Tartikoff to Quit Paramount, Sources Report

In a stunning surprise, Paramount Pictures Chairman Brandon Tartikoff will announce today that he is resigning after only 15 months at the helm of the major Hollywood studio, sources close to the company said late Wednesday.

Tartikoff is stepping down in order to spend more time with his daughter, who was seriously injured in an automobile accident nearly two years ago, the sources said. Tartikoff will move to New Orleans, where he has already bought a home and where his daughter is in a rehabilitation program, they said.

Tartikoff, 42, the former NBC programming whiz who helped propel the network to prime-time dominance in the 1980s, joined Paramount in July, 1991, replacing Frank Mancuso, who left under pressure from Paramount Communications Chief Executive Martin S. Davis and Chief Operating Officer Stanley Jaffe.

Sources said that Tartikoff’s departure from the studio was at his own request and not, as had been speculated in recent months, because of friction with Davis and Jaffe. Tartikoff was said to have been unhappy with Jaffe’s and Davis’ close scrutiny of his divisions.

Nonetheless, sources close to the company said Tartikoff’s departure caps a tumultuous two weeks that culminated in a “disastrous” presentation by Tartikoff’s motion picture division during a management conference in Rancho Mirage. “They weren’t prepared,” said an executive who was at the meeting. “It was just a disaster.”

Earlier this week, the stock of the studio’s parent, Paramount Communications, fell $1.625 a share, to $43.25, after influential Goldman Sachs entertainment analyst Richard Simon downgraded his rating of the firm and expressed concern about its short-term earnings outlook. Simon said that such recent releases as “1492” and “School Ties” have not performed well and will hurt fourth-quarter earnings. Analysts have also expressed concern over the fact that Paramount does not have a major release for the coming holiday season, one of the busiest movie-going periods.

The announcement of Tartikoff’s resignation will be made today at a special meeting for Paramount executives on the lot, the sources said. No successor has been named.

Tartikoff and his daughter Calla, now 9, were in an automobile accident near their vacation home in Lake Tahoe on New Year’s Day, 1991. She was hospitalized with a brain concussion for several months and now is in rehabilitation therapy.

The resignation will come only a few weeks after Tartikoff published an autobiography focusing on his years at NBC, titled “The Last Great Ride.” He had recently finished a national book tour, appearing on such shows as CNN’s “Larry King Live,” ABC’s “Primetime Live” and “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

According to people close to Tartikoff, the accident had a “devastating” effect on Tartikoff and his wife, Lilly. The accident was a second blow to Tartikoff, who earlier in his career had suffered from Hodgkin’s disease but overcame it.

Tartikoff came to Paramount after the departure of longtime studio chief Mancuso, who left in the wake of big-budget disappointments such as “The Godfather, Part III,” and “Days of Thunder.”

Davis charged him with cutting the movie division’s costs, which Tartikoff achieved. But in Hollywood there remained doubts about his autonomy. High-ranking executives said Jaffe continued to call many of the shots from New York, especially on Paramount’s bigger projects.

Tartikoff struck a number of movie deals with big-name television producers, and largely focused on smaller-scale movies based on his television industry contacts, such as the hit “Wayne’s World,” which was a spinoff from the TV show “Saturday Night Live.” Tartikoff also set into motion a film version of “The Brady Bunch,” the 1970s TV cult classic.

On the studio lot, he was known for taking a hands-on role in productions. He personally suggested the casting of Rob Lowe as the smarmy TV executive in “Wayne’s World.” Tartikoff even participated in editing sessions.

It was an indication of his smooth demeanor that he was able to resolve a bitter rift with spy novelist Tom Clancy over Paramount’s film adaptation of his book “Patriot Games.”

But Tartikoff never gained the same recognition he enjoyed at NBC. He largely avoided the media, and often complained to associates about the pressure-cooker environment in Hollywood, where studio chiefs are given little more than a year to make their mark.

Times staff writer Alan Citron and Ryan Murphy contributed to this story.