DREAMS OF DILLER: EISNER'S SICKBED MUSINGS ON A SUCCESSOR
Sun Sep 19 2004 18:34:54 ET
Before being wheeled into an operating room for quadruple bypass surgery in July 1994, DISNEY chief Michael Eisner wrote in a memo that Barry Diller should be his replacement if he died.
"Maybe I would choose Diller," Eisner wrote. "I don't know. I do know there is nobody else."
Ovitz?
In the memo, obtained by Monday's NEW YORK TIMES, Eisner complained that he had no obvious successor. "Here's the sad truth," Eisner wrote. "I do not have one. I know a lot of plans, a lot of silly ideas, a lot of frustrating plans; but I have no solid recommendations."
Of Ovitz, once one of Hollywood's most powerful agents, Eisner wrote that he was a family man, motivated but "somewhat untested." Eisner said that Diller, his boss at Paramount Pictures in the 1970s, was smarter, more ethical and, although unmarried, would "adapt to family values quicker" than Fred MacMurray, referring to the actor who played the single father in the 1960s television comedy, "My Three Sons."
Eisner declined to comment on the memo's contents. A Disney spokeswoman, Zenia Mucha, said in a statement, "This is a decade-old confidential memo from the CEO in the wake of the serious medical condition outlining his qualifications for a successor."
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