Paramount’s Dawn Steel Named as New President of Columbia Pictures

Dawn Steel, one of Hollywood’s most visible and successful women executives, has been picked as president of the Columbia Pictures unit under Coca-Cola’s previously announced merger of the Tri-Star and Columbia studios. However, the new job will not carry the chairman’s title held by her predecessor, David Puttnam, who resigned last month.

In addition to production, Steel will head marketing and distribution at Columbia, reporting to Victor A. Kaufman, the designated president and chief executive of Columbia Pictures Entertainment. That is the new umbrella company that will be the parent of the Tri-Star and Columbia studios.

Since April, 1985, Steel has been president of production at Paramount. However, she was considering resigning earlier this year and becoming an independent movie producer.

A one-time writer of sports digest books and a Penthouse magazine editor, she has had major involvement with a string of successful motion pictures at Paramount. They included “Flashdance,” “Top Gun” and the current box-office leader, “Fatal Attraction.”

Roger Faxon will become senior executive vice president of Columbia Pictures. He will oversee marketing, distribution, business affairs and administration, reporting to Steel. He now is executive vice president of business affairs at Tri-Star.

Kaufman, who presently is chairman and chief executive of Tri-Star, said the position of Columbia Pictures chairman held by Puttnam will be “eliminated.” Puttnam also held the title of chief executive, which also apparently was eliminated.

In another change, Kaufman also noted that David Picker is leaving his current posts as president and chief operating officer of Columbia Pictures.

Kaufman said Picker had previously requested to return to independent production after a new production chief was selected for the studio.

When it was reported last July that the 41-year-old Steel was thinking of leaving her executive post, sources said that it was partly because of friction with Ned Tanen, president of Paramount’s motion picture group.

However, in a telephone interview Tuesday from New York, where she had gone to confer with top Tri-Star executives, Steel said that what made her consider stepping down was the birth of her baby, Rebecca, last March 17.

Steel said that her most important professional relationship at Paramount was with Frank Mancuso, its chairman and chief executive, which “is still a primary one in my life.” She did not discuss Tanen.

Despite her inclination to give up the fast track of production chief there, she said that Kaufman and Coca-Cola made her such a “special and unique” offer that she could not turn it down. “I am really thrilled with the job,” she added, and hopes to begin as soon as she can get a release from her Paramount contract, which runs until next March.

Steel is married to--and a fan of--film producer Charles Roven, whose movies have included “Heart Like a Wheel.”

She said she began her career in 1969 as a receptionist at a small New York publishing company and turned it into a job writing digest books on various sports. Later, she became an editor at Penthouse.

Her first film job was at Paramount, where she was named director of merchandising and marketing in November, 1978. She became a vice president six months later.

She became vice president of production in April, 1980, and senior vice president of production in November, 1983.

Faxon joined Tri-Star in April, 1986, after being a partner of Mount Co., an independent producer, since February, 1984. He was chief operating officer of Lucas Films from 1980 to 1984.