STEEL PROMOTED AT PARAMOUNT

Dawn Steel was waiting for her white Jaguar after a fund-raiser at MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman’s home Thursday when a man approached her and handed her his valet parking ticket. “That’s not what I do for a living,” she politely told him. “Hi, I’m Bob Daly,” the embarrassed chairman of Warner Bros. Inc. responded. Twenty-four hours later, the 38-year-old Steel would be chosen Paramount Pictures’ new president of production.

Steel, already regarded as Hollywood’s most powerful woman executive, is only the third woman to head the production division of a major studio. As a production executive at Paramount she supervised “Footloose” and was widely credited for developing “Flashdance.” After former Paramount President Michael Eisner and production head Jeffrey Katzenberg left for Walt Disney Productions, Steel was promoted to senior vice president, with insiders expecting her to land the president’s office.

“She’s been doing the job for the past three months so it’s not that much of a surprise,” said one Paramount producer after the announcement was made Monday.

Still, Steel sounded genuinely thrilled, if a bit anxious. “This is both exciting and scary at the same time,” Steel said Monday, on her way to the Hagler-Hearns fight in Las Vegas. “If I wasn’t frightened by the responsibility, then I’d be numb.”

Known as a tough and sometimes abrasive executive, Steel is said to have excellent relationships with Hollywood’s creative community. “She is an extremely qualified executive who is hard-nosed and that’s very important,” said Ned Tanen, Paramount Motion Picture Group president. “Let me put it this way, I don’t think she’s a sentimental executive.”

Producer Dan Melnick (“Footloose”) agreed. “She is a superb executive,” he said. “She is no more abrasive or difficult than any other overextended executive in this business. That’s sexist baloney.”

A New York City native, Steel began her career as a sportswriter but claims she retired when she was thrown out of the press box at Yankee Stadium for being a woman. In 1976 she entered the merchandising business when she created and marketed toilet paper mimicking the Gucci label (the green and red signature stripes were reversed). Later, Steel obtained the rights to market Irving Wallace’s “The Book of Lists” as toilet paper. Her success in marketing both toilet-paper lines suggested to Craig Baumgarten, then a Paramount executive, that Steel might have the right instincts for the movie business. “He said, ‘If you can merchandise toilet paper you can merchandise the movie business,’ ” Steel said.

Steel was brought in as a director of merchandising in November, 1978, and six months later was promoted to vice president of the department.

Her star soared when she impressed Paramount executives with a “Star Trek: The Movie” ad campaign tying in Coca-Cola and McDonald’s with the film (TV spots featured “Star Trek” Klingon characters eating Big Macs and drinking Cokes). In April, 1980, she made the transition to vice president, production; in November, 1983, she was promoted to senior vice president of production.

Former Paramount production chief Don Simpson, one of those who approved her move to production, described her as a “tenacious and strong” executive. He also called her “one of the better-dressed women in the business.” Simpson said Steel regularly came to him on pay day and asked for a raise “against her future success” so that she could get a new dress.

Though she freely admits that being a woman has been “more of an asset than a liability” in her career, Steel hopes that gender will no longer be an issue. “I’m a human being and I’d like to be treated as a human being,” she said.

As head of production, Steel will now oversee all of Paramount’s movies, including her current project, Steven Spielberg’s “Young Sherlock Holmes.” Steel said she hopes to continue Paramount’s philosophy of keeping costs in line, but that in movie making the idea is the thing. “If you have a great idea and screw it up you still have a shot,” she said. “If you start with a lousy idea you are in trouble. If you have a mediocre idea and do it great you get ‘Tender Mercies,’ ” she said.

Born Dawn Spielberg (her father, a semiprofessional weightlifter changed it to Steel as in man of . . . ) Steel (no relation to the director) had already received a bevy of calls from well-wishers and new best friends Monday morning. Her favorite call came from her mother who, when told of the new title, asked, “what took you so long?”