Sumner Redstone

Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) is a media magnate who owns and controls the National Amusements theater chain, and is the majority owner of CBS Corporation, Viacom, the MTV Network, BET, and the Paramount Pictures film studio. Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, where he graduated first in his class, and then graduated Harvard College in three years. He served in World War II, with a team that decoded Japanese messages for the U.S. Army, and after the war, earned his degree from Harvard Law School. After law school, he worked for the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and then went into private practice. After a few years, he joined his father's theater chain and pioneered the "multiplex" in huge suburban malls and expanded to 750 screens across the nation. He also invested in movie content providers Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures. In 1979, he almost died in the Boston Copley Hotel fire when he crawled out of a window onto a ledge. Redstone was not expected to survive and underwent 30 hours of intense surgery. After a hostile takeover in 1987, he won voting control of Viacom, a television syndication, which also owned MTV and Nickelodeon and Showtime networks. His next acquisition was Paramount Pictures in 1993, and led the studio on a ten-year streak of record performance with hit films including "Saving Private Ryan" and "Titanic." That same year Sumner Redstone participated in the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park, Montana and spoke to the student delegates about his life as a student, risk taking, and his personal commitment to his business career.