Commentary : Who Holds Trump Card in MCA Bid?

“I have never heard of Donald Trump having anything to do with any aspect of the entertainment business,” said Hollywood lawyer Bertram Fields, quite definitely.

Fields, who represents the likes of Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, knows just about everybody who’s anybody in show business. So it’s reasonably safe to assume that the empire-building developer, despite his exploits in New York and Atlantic City, doesn’t count for much in these parts . . . yet.

That could change soon enough, of course.

On Friday, Trump notified MCA Inc., parent to Universal Pictures, that he might buy up to 24.9% of the entertainment giant. Trump’s reasons are best known to himself. He didn’t return calls from this paper last week.

But it’s hard not to suspect the workings of ego when it comes to buying up a movie studio--perhaps the ultimate status symbol in 20th-Century America.

Moviedom’s allure for the great egos in American business is at least as old as the 1920s. Back then, publisher William Randolph Hearst poured newspaper profits into his money-losing Cosmopolitan Pictures and the less-than-lustrous career of actress Marion Davies. The Hearst empire survived, but just barely.

More recently, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, Hearst’s nearest modern counterpart, bought 20th Century Fox for some $575 million. Murdoch has been struggling with heavy losses in Fox’s expanding TV operations ever since. But he’s also been basking at Spago and elsewhere in the special warmth that Hollywood reserves for studio owners--more than can be said for Atlanta’s Ted Turner, whose rapid-fire breakup of MGM was a little like turning Tara into a rooming house.

Other rich outsiders who came to Hollywood range from Joseph Kennedy and Howard Hughes in the Golden Age to the Allen family and Kirk Kerkorian, who are still involved with Columbia Pictures and MGM/UA, respectively.

At least occasionally, show-business charms may be worth the price.

According to a favorite bit of local lore, for instance, a group of Paramount executives--anticipating a visit from Gulf & Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn, whose New York-based company had bought the studio--actually painted the grass green at their Melrose Avenue lot. The idea was to “keep Charlie happy” by making things look “more like California,” at least as he imagined it.

Every once in a while, too, the money men manage to get the last laugh.

Marvin Davis, the Denver oilman who preceded Murdoch at Fox, made several hundred million dollars during his four-year tenure at the studio. And he seemed to keep a certain perspective on show-business seductions while he did it.

Just as he was selling Fox, Davis quipped to a movie-business roast that his life was getting to be just like “Dynasty,” a show produced by his neighbor, Aaron Spelling. “When we go to bed every night, my wife, Barbara, and I do the same thing as Blake and Krystle Carrington,” said Davis. “We complain about Aaron.”

Apparently, Trump would love to have such headaches.

If ego is what it takes to mount a serious takeover attempt, at any rate, the 41-year-old developer and gaming magnate comes well supplied. In the words of his current best seller, “Trump: The Art of the Deal”: “I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need.”

Unfortunately, though, baubles like a major studio don’t come easy, even for someone reputedly worth about $850 million.

For one thing, MCA’s top officers control much of the company’s stock, and they haven’t shown any inclination to be pushed into a deal, despite repeated queries from big investors and major companies alike.

Nor do they seem unduly worried about pressure from what some Hollywood figures tend to regard as an upstart New Yorker. After receiving the developer’s notice of intent to buy stock last week, MCA chairman Lew Wasserman headed for Palm Springs, and president Sidney Sheinberg hit the beach at Malibu. According to one weekend visitor, Wasserman “was in the sun, relaxing,” and “didn’t look shook.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood’s gossip-mill busily concocted hypothetical scenarios under which egos at least as big as Trump’s might be just as tempted to take a stake in MCA, if the studio, whose profits have sagged lately, were really to be sold.

If Trump can do it, why not Garth Drabinsky, for example? The aggressive Toronto-based movie exhibitor, whose Cineplex-Odeon Corp. is 50% owned by MCA, could presumably strike an alliance with investors such as Canada’s Belzberg or Bronfman families to become white knight by purchasing a big stake in the studio and signing a stand-still agreement for, say, five years.

Or why not Walt Disney Co. chairman Michael Eisner? Disney is flush with cash, and hardly averse to doing some empire-building of its own--despite, or because of, Eisner’s much-publicized feud with Sheinberg over the companies’ respective theme parks.

Or why not movie-mogul Jerry Weintraub, for that matter? Although tied to Columbia by a movie distribution deal, Weintraub has close ties with money man William E. Simon, and might be as eager as Trump to have a stake in a plum like MCA.

On the other hand, of course, Trump-the-author probably won’t lose by making an MCA bid.

According to a clerk at Brentano’s bookstore in Century City, sales of his deal-making bible “have been tapering off” lately. Around here, at least, a run at a big studio ought to perk sales up considerably.