Media mogul Sumner Redstone dies at 97

Sumner Redstone, who built a media empire from his family’s drive-in movie chain, has died. He was 97.

ViacomCBS Inc., which he lead for decades, remembers Redstone for his “unparalleled passion to win, his endless intellectual curiosity, and his complete dedication to the company.”

Redstone, who was Jewish, built the company through aggressive acquisitions, but many headlines with his name focused on severed ties with wives, actors and executives. In multiple interviews, he said he’d never die.

His tight-fisted grip on the National Amusements theater chain, which controlled CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. through voting stock, was passed to his daughter Shari Redstone, who battled top executives to re-merge the two entities that split in 2006.

Sumner Redstone’s battles with his own family were as dramatic as his corporate maneuvers. Son Brent Redstone once sued his father to break up his media empire — then settled for a princely sum to give up his voting shares.

Redstone, a lanky man with a thick Boston accent, was married and divorced twice — first to Phyllis Gloria Raphael, mother of his children Shari and Brent — then to schoolteachers Paula Fortunato, a woman 39 years his junior.

Under his watch, Viacom became one of the nation’s media titans, home to pay TV channels MTV and Comedy Central and movie studio Paramount Pictures. Redstone often told interviewers, “content is king.”

And he was right. Despite sagging TV ratings at Viacom, his vast shareholdings in Viacom and CBS led Forbes magazine to estimate his net worth at $4.6 billion.

Besides being ruthless, Redstone was known for being doggedly determined. In 1979, he survived a fire at Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel by gripping a third-floor window ledge with his right arm still inside. He suffered third-degree burns over half his body, his right wrist was nearly severed, and he was told he would never walk again. But he eventually recovered, and even was able to play tennis by strapping the racket to his wrist.

“I intend to live forever!” he told Upstart Business Journal in 2009.

Born in 1923 in Boston, Redstone was the oldest son of Michael and Belle Rothstein, who changed the family name to Redstone.

— AP