Daly-Semel Team Endures as Their Proteges Part Ways

As in life, successful executive marriages are difficult to make work. In ego-sensitive Hollywood, an inherently competitive environment where power and credit are more often hoarded than shared, and blaming others in failure is a practiced art, it’s that much more challenging.

In fact, the only true equal corporate partners in Hollywood who have ever been able to pull it off over the long haul are Warner Bros. Co-Chairmen Bob Daly and Terry Semel.

The duo, who have run the studio in tandem for 18 years--the last four as equals in title, responsibility and compensation--thought they had provided the perfect model for their two young production heads, Bill Gerber and Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

They were wrong. Two years of infighting and stepping on each other’s toes between the two ambitious fortysomething executives resulted in a dysfunctional, ineffective movie division that often sent confusing messages to talent and their representatives.

Finally last month, after much internal unrest, complaints from Hollywood’s creative community and a string of expensive box-office flops that included “Fathers’ Day,” “Mad City” and “Sphere,” Daly and Semel severed the partnership, making Di Bonaventura the sole head of production and Gerber a producer on the lot.

Although it was Gerber’s idea that Warner hire Di Bonaventura back in 1989, Gerber will now have to seek his approval on the movie projects he wants to produce for Warner--such is Hollywood.

In fairness to the two executives, the union of Gerber and Di Bonaventura was a forced marriage that was probably doomed from the get-go. When Daly and Semel decided to promote both executives to run the movie division rather than risk losing one or the other, the competition between Gerber and Di Bonaventura to prove themselves intensified along with the pressure to put together a successful slate of movies.

Moreover, Daly and Semel each had maturity and years of management experience behind them when they joined forces, which Gerber and Di Bonaventura lacked.

Daly now acknowledges that a dual presidency might have been “naive” and ill-conceived.

“Terry and I have plenty of room to roam,” Daly said. “In hindsight, the canvas wasn’t big enough for Billy and Lorenzo.”

Where the two executives were responsible for the day-to-day operations of one division, Daly and Semel oversee a $10-billion-plus entertainment empire that encompasses movies, television, music, theme parks and retail stores. While their jobs often cross (they both attend movie marketing meetings and often premieres), they’ve also divided some of the responsibilities. Daly, for example, spends more time on domestic television while Semel focuses on the international side.

They share an assistant who keeps track of both their schedules and coordinates who will be at what meeting with whom.

“We spend a lot of time together and a lot of time apart,” said Daly, noting they always make sure they fill each other in.

Many Hollywood observers suggest that the main reason Daly and Semel have made it work so well all these years, sharing responsibility in success and in failure, is they’re able to suppress their egos.

“Just like in marriage, you have to put your ego in check to have a partnership. You have to be able to accept the fact that you don’t have to be right all the time. And I don’t have to be at a meeting with Mel Gibson that Terry’s going to,” Daly said.

Daly added that ultimately he and Semel--who live on the same block in Bel-Air and still drive to work together three times a week--have one common goal.

“There’s one thing we care about, and that is we do a good job and the company is successful--that’s what motivates us, not that one of us came up with an idea for this movie or for changing this particular scene. We care about the end results.”

Of course, their multimillion-dollar annual compensation packages also depend on how well the company’s businesses perform.

Even a relationship as solid as Daly and Semel’s can be put to the test in bad times, as the Warner movie division has been enduring. The studio’s TV business is booming, but the movie side has been going through a prolonged dry spell. Executive shake-ups--an everyday occurrence in the industry--had been foreign to Warner, until the last year.

Former MCA Inc. President and Chief Executive Sidney Sheinberg, whose decades-long relationship with boss Lew Wasserman was considered one of Hollywood’s most formidable corporate partnerships, said: “There’s no mystery to it. You have to have a relationship of great candor so that one trusts the other. Keeping an open line of communication is the key.”

Sheinberg, who formed a production company with his two sons when he left Universal Studios three years ago, added: “Chemically, it has to work. There are going to be days when you get angry at each other and have to tolerate things. . . . And, you have to enjoy spending time together, since so much of your day is spent in a working relationship.”

Kathy Jones, who has worked side by side with her partner and boss, Buffy Shutt, since the two formed their own marketing consulting firm in New York in 1987 and then co-headed marketing at Columbia/TriStar Pictures and Universal Pictures, said their relationship has been “a great source of strength in a business that’s very difficult and competitive.”

The widely regarded duo got fired this month from Universal because of differences with studio owner Edgar Bronfman Jr.

“There’s nothing better on a bad day than looking up and seeing your best friend sitting there,” said Jones.