MCA Deal Leaves Ultimate Studio Insider on Outside : Hollywood: Chairman Lew Wasserman was told of sale at last minute. Some observers call it shabby treatment.

He is the archetypal Hollywood legend--a man who started as a movie usher in Cleveland and became the longest-surviving mogul in the business. Lew Wasserman, chairman of MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios, defined the powerbroker: industry titan for an astonishing 50 years, political benefactor through five presidential administrations (he was once Ronald Reagan’s theatrical agent), and Hollywood social fixture.

So it was with surprise and some sadness that those close to Wasserman have watched during the last week as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. prepared to sell MCA to a New York whiskey magnate without either consulting or informing Wasserman. Called only on Wednesday night by the senior member of the Bronfman family, the owner of Seagram Co., virtually after the deal was done, Wasserman began to clear out his desk, a source said. How could this lion of Hollywood not have known?

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Elegantly tall and thin, sporting his trademark dark framed rectangular glasses, Wasserman behind closed doors was verbally ferocious enough to make grown men throw up. In public, he could be fatherly and friendly, hovering paternally over Universal employees as they bought earthquake preparedness supplies in a room on the Universal lot after the Northridge earthquake.

His life has been MCA. At 82, he has never been one to talk of retirement, but observers presume that his reign will end when the sale of MCA to Seagram goes through. Not that that necessarily means he’s leaving--or leaving right away.

“Lew Wasserman is a man who’d probably be the best poker player in the world,” said Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. “Until he says what he’s thinking, you don’t know, and I’ve known him for over 30 years.”

Wasserman, who declined to be interviewed for this article and rarely talks to the press, has carved an unusually stable life for himself in the erratic topography of Hollywood. His marriage to the former Edith Beckerman is as long-lived as his association with MCA--both dating to 1936. Active in a variety of philanthropic causes, the couple have a vacation house in Palm Springs and a home in Beverly Hills.

“I think for a man of his age to have done what he has done in Hollywood, he has to be really proud of that,” said movie producer George Zaloom, who has worked on the Universal lot. “He’s had a fantastic career. Most people his age are sitting around in retirement homes or playing golf. He drives himself to work every day, has lunch in the commissary every day, and has that cherry pie every day.”

Some in the Hollywood community are appalled at the way Wasserman was ignored by the Matsushita company as it went about negotiating to sell to Seagram.

“I think it’s disgraceful and stupid on their part,” said producer Ned Tannen, who spent 28 years at MCA, working his way up from the mail room to president of Universal Pictures. “I certainly wouldn’t have dealt in Mr. Wasserman’s company without discussing it with him. . . . Obviously the Japanese have a totally different way of operating. . . . I was under the impression that they venerated their elders.”

“I think clearly he has been treated shabbily,” said entertainment attorney David Colden. “He is viewed as the elder statesman of the Hollywood community.”

One top agent said: “It must be so humiliating for Wasserman not to have a sense what is going on.”

Others note that Wasserman agreed to sell the company for a bundle less than five years ago and that he can retire after leaving the company with a huge fortune earned from that sale.

“He sold his company. No one forced him to sell it,” one producer said. “He was handsomely rewarded, so you can’t cry over spilled milk when you’ve had the whole bottle anyway.”

Of course, friction between Matsushita and MCA’s Wasserman and President Sidney Sheinberg has been well known for years. And some in Hollywood speculate that Wasserman not only hoped that Matsushita would sell but has been long aware that the Japanese company was negotiating with the New York-based beverage giant.

“Well, I have heard they were in the dark but do you really think they didn’t know?” said Roger Vorce, president of the APA talent agency, who worked in MCA’s New York office in the late 1950s and early ‘60s in its last years as a talent agency. “I can’t imagine, knowing this man, that anything like that could happen unless he was aware of it.”

Vorce rarely sees Wasserman except for occasional Saturday mornings when he runs into the studio chief having breakfast with his grandson at Nate n’ Al’s deli in Beverly Hills. But he ventured that Wasserman was hoping to remain at MCA under owners who better understood the nature of the business.

“I think they believe the Bronfman family will listen to them and understand you don’t run a creative entertainment business as an electronics company.”

But sources close to the deal say that Wasserman was carefully and deliberately kept in the dark about the negotiations.

When Wasserman joined MCA in 1936, it was a Chicago-based music talent agency founded by former ophthalmologist and musician Julius Caesar Stein. Wasserman was national advertising and publicity director and earned $60 a week. Stein took the talent agency to Hollywood in 1937, and the following year, Wasserman arrived, quickly becoming vice president over the company’s new motion picture division. In 1946, he became president of MCA .

In 1952, the Screen Actors Guild (with support of its president, then-actor Reagan) granted MCA a waiver from the union rules prohibiting talent agencies from producing films and television programs.

Under Wasserman’s tenure--and along with Sheinberg--MCA and Universal Studios (which MCA acquired in 1962) became known for a certain business style, recognizing that product was the most important and lucrative thing in Hollywood.

“Lew and Jules Stein built the first real major powerhouse agency, which preceded ICM and Creative Artists Agency,” said Samuel Goldwyn Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of the Samuel Goldwyn Co. “They really created the idea of stars producing pictures.”

When Goldwyn made his first movie, he sought out Wasserman. “I’ve known him since I was 19 years old,” he said. “I’ve never gone to him for advice when that advice wasn’t good.”

In the early 1960s, MCA complied with federal anti-trust rules by dissolving its talent agency and concentrating on the studio. Under Wasserman’s tenure, the Universal Studios of the 1960s and ‘70s became the leading supplier of television shows, particularly one-hour action and drama series.

Tannen called MCA “the best-managed company in the business,” and like others in Hollywood praised Wasserman and Sheinberg as an extraordinary team.

But as Tannen and others noted, Wasserman has been more than a good businessman. In his heyday, he was someone who helped make Hollywood run, negotiating labor union deals and averting strikes.

“He has good instincts,” Tannen said of Wasserman. “Most of the people running these companies do not have such instincts. How many Harvard MBAs have gone through Hollywood and their bones are rotting in the desert somewhere?”

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A constant presence at his company, Wasserman was in the black tower at Universal in 1993 when a sniper opened fire from outside the building and wounded several people. One producer remembers crawling out of an elevator that opened on the top floor of the building to find everyone crawling on the floor, some wounded, with glass and debris strewn everywhere and people murmuring that the sniper was in the building. Suddenly he saw a pinstripe-suited Wasserman standing in the middle of the space, his arms held aloft and pronouncing confidently, “There is no sniper in the building.”

“Mr. Wasserman’s voice was so convincing that calm descended on the group as they waited for paramedics,” the producer said.

Universal has produced three of the biggest-selling films of all time--”Jaws,” “E.T.--The Extra-Terrestrial,” and “Jurassic Park.” But the studio’s recent fare has not been as strong. Lately when people talk about a Universal film, it’s the upcoming Kevin Costner epic “Waterworld,” which is setting records for going over budget.

“I think there is so much respect accorded him, but he is older now,” said one high-ranking executive from another studio. “The last few years, probably more respect of the legend than actually doing stuff.”

Not that he still cannot command an audience. The studio executive said: “When Lew Wasserman sends out invitations to his house to meet Ted Kennedy, everyone goes.”

* DEAL DEVELOPS: Seagram, Matsushita bicker; impact on MCA assessed. D1