Sumner Redstone earned renown as both dealmaker and deal breaker (he once said hed fired Tom Cruise).
His daughter, Shari, seems to have inherited only part of his skill set.
Flash back 50 years: The Beverly Hills dinner party was lavish.
Paramount studio lotAaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
The mood among the Hollywood power players was upbeat.
Gossip about a stream of impending hits from theParamountstudio prompted praise and optimism.
Paramounts management team will implode within weeks, said the acerbic Diller.
Itll be the classic Hollywood case of turning success into failure.
As a film studio, Paramount again levitates in limbo land.
And Hollywood wonders whether any creative entity can survive its many episodes of turmoil.
Both men had had to overcome the skepticism of billionaire fathers.
Ellison, chief of Skydance Media, could trace his legacy to technology Larry Ellison runs Oracle.
The Bronfman dynasty understood how to distill alcohol, but not entertainment.
They were content owning Seagram until heirs began dabbling in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the Paramount studio could now also aspire to a paint job as it endures its bidding wars.
RedBird, having backed Ellison, now watches from the sidelines.
His National Amusements builtParamount Global, which also owned CBS among other entities.
Some were hits, some flops, but all were ambitious in terms of talent and budget.
The success was historic and evanescent.
Fifty years later, the studio awaits its next champion.
Diller isnt making any predictions other than to warn that time is running short.
