Pathe Co-Founder Reportedly Makes Anti-Semitic Remarks

Giancarlo Parretti, the flamboyant Italian entertainment mogul who is vying for control of MGM/UA Communications Co., reportedly made anti-Semitic remarks in an interview with an Italian newspaper.

According to today’s issue of Business Week magazine, Parretti allegedly said, “Jews have ganged up on me.”

“The fact is that the Jews don’t like the idea that I represent the first Catholic communications network,” Parretti is quoted as saying in the interview that originally appeared in the daily Italian newspaper, L’Unita, last month. “There doesn’t exist a single (media) holding company in the world that isn’t in the hands of Jews.”

Parretti, who declined comment Thursday, has vehemently denied making the statements previously. But Business Week editor-in-chief Stephen Shepard said he is confident in the Italian newspaper’s account of the interview, in which Parretti also is quoted as saying Jews control Business Week.

The printing of the potentially explosive remarks comes as Parretti, a co-founder of Pathe Communications Co., is in the midst of an attempted buyout of MGM/UA for $1.2 billion. Time Warner Inc. joined the deal this week, offering to shoulder more than half the cost of the buyout in return for worldwide distribution rights to the United Artists film library and all future MGM/UA and Pathe films.

Time Warner executives declined comment on Parretti’s alleged remarks on Thursday. But Jewish leaders swiftly denounced the statements.

“The kind of accusation that Mr. Parretti makes have been the stock and trade of bigots for decades and must be rejected,” said David A. Lehrer, regional director of Anti-Defamation League. “I would hope (Hollywood) would reject this type of stereotyping and bigotry out of hand.”

Shepard’s staff, which angered Parretti in a 1989 story that questioned his past business dealings, interviewed the reporter who spoke to Parretti and also viewed a videotape of an Italian television show interview in which Parretti made similar, though less inflammatory, comments, saying big movie companies have always been “American and Jewish.”

“It’s an old canard that the Jews control the media and Jews control Hollywood,” Shepard said. “That’s bad enough. But what he was accusing Business Week of in this interview . . . was that we were criticizing him in our story a year ago because he was Catholic, and that really offended me. Because he’s accusing us of bigotry.”

The Parretti interview in L’Unita, a large and influential Communist daily based in Rome, was reported by Los Angeles-based correspondent Sergio di Cori. Parretti later denied having made the statements to Di Cori, telling the same reporter in a subsequent interview:

“I had said that, finding myself competing against very solid financial groups, some people were against me. . . . But all of that has nothing to do with Jews in general.”

(A Pathe spokesman said Parretti is contemplating legal action against L’Unita.)

Parretti, who seemed to emerge out of nowhere to become a major entertainment figure in recent years, is trying to line up the financing that will allow him to complete the ambitious MGM/UA deal.

He already controls a diversified international conglomerate of film libraries, television and motion picture studios and theaters but has also made headlines for his run-ins with Italian legal authorities.

A Naples court recently sentenced Parretti to more than eight years in prison for “fraudulent bankruptcy” in connection with the 1981 failure of Il Diario, the national daily newspaper he partly owned. Parretti is appealing the conviction.