well as the publisher Simon & Schuster and a portfolio of other media and sports interests.

In 1994 Redstone went on to win a ferocious $10 billion bidding war for Paramount Pictures – against his fellow mogul and former friend Barry Diller – while at the same time merging Viacom with the Blockbuster video-rental chain in order to borrow against its cash flows, at a time when Wall Street viewed Viacom’s finances as high-risk.

But peripheral assets were sold off and profits flowed as Paramount went on to a run of successes that included Saving Private Ryan and Titanic. Finally in 1999, and by now 76, Redstone made his boldest leap by acquiring CBS itself for $37 billion, making Viacom larger than Disney and second only to Time-Warner in the US media league.

Observers seeking a key to Redstone’s business drive pointed to a formative event on 29 March 1979, when he escaped death in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston by clinging to a third-floor window ledge. The experience left him, according to his biographer Keach Hagey, “with a gnarled claw for a hand, burns over 45 per cent of his body, and a steely resolve never to be beaten at anything” which made him “the most feared negotiator in all of the media”.

Described by a colleague as “a force of nature and fierce competitor” as well as a brilliant visionary and dealmaker, he ruled like an emperor, despatching at will executives who threatened his power and anyone else who displeased him – including, in 2006, the actor Tom Cruise, whose relationship with Paramount was severed on grounds of unacceptable behaviour after Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s chat show couch and advocated Scientology.

And one subject on which Redstone would brook no discussion whatever was that matter of whether he might ever hand over the reins – and to whom. “Viacom is me. I am Viacom,” he liked to declare. “That marriage is eternal.”

Any reference by interviewers to his own advancing age was batted angrily away. “I will not discuss succession,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “You know why? I’m not going to die.”

Sumner Murray Rothstein was born in a tenement district of Boston on May 27 1923, to Michael Rothstein and his wife Belle, née Ostrovsky. “Mickey” Rothstein was a liquor wholesaler with underworld connections who made enough money to become owner of drive-in cinemas in the 1930s.

The family name was anglicised to Redstone to avoid the anti-Semitism that prevailed in Boston business circles and, so it was said, any associations with the New York racketeer Arnold Rothstein.

Sumner was top of his class at Boston Latin School and went on to study at Harvard before being called for military service in signals intelligence, decoding Japanese communications. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1947, he worked as an assistant to the US Attorney General Tom C Clark and established himself in private practice until 1954, when he joined National Amusements, becoming chief executive in 1967.

Redstone attributed his vigour in old age to a high-protein diet (“I’m a nutritional expert, by the way”) as well as willpower; he played tennis with the racket strapped to his damaged hand, liked to swim naked in his Los Angeles pool, and claimed a lively libido: “I feel better than I did when I was 20 – in every facet.”

He continued to control 80 per cent of the voting power in his group holding company (his daughter Shari held the other 20 per cent) and remained chairman of Viacom and CBS until 2016.

But decline was inevitable and he finally stepped aside after a legal challenge over his mental capacity. While his entourage kept a veil over his true state of health, it was widely reported that he had difficulty speaking after an episode of inhaling food into his lungs in 2014 and had resorted to answering questions by means of an iPad voice recording that said: “Yes”, “No” or “F--k you”.

His autobiography A Passion To Win, co-written with Peter Knobler, was published in 2001. Though he claimed wealth was not important to him and that he still bought off-the-peg suits, his fortune was recently estimated at $4.3 billion.

His philanthropic gifts included more than $100 million for cancer and burn recovery research, and endowments for the law schools of Boston University and Harvard.

The New York-based author Michael Wolff, in Autumn of the Moguls, summed up Redstone as “a vainglorious old-school egomaniac with a striking head of orange hair … who has an operatic personal life that has been largely kept out of the media – undoubtedly because he controls so much of it.”

He married first, in 1947, Phyllis Raphael, with whom he has a son Brent and daughter Shari. After a $100 million divorce settlement in 1999 he married secondly, in 2002, Paula Fortunato, from whom he was divorced in 2009.

His relationship with Brent terminated in a lawsuit in 2007. Shari was his favoured successor until a falling out in the mid-2000s which left them communicating only by fax, though they were later reconciled; several other family members found themselves in court from time to time as Redstone maintained obsessive control of his empire.

Finally, two live-in companions of his later years, Sydney Holland (who said: “I’ve never noticed his age … he’s got the most beautiful skin”) and Manuela Herzer – both more than 40 years his junior – were banished from his home after an undignified legal battle.

Redstone sued both for the return of $150 million of gifts, while Herzer, who had also been barred from taking medical decisions on his behalf, claimed he was completely non compos mentis – though still capable of demanding sex and steak every day.

Sumner Redstone, born May 27 1923, died August 11 2020