Product Description

A riveting account of Michael Eisner's outrageous, thrilling, and often self-destructive tenure as head of the Walt Disney Company

Kim Masters, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Hit & Run, has written a page-turning account of Michael Eisner's ascent at The Magic Kingdom. Based on hundreds of interviews with Hollywood's power players, she weaves Eisner's story together with those who have crossed his path: Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz. Masters traces Eisner's rivalry with Diller at ABC and Paramount and shows how at Disney, Eisner and Frank Wells rejuvenated the company. Masters also details the fallout between Eisner and Katzenberg (who was responsible for hits like Aladdin and The Lion King) after Wells's untimely death, and traces the move of uber-agent Michael Ovitz from CAA to an executive position at Disney, one of Hollywood's most spectacular failures.Kim Masters, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Hit & Run, has written a page-turning account of Michael Eisner's ascent at The Magic Kingdom. Based on hundreds of interviews with Hollywood's power players, she weaves Eisner's story together with those who have crossed his path: Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz. Masters traces Eisner's rivalry with Diller at ABC and Paramount and shows how at Disney, Eisner and Frank Wells rejuvenated the company. Masters also details the fallout between Eisner and Katzenberg (who was responsible for hits like Aladdin and The Lion King) after Wells's untimely death, and traces the move of uber-agent Michael Ovitz from CAA to an executive position at Disney, one of Hollywood's most spectacular failures.

The Keys to the Kingdom climaxes with the shocking and incredibly personal court battle between Eisner and Katzenberg, involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #761681 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-01
• Released on: 2000-03-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

From Library Journal
Hit & Run coauthor Masters on Eisner's reign at Disney.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A chilling little horror tale about just how ugly greed and ambition can be . ... Big and juicy." -- Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"A chilling little horror tale about just how ugly greed and ambition can be . ... Big and juicy." -- --Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"A page turner ... juicy as all get-out and persuasive to boot." -- --Steven Bach, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A page turner ... juicy as all get-out and persuasive to boot." -- Steven Bach, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A sweeping, vivid and richly entertaining account, not just of Disney but of the entire movie industry." -- --Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2000

"Merge Indecent Exposure with Barbarians at the Gate, add sex and you have Hit & Run." -- Sherryl Connelly, Daily News

"The most entertaining business book to come along in years." -- Christopher Byron, Wall Street Journal

"What Masters does with exceptional skill is to dig up small, inside details of the day-to-day machinations of show business." -- --Entertainment Weekly, March 24, 2000

About the Author

Kim Masters, a contributing editor for Time and Vanity Fair and a former reporter for the Washington Post, is coauthor with Nancy Griffin of Hit & Run. She lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

So sad but SOOooooo true...
Those of us that "love" the Disney Company have been having our hearts torn out for years watching this show of shows in the Team Disney Building. Finally, a book that dares to tell the truth, Michael just plain does not care for the people that work for him. It seems Kim missed the recent quote in the trade papers by Michael saying: "Unless I am completly out of touch, we have the best morale of any major company in America". Dear Mr. out of touch.... Well researched and well written it's a page turner even if you are not employed by the mouse house. Buy this book and see the other side of the "Tragic Kingdom". There is honest information here, not only about the name players but about those that they brush aside without a thought. (And people wonder why every time there is an earth quake we say "Well, there's Walt turning over."

I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
Michael Eisner is routinely credited (and has been handsomely rewarded) with the great Disney turnaround. Was it genius or luck? Kim Master's Key's to the Kingdom-How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip is a well researched and thoroughly entertaining look into the Hollywood scene and the Walt Disney Company in particular from 1984 to 1999. We are given a rare unfiltered peek over the burm and into the inner sanctum of the Magic Kingdom. In the end, one comes away with the intended impression that Bravado, Ego and Greed are the three horseman of Hollywood. We are left with an unflattering portrait of Michael Eisner as a parsimonious and deeply flawed leader clearly out of touch with the world around him.

So how did such a flawed leader turn a Two Billion Dollar company into a Sixty Billion Dollar juggernaut of American industry? Frank Well's summed up the situation best when shortly after the Eisner/Wells team ascended to the leadership of Disney, Well's noted "Every time I open a door at this company, there's money behind it."

What is glossed over and unappreciated in Kim Master's book is the fact that when Walt Disney died in 1966 he left the Disney organization without a well groomed leader. From 1966 to 1984 Walt literally ruled Disney from the grave and no one in the incestuous leadership of the company dared peek into the cupboard or look behind any door.

The two to sixty billion dollar story, weaved by Kim Masters leaves the reader with the clear impression that it was Michael Eisner's luck rather than his talent which was at the core of this success. Michael's early failure to appreciate the value of animation, his obsession with paying the minimum for talent, the lost movie opportunities, the personal vendetta against Jeffrey Katzenberg, the hiring and firing of Michael Ovitz, the yet to pay off acquisition of ABC/CapitalCities are all fascinating vignette's in a passion play which could easily be called "As the Mouse Turns."

Despite the negative tone of the book in general, Master's paints a flattering picture of Frank Well's insightful decision making and tactful backroom smoothing of feathers, leaving the reader to conclude that it was perhaps Well's talents and not Eisner's that were in fact were the real Keys to the Kingdom.

With fewer doors to look behind and all the cupboards bare, it is interesting to note that since Well's death in 1994 Disney stock has grown only at about the same rate as the S&P 500.

While insisting that most talent work for the minimum, we are told that Eisner in 1996 signed a long term employment contract with Disney which provided in addition to a $750,000 base salary, annual bonus participation and options for an additional 24,000,000 shares of Disney stock.

In fairness to Michael Eisner the shareholders of Disney have profited handsomely during his tenure at the Company. Nevertheless even as Eisner himself might say "Yes, but could we have made the deal without giving up so much money?"

Wow!
A tremendously insightful juggernaut of accounts that takes you on a ride through one of the most fascinating journeys in recent Hollywood history. Kim Masters does a great job of establishing "who's who" and "who did what to who" by detailing key defining moments in the careers and lives of such Disney icons as Michael Eisner, Frank G. Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Roy E. Disney, et al - not to mention former Paramount chair Barry Diller.

This is just one of those books I started to peruse on my weekly Sunday trip to the bookstore and simply COULD NOT PUT DOWN! Too bad it was published before Masters had a chance to tell us a bit about Bob Iger's rise to the Presidency of The Walt Disney Company.