Media mogul dies aged 86
Merrill dead
LOS ANGELES, May 25, (AP): Jerry Perenchio was a media mogul, billionaire former owner of Univision and the producer behind a slew of hit shows and sporting events but his house appeared more often on TV than he did.
Perenchio was famously publicity-shy. The first item on his list of 20 rules for subordinates was “stay clear of the press.” But his Bel Air mansion was seen every week as the home of the Clampett family on the 1960s series “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Perenchio, 86, died Tuesday of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his wife, Margaret, said Wednesday.
“Jerry Perenchio had a big vision and a bigger heart — he always gave back,” Arnold Schwarzenegger posted on Twitter Wednesday. “He was an example to all of us and I was proud to call him my friend.”
Ron Howard used his Twitter account to call Perenchio “a gracious and brilliant mentor.”
Perenchio’s half-century in the entertainment business included talent agent, sports promoter, television and motion picture tycoon but he preferred to work behind the scenes.
His wealth, recently estimated by Forbes at $2.8 billion, allowed him to be a generous political donor and philanthropist. He contributed some $50 million to candidates and causes and tens of millions more to schools, hospitals, museums and charities of all types.
Collection
He amassed a significant art collection that included work by Picasso, Cezanne and Monet and in 2014 announced he would bequeath 47 pieces — worth an estimated $500 million — to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He also donated $25 million for a new building to house it.
“He was one of the most generous people whom I’ve ever met, and yet, in a town where everyone wants to take credit for everything, he refused to take credit for a lifetime of achievements,” Mark Gold, former head of the nonprofit environmental group Heal the Bay and now an associate vice chancellor at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “He was really quite extraordinary.”
Scion of a Fresno winemaking family, Andrew Jerry Perenchio wore many hats during a half-century in the entertainment business.
He turned to show business after attending UCLA and serving in the Air Force as a jet pilot and flight instructor.
American heiress Dina Merrill, the Hollywood socialite who became a leading lady, has died aged 93.
Merrill, raised in part on the Mara-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, now owned by President Donald Trump, died in New York on Monday after a battle with dementia, according to US media reports quoting family sources.
Merrill appeared in more than 20 films and dozens of TV series after making her big screen debut in “Desk Set,” a 1957 romantic comedy starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Her co-stars during a career that lasted well into the 2000s included Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Elizabeth Taylor.
Merrill’s mother Marjorie Merriweather Post, an heiress to the Post cereal fortune, was estimated to be worth $250 million when she died in 1973.
The actress had two daughters and two sons, during marriages to wartime fighter pilot and Colgate heir Stanley Rumbough Jr. and actor Cliff Robertson.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s theatre director grandson Alexander Burdonsky has died at 75, the Moscow theatre where he worked for 45 years said Wednesday.
Burdonsky kept a low profile and used his mother’s surname. He said he had never visited Stalin’s grave by the Kremlin wall.
Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky marked Burdonsky’s death with a telegramme praising his “many-faceted talent” and “artistic taste.”
Burdonsky was the son of Stalin’s youngest son Vasily, an airforce pilot who spent years in prison after the dictator’s death and suffered from alcoholism.
Burdonsky’s mother Galina Burdonskaya came from a humble background. The couple separated in 1945 and their two children were taken away from their mother for eight years.