Mancuso Leaves Chairman’s Post at Paramount : Entertainment: His departure comes two days after producer Stanley Jaffe was named president of the studio’s parent company.

Frank G. Mancuso abruptly left his position as chairman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures, sending a shock wave through one of Hollywood’s biggest film and television studios.

The Wednesday departure follows by two days the surprise appointment of film producer Stanley Jaffe as president of Paramount Communications, the studio’s New York-based parent.

It was not clear whether Mancuso--a widely respected executive who spent his entire 29-year studio career with Paramount--resigned or was fired from the chairmanship, which he held since 1984. A brief statement issued by the parent company said only that Mancuso was “leaving Paramount Pictures effective immediately.”

People close to Mancuso, 57, said he was shaken by Jaffe’s appointment to the presidency and learned of the step only hours before it was announced to the press.

Fox Inc. Chairman Barry Diller, who preceded Mancuso as head of the Paramount studio and left after a dispute with Paramount Communications Chairman Martin S. Davis in 1984, said: “It should be clear that I like Stanley Jaffe. I brought him to Paramount in 1982. But what Paramount did to Frank Mancuso shouldn’t reflect the way people are treated in the movie business.”

Mancuso, Jaffe and Davis did not return calls. Davis and Jaffe were in Los Angeles on Wednesday, and sources said Davis was working out of Mancuso’s office at Paramount. Mancuso was not on the lot as of early afternoon, when the announcement was made.

The company said Jaffe will fill Mancuso’s post until a permanent successor could be named. Jaffe, 50, produced such hit films as “Fatal Attraction” and “The Accused” for Paramount through his eight-year partnership with Sherry Lansing. He was president of production for the studio in the early 1970s and briefly worked as an executive at Columbia Pictures.

Under Mancuso, Paramount experienced a roller-coaster ride of successes and failures. The studio has had major TV hits in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the “The Arsenio Hall Show.” And it dominated the motion picture box office in the mid-1980s, thanks to blockbusters such as “Top Gun,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and other films produced before Ned Tanen retired as Mancuso’s second-in-command in 1988.

Last year, the studio was No. 2 at the U.S. box office, thanks largely to the success of “Ghost.” But profits in the film division were battered by “Another 48 Hours,” “Days of Thunder,” “The Two Jakes” and “The Godfather, Part III,” which did not perform well.

Many entertainment industry observers have speculated that Davis is trying to clean up operating problems at Paramount before some major bid for a TV network or other property. The company, which also owns Simon & Schuster, raised more than $3 billion by selling its Associates First Capital Corp. consumer finance arm in 1989 but has been slow to spend on acquisitions.

Last summer, studio Co-President Sidney Ganis, who succeeded Tanen as head filmmaker, was replaced by Disney executive David Kirkpatrick in a move that was supposed to strengthen Paramount’s drive to hold down costs and move away from big “event” films. Several studio executives say Davis became convinced, however, that Mancuso rather than Ganis was responsible for losing control of spending and creative decisions.

The 1984 shake-up at Paramount--which followed by a year Davis’ succession to the chairmanship of what was then known as Gulf & Western Industries after the death of co-founder Charles Bluhdorn--led to profound changes in the film industry.

In its wake, Diller moved to Fox, where he began building a new TV network. Meanwhile, his top lieutenants, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, moved to posts at Walt Disney Co. after Davis bypassed them in favor of Mancuso. Mancuso had headed film distribution and marketing at Paramount after working his way up from a film booker’s position in 1962.

Nearly three dozen Paramount executives eventually followed Eisner and Katzenberg to Disney, leaving Mancuso to rebuild the studio and defend key relationships with actors and other talent.

Mancuso got high marks as an executive from his peers at other studios. “He’s a competent, honorable, fine man. . . . I’m not aware of where his weaknesses were,” said one highly placed competitor who declined to be identified.

Yet producers, agents and lower-ranking executives at Paramount frequently complained that he didn’t provide strong direction to the film operation. Mancuso tried to cultivate a family atmosphere at Paramount and maintained exclusive arrangements with a strong group of film producers, including Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, Eddie Murphy, Mace Neufeld and the Jaffe-Lansing company.

Yet several of those relationships soured badly, most notably when Simpson and Bruckheimer left for Disney last year, only months after signing a widely publicized megadeal with Paramount.

Paramount executives said they did not know whether other executives would leave in the wake of Mancuso’s departure.

Kirkpatrick appears closely attuned to Davis’ program of cost containment--although studio sources note that he experienced friction with Jaffe recently when he initially blocked Jaffe from producing and directing “School Ties.” That film was eventually approved by the studio but will now be directed by someone else.

Several Hollywood executives noted that Mancuso may have difficulty finding a place at another major studio, where the top jobs have turned over infrequently in the past several years. While film production executives face a rapidly revolving door, the very top posts at studios such as Fox, Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. have been stable since 1984.