It Beats Help-Wanted Ads

Ronald W. Miller, the tall, brawny ex-president of Walt Disney Co., recently provided an insight into career shortcuts for aspiring executives.

He was a witness in the trial of stockholder lawsuits accusing Disney and its directors of paying “greenmail” in 1984 to an unwelcome suitor, co-defendant Saul P. Steinberg. Miller testified that he started work for founder Walt Disney in the early 1950s after attending the University of Southern California and playing professional football briefly for the Los Angeles Rams.

Miller, who worked his way up the ladder at Disney but lost his job under a new board in 1984, was asked by his own attorney how he got his first job with the company. Smiling, Miller drew a laugh from the jury when he said: “I married Walt’s daughter.”

His family still has major stock holdings in the company, so he hasn’t had to go job hunting.

Source Slow With the News

If you’re a subscriber to the Source computer information service, you may have been jolted last week by a message that now appears as you log on: “The Source is pleased to announce that it has been acquired by Compuserve Inc.”

Subscribers can take some comfort, however, in knowing that they were way ahead of the general public in getting the news. The company that bills itself as the world’s largest and fastest on-line information service firm chose to distribute its own news through the mail--and a week went by before the story appeared in major newspapers.

A reporter calling the company after 5 p.m. to get a copy of the press release was initially told that it would depend on getting access to a fax machine. So much for the electronic information age.

At the Sound of Beep, Sneak

Be honest: How many times would you have given your Gold Card to escape some deadly sales presentation, staff meeting or other command performance?

Well, Eugene Grant, a retired aerospace engineer, knows just how you feel. One Sunday he was itching to hit the road during the pastor’s sermon when he heard a physician’s beeper sound off. It was just the inspiration he needed to create the Timely Beeper, a fake telephone paging device that wearers surreptitiously trigger.

Grant said his Sunset Beach company, Omega Contract Design, has sold nearly 19,000 at $29.95. “It’s nothing but a toy,” Grant admits. “But it doesn’t matter. It sounds just like the real thing.”

An Ideal Testing Ground

Reebok has turned to a West Los Angeles health club as its trendy testing ground.

The Canton, Mass.-based maker of athletic shoes and apparel has signed a one-year promotional agreement with Mezzeplex, a fitness facility that opened last week in the Executive Life Tower on Olympic Boulevard.

All sorts of Reebok athletic apparel--including shoes and aerobic outfits--will be tested by specially chosen members and instructors at the club.

Already, Mezzeplex instructors are helping to design an aerobic leotard with Reebok, said Michael Greenwald, a co-owner of Mezzeplex. “Things that are popular in West Los Angeles,” he said, “catch on two years later in the rest of the country.”