Lew Wasserman
Personality

One of the few things Wasserman was known for among people who came in contact with him was his fury - it was his trademark just as much as the glasses were.

When an employee did something wrong, went behind the boss' back etc., Lew knew no mercy. Just like Alex Ferguson (the 'hair dryer treatment'), he could scream so loud that the building was almost shaking and so long that one could go half-deaf after the meeting as if the granade had just exploded right next to the victim.

How calculated was that behavior? It's hard to say. On one hand, he was a control freak who had to always have things going his way, so when they weren't, it was a good reason to get furious. On the other hand, he coldly calculated every action and such behavior was in tone with how the company was ran in general, so it could be a strategy just as well.

Wasserman was waking up at 5 o'clock every day. In his work days (which meant most of them), after eating breakfast and preparing for work, he was traveling to the MCA headquarters to be there at 9 o'clock.

Before one o'clock, he was coming down to canteen to eat. Lew wasn't socializing there a lot, but still preferred to eat there. In the menu for him was almost always either tuna, or fruit salad.

Precisely at fifteen past one, he was expecting a phone to be brought to his table so he can receive the call with the update of current stock prices he followed.

Past six, he was eating with his wife, but also doing some duties half work-related, like watching movies and TV series. Partly for pleasure, partly to keep tabs on the market.

Routine was very important to him. As capable of adjusting to the unforseen circumstances as he was, Lew still preferred to work on them in an orderly fashion.

People with huge memory capacity often have enormous thirst for knowledge, just as bodybuilders often can't wait until the next time they're going to train, as if their muscles would demand it.

Wasserman was just like that. MCA hired many people and most of them had busy schedules, and yet Lew knew everything that could be known almost about each one of them.

How did they perform when they first started? How does their recent porformance compare? Are they earning too much, or too little? What do their clients really think about them? Are their talents properly utilized? He knew answers to all these questions and whenever he was able to find a moment to spare, he choked his brain with the company data.

It wasn't some costly obsession, though. Remembering was pleasant to him and came naturally. On top of that, he was armed with a photographic memory, so memorizing huge amounts of data was even easier.

Wasserman's one little trick was to remember minor personal details about each employee and letting him know that he does. It probably was an effort done partly to raise morale, partly to brag about his superhuman brain capacity.

Wasserman once said: numbers are what make the world go round and that is an expression of his private obsession more than anything else.

It is probably an extension of the previous point, as most of what Wasserman was remembering were numbers. Here, he went so far out what was really necessary that he could remember how much someone earned in a specific month in a specific year, or how much money a marginal Universal movie made in a particular theater.

Just as genius mathematicians can obsess over numbers and twist their reality to adjust to the numerical scale, so was Lew fixed on them, but he was too pragmatic to get himself carried away and mostly used this attraction to his benefit. In a world fixated on making money, it can definitely be helpful.

Part of why Lew was so successful was because of how well he negotiated terms.

First, he knew how to make pople feel special without it coming off as a cheap plastic attempt to win someone. Happy and comfortable, they forgot who they were dealing with and it was harder for them to notice when they were being stomped on with an unfavorable contract.

The man was very confident and mostly stood his ground. Coming to the negotiating table, he always knew how much the deal was worth, how much is he willing to go for and what his response will be in every possible scenario.

Most of the time within the boundaries of good manners, he could still politely crash his enemies to get the deal he wanted. At times, he would ostentatiously call the deal off and walk out of the room to bend the deal his way. If the talking partners changed their minds, he won. If not, he didn't care - or at least he made it look that way.

Finally, Wasserman used blackmail too. When presented with proposition he didn't like, he sometimes said that it can be that way, but then [insert something scary that was supposed to made those poor people change their minds].

For the few people close to him, the problem was that he used those same tactics in personal life. In a way, everything was a bargain to be struck. And just as he strived to take control in the business environment, so he privately tried to steer people to go in the direction he wants them to go.

There was no other person as influential in Hollywood history as Lew Wasserman. He could become a brighter star than any actor even in cinema's greatest years could. Surprisingly, he didn't want any of it.

One good reason to keep things that way was that he and Jules Stein ran MCA secretly - they both saw power in hard to measure and unpredictable, while measuring and predicting everyone around them. This was their style and it worked so well!

But if MCA's modus operandi would be different, Lew would still probably approach things the same way, because that's just the person he was. In a world of people bragging and exagerrating things to make it look like they are more successful in life than they are, such attitude is a nice change. On the other hand, it is a common theme of people in great power to have other faces shine for them while they run the puppet show from behind the curtain.

That attitude of his didn't come from some kind of life philosophy, an ascetic or minimalistic life view. He just didn't care, it did nothing for him. That's why despite him being such an enormously powerful man, when you ask a random person who he is, you will most likely hear: "who?" in return.