Wasserman to Give UCLA $10 Million

Saying he wants to provide poor students with the college education he could never afford, Hollywood patriarch Lew Wasserman is donating $8.75 million to UCLA for undergraduate scholarships.

The chairman emeritus of Universal Studios also is giving UCLA $300,000 to help support its Geffen Playhouse and turning over his $700,000 weekend home in Palm Springs, along with a built-in $250,000 maintenance fund--bringing his total gift to $10 million.

While a $10-million donation is not unheard-of at major universities these days, it is rare to designate so much for scholarships.

“It is one of the largest gifts given by anyone solely to support undergraduate education,” said UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale. “The Wasserman gift is extraordinarily generous and wonderfully visionary.”

The money will be given in installments over the next five years and placed into an Edith and Lew Wasserman Fund for Undergraduate Support. Once fully funded, the endowment’s annual earnings should be enough to cover UCLA’s fees of $4,050 for about 100 needy students at a time.

“We’d like the scholarships to go to the people who really need them,” Wasserman said. “I am trying to make happen for others what wasn’t available for me.”

The 84-year-old Wasserman now makes Forbes’ list of the richest Americans with an estimated worth of $490 million. But he didn’t always keep such company.

When he graduated from high school in Cleveland in 1930, Wasserman said, he had his eye on several schools, including Ohio State and what is now Case Western Reserve.

But the nation was in the throes of the Depression, he said, “and we couldn’t afford it.” His graduation from high school was marked by one change in his life: his part-time job as an usher in Cleveland’s Palace movie theater went to full time.

Six years later, Wasserman linked up with Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist who founded a talent agency that became Music Corporation of America. He soon left for Hollywood to head MCA’s new motion picture division. Over the years, he rose to become president and chairman of what is now Universal Studios Inc.

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During his six-decade reign as a Hollywood deal maker, Wasserman also became a key player in political and philanthropic circles: assisting Dorothy Chandler in raising money for the Los Angeles Music Center and becoming a friend and fund-raiser for presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton.

Though he has donated handsomely to six colleges other than UCLA--Caltech, California Institute of the Arts, Georgetown, New York University, Brandeis and the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs--Wasserman declined to total his contributions to higher education.

“This gift and those to the other colleges would make a very large number,” he said, “and I’d rather not announce it.”

His generosity, however, has helped earn him honorary degrees from NYU and Brandeis. And he did say that he and his wife, Edith, receive nearly 200 “pleasing” letters a year from the beneficiaries of various funds that provide financial aid ranging “from minimal scholarships to full ride, [tuition], room and board.”

Some of those letters stem from the $2-million Wasserman Scholars Endowment that he set up for UCLA undergraduates in 1994 and another $1-million endowment for graduate students at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. He also has endowed a $660,000 chair of ophthalmology at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute.

“We’re old-fashioned,” Wasserman said of his philanthropy, now directed through a family foundation run by his grandson Casey. “We believe that if you had a modest degree of success, you cannot just go through life taking. You have to reinvest it back into the system.”

Wasserman’s $10-million gift brings UCLA’s ongoing fund-raising campaign to $558 million, nearly 47% of its $1.2-billion goal--the most ambitious ever set by a public university.

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Profile: Lew Wasserman

* Born: March 15, 1913

* Residence: Beverly Hills

* Education: High school diploma

* Career highlights: A longtime talent agent who represented the likes of James Stewart and Ronald Reagan, he became president and chairman of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) and chairman of the Assn. of Motion Picture and TV Producers. He currently is chairman emeritus of MCA, now Universal Studios Inc.

* Interests: National politics and blindness prevention.

* Family: Married to Edith T. Beckerman; one daughter, Lynne Kay.

* Quote: “You have a responsibility if you have been making some money to give it back.”