Great Moments in Mogul Mangling

1920-1930s

* Not content to start wars and pick U.S. presidents, publisher William Randolph Hearst’s real ambition, according to “The Chief,” David Nasaw’s 2000 Hearst biography, was to make classy costume epics featuring his paramour, Marion Davies. Some of Davies’ silent-era efforts actually did boffo box office, but Hearst’s fondness for overly lavish sets ate up the profits.

* Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the future president, hit Hollywood and soon began his amorous pursuit of married actress Gloria Swanson. He also began searching for a suitable film project for Swanson and settled on a film by Erich von Stroheim. The methodical director fell months behind schedule. One day in 1929, after an actor, at von Stroheim’s behest, spat tobacco juice on Swanson’s hand, the actress fled the set, leaving the film, “Queen Kelly,” half-finished until it was restored half a century later. Kennedy fired von Stroheim, but only after the director had burned through $800,000 of Kennedy’s money.

1940s-1950s

* Howard Hughes hung around Hollywood for decades and directed several films, including the 1930 flick “Hell’s Angels.” But he never really figured out the business. Hughes bought RKO for $8.8 million in 1948 and went on to mismanage the studio so badly that its productivity dropped from 54 films a year to just six. After about $20 million in losses, he reluctantly sold the moribund studio in 1954.

1960s-1970s

* San Francisco-based insurance company Transamerica bought United Artists from Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin in 1967, impressed by the studio’s $20-million projected profit for the next year. Three years later, Transamerica Chairman John Beckett, dumbfounded by UA’s $85-million loss, ordered that “all acquisitions cease until we have a management system in place that we can understand and will give us early warnings.” Krim and Benjamin stayed on to run the studio, but feuded with the insurance men and left in 1978. More than 60 prominent directors bought an ad in Variety to trash Beckett for chasing them away. Transamerica’s less-savvy management team bet the ranch on “Heaven’s Gate,” which became one of the most spectacular flops in cinematic history. The company was foundering in red ink when it was sold in 1981 to MGM.

1980s

* Four years after paying $752 million for Columbia Pictures in 1982, Coca-Cola brought in British producer David Puttnam to run the studio. Coke assumed it was buying artistic integrity, but it got more than it bargained for. At his introductory news conference, the iconoclastic Puttnam castigated the movie industry for slavishly submitting to “the tyranny of the box office.” Puttnam lasted slightly more than a year before being squeezed out when Coke merged Columbia with Tri-Star. Two years after that, the soft-drink maker sold its shares of the studio to Sony.

1990s

* Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti bought MGM for $1.3 billion in 1990 with the help of the French bank Credit Lyonnais. He wasn’t on the scene long, but he was there long enough to install three mistresses on the company payroll, according to a 1996 expose in Fortune magazine. In 1998 he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges ranging from money laundering to securities fraud in connection with the studio purchase and other entertainment companies. He subsequently was arrested in Italy, where extradition efforts continue.

2000s

* According to a recent profile in this magazine, Seagram heir-turned-MCA/Universal mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. once proposed, without success, that theaters charge higher prices for more expensive movies, just as Seagram charged more for its single-malt Scotch than its lower-priced blended varieties. Why, Bronfman argued, should a customer pay the same amount to see a $2-million movie as a $200-million one? -- P.J.K.