Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman.
He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.
Early life Eisner was born to an affluent, secular Jewish
family in Mount Kisco, New York.
His mother, Margaret, whose family founded the American Safety Razor Company, was the
president of the Irvington Institute, a hospital that treated children with rheumatic fever.
His father, Lester Eisner, Jr., was a lawyer and regional administrator of the United States
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
His great-grandfather, Sigmund Eisner, established a very successful clothing company that was
one of the first uniform suppliers to the Boy Scouts of America and his great-grandmother,
Bertha Weiss, belonged to an immigrant family that established the town of Red Bank, New
Jersey.
His parents were both descendents of German Jewish immigrants and Eisner had 16 relatives
who were killed in the Holocaust.
He was raised on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
He attended the Allen-Stevenson School kindergarten through ninth grade followed by The Lawrenceville
School in 10th through his senior year and graduated from Denison University in 1964
with a B.A. in English.
He is a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity and credits much of his accomplishments to
his time at Keewaydin Canoe Camp for boys in Vermont.
Eisner has one sister, Margot Freedman.
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 CEO 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 & Shirley, Cheers and Family Ties.
Diller left Paramount in 1984, and, as his protégé, 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.
The Walt Disney Company Since Walt Disney's death in 1966, The Walt
Disney Company had narrowly survived takeover attempts.
Its shareholders Sid Bass and Roy E. Disney brought in Eisner and former Warner Brothers
chief Frank Wells to replace Ron W. Miller in 1984 and strengthen the company.
During the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, Disney was revitalized.
Beginning with the films Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, its flagship
animation studio enjoyed a series of commercial and critical successes.
Disney also broadened its adult offerings in film when then Disney Studio Chairman Jeffrey
Katzenberg acquired Miramax Films in 1993.
Disney acquired many other media sources, including ABC and ESPN.
In the early part of the 1990s, Eisner and his partners set out to plan "The Disney Decade"
which was to feature new parks around the world, existing park expansions, new films,
and new media investments.
While some of the proposals were completed, most were not.
Those completed included the Euro Disney Resort, Disney-MGM Studios, Disney's California Adventure
Park, Disney-MGM Studios Paris, and various film projects including a Who Framed Roger
Rabbit franchise.
Wells died in a helicopter crash in 1994.
When Eisner did not appoint Walt Disney Studios chief Jeffrey Katzenberg to Wells' now-available
post, Katzenberg resigned and formed DreamWorks SKG with partners Steven Spielberg and David
Geffen.
Eisner then recruited his friend Michael Ovitz, one of the founders of the Creative Artists
Agency, to be President, with minimal involvement from Disney's board of directors.
Ovitz lasted only 14 months and left Disney in December 1996 via a "no fault termination"
with a severance package of $38 million in cash and 3 million stock options worth roughly
$100 million at the time of Ovitz's departure.
The Ovitz episode engendered a long running derivative suit, which finally concluded in
June 2006, almost 10 years later.
Chancellor William B. Chandler, III of the Delaware Court of Chancery, despite describing
Eisner's behavior as falling "far short of what shareholders expect and demand from those
entrusted with a fiduciary position..." found in favor of Eisner and the rest of the Disney
board because they had not violated the letter of the law.
"Save Disney" campaign and the ousting of Eisner
In 2003, Roy E. Disney, the son of Disney co-founder Roy O. Disney and nephew of Walt
Disney, resigned from his positions as Disney vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney
Feature Animation.
His reasons for resigning were micromanagement flops with the ABC television network, timidity
in the theme park business, the Walt Disney Company turning into a "rapacious, soul-less"
company, refusal to establish a clear succession plan, as well as a string of box-office movie
flops starting in the year 2000.
On March 3, 2004, at Disney's annual shareholders' meeting, a surprising and unprecedented 43%
of Disney's shareholders, predominantly rallied by former board members Roy Disney and Stanley
Gold, withheld their proxies to re-elect Eisner to the board.
Disney's board then gave the chairmanship position to board member George Mitchell.
However, the board did not immediately remove Eisner as chief executive.
On March 13, 2005, Eisner announced that he would step down as CEO one year before his
contract expired.
On September 30, Eisner resigned both as an executive and as a member of the board of
directors, and, severing all formal ties with the company, he waived his contractual rights
to perks such as the use of a corporate jet and an office at the company's Burbank headquarters.
Eisner's replacement was his longtime Chief Operating Officer, Robert Iger.
Post-Disney On October 7, 2005, Eisner was a guest host
for the Charlie Rose talk show.
His guests were John Travolta and his ex-boss, Barry Diller.
Impressed with Eisner's performance, CNBC President Mark Hoffman hired Eisner in early
2006 to host his own talk show, Conversations with Michael Eisner.
The show mostly features CEOs, political leaders, artists and actors.
His guests have included Chuck Norris and Frank Gehry.
Eisner is also an executive producer of the show.
In March 2007, Eisner's investment firm, The Tornante Company, launched a studio, Vuguru,
that produces and distributes videos for the Internet, portable media devices and cell
phones.
In October 2007, Eisner, through his Tornante Company investment firm, partnered with Madison
Dearborn Partners in the acquisition of Topps Company, the bubble-gum and collectibles firm.
He produced a mockumentary style show about his takeover of the Topps Company, called
"Back on Topps."
The College of Education at California State University Northridge is named in his honor.
In 2009, Eisner used his own money to produce a claymation show called Glenn Martin, DDS.
He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2012.
Personal life After college in 1964, he met his future wife,
Jane Breckenridge, a Unitarian of Swedish and Scottish descent.
They have three sons: Breck, Eric and Anders Eisner.
Books Work In Progress
Camp Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed
Awards and recognition 2001 Honor Award from the National Building
Museum 2004 UJA-Federation of New York's Steven J.
Ross Humanitarian of the Year Award Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
in 2008.
Inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame on March 1, 2012.
References
Further reading The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management
Team Revived an Entertainment Empire by Ron Grover, ISBN 1-55623-385-X
DisneyWar by James B. Stewart, Simon & Schuster, 2005, ISBN 0-684-80993-1
Work in Progress by Michael Eisner with Tony Schwartz, ISBN 978-0-375-50071-8
External links Official site MichaelEisner.com
Michael Eisner at the Internet Movie Database CNBC show official site with videos and transcripts
Conversations with Michael Eisner Eisner Foundation
Archive of American Television interview Michael Eisner's Interview on Plum