Sumner Redstone
Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein; May 27, 1923 – August 11, 2020) was an American businessman and media magnate. He was the majority owner and chairman of the board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, Redstone, up until his death, and his family are majority voting shareholders of mass media conglomerate ViacomCBS (itself the parent company of the CBS television network and various cable networks). According to Forbes, as of September 2015, he was worth US$5 billion.
Redstone was formerly the executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom In February 2016, at age 92, Redstone resigned both chairmanships following a court-ordered examination by a geriatric psychiatrist. He was ultimately succeeded by Les Moonves at CBS and Philippe Dauman at Viacom
Redstone was born to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts, to Belle (née Ostrovsky) and Michael Rothstein. In 1940, his father changed the family surname from "Rothstein" to "Redstone" ("Red stone" is the literal translation of the Yiddish name, "Rothstein"). Michael Rothstein owned Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts (the forerunner of National Amusements) and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub
Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, from which he graduated first in his class. In 1944, he graduated from Harvard College where he completed the studies for his baccalaureate in three years. Later, Redstone served as a 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II with a team at the Signals Intelligence Service :p. 208 that decoded Japanese messages. After his military service, he worked in Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown University Law Center. He transferred to Harvard Law School and received his law degree in 1947.
After completing law school, Redstone served as special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark (who later served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967) and then worked for the United States Department of Justice Tax Division in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, and thereafter entered private practice. In 1954, he joined his father's theater chain, National Amusements and in 1967, he became CEO of the company. As the company grew, Redstone came to believe that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms: channels of distribution (in varied forms) would always exist, but content would always be essential (Redstone coined the phrase, "Content is king!" ). He invested in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (Redstone's Viacom would buy Paramount in the 1990s), all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell their stock in the early 1980s.
On March 29, 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after thirty hours of extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Though he was warned that he might never be able to live a normal life again, eight years later he was fit enough to insist on playing tennis nearly every day and to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom. Redstone discussed the story of surviving the fire as a reflection of his strong determination and will to live
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