Sumner Redstone

Sumner Murray Redstone (né Rothstein; May 27, 1923 – August 11, 2020) was an American billionaire businessman and media magnate. He was the founder and chairman of the second incarnation of Viacom, chairman of CBS Corporation (the two companies merged in 2019, a year before Redstone's death), and the majority owner and chairman of the National Amusements theater chain.

Until his death, Redstone was a majority voting shareholder of the media conglomerate ViacomCBS, the parent company of the Paramount Pictures film studio, the CBS television network, and various cable networks.

According to Forbes, as of April 2020, he was worth US$2.6 billion.

Redstone was formerly the executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom. In February 2016, at age 92, Redstone resigned both chairmanships following a court-ordered examination by a geriatric psychiatrist. He was ultimately succeeded by Les Moonves at CBS and Philippe Dauman at Viacom.

Redstone was born Sumner Murray Rothstein in 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Belle (née Ostrovsky) and Michael Rothstein. Sumner was a second-generation Bostonian; his father Michael was born in Boston in 1902 to Galician Jewish parents originally from Kozova, a shtetl in Austro-Hungarian land now in Ukraine. His mother Bella was also an American-born child of Jewish immigrants; her parents emigrated to the U.S. from Kyiv early in the 20th century. Redstone had a younger brother named Edward Stanton Redstone.

In 1940, at Sumner's behest, his father changed the family surname from "Rothstein" to "Redstone"; although Sumner credited his father for the name change, friends of the family attribute it more to Sumner. "Red stone" is the translation of the Yiddish name Rothstein. Michael Rothstein owned Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts, the forerunner of National Amusements, and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub. As a teenager, Sumner had summer jobs at his father's theaters but "had higher aspirations than the then-still-somewhat-déclassé world of theaters," wrote Keach Hagey.

Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1940 first in his class, and was accepted to Harvard College on scholarship. Among his coursework at Harvard was a Japanese course taught by Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, recommended to him by college administrators based on his study of Latin and Greek in high school. In 1943, Reischauer left Harvard to establish a United States Army Signal Corps training program at Arlington Hall for Japanese translators and cryptanalysts, positions in need during World War II; Redstone would be among Reischauer's students following the professor to Arlington Hall.

Enlisting in the United States Army, Redstone became a second lieutenant in 1944 before being promoted to first lieutenant. He worked with a team at the Signals Intelligence Service that decoded Japanese messages. Despite leaving Harvard for the military, Redstone had completed enough credits that Harvard granted his Bachelor of Arts in the class of 1944 with a concentration in classics and government. After his military service, he attended Georgetown University Law Center before transferring to Harvard Law School and receiving his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1947.

In 1954, he joined his father's theater chain Northeast Theatre Corporation, which then had fourteen drive-in theaters in five eastern states. The Redstone family re-incorporated Northeast Theatre Corporation and their other businesses as National Amusements in 1959 to access more money to finance expansion; Redstone would invest nearly $18,000 in stock and be named vice president. In 1964, Redstone was elected president of the Theater Owners of America, which would merge with a rival group to form the National Association of Theatre Owners, for which Redstone became chairman in 1965.

Redstone became CEO of National Amusements in 1967. The company had 93 theater screens (52 drive-ins and 41 indoor) when Redstone took office; within 10 years, National Amusements had nearly 250 screens. After watching the first Star Wars film in 1977, Redstone directed National Amusements to buy a five percent stake in 20th Century Fox, distributor of Star Wars. Having bought Fox for $8 a share, National Amusements sold Fox at $60 after Marvin Davis bought the company. National Amusements' other investments in Columbia Pictures, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures also had large returns on investment in the early 1980s.

In 2025, Barry Diller stated that Redstone regularly bribed former Paramount CEO Frank Yablans, with former Paramount chairman Charlie Bluhdorn having knowledge of this.

As a hedge against slow growth in movie theaters, Redstone began buying stock in Viacom International in 1985. Viacom spun off from CBS in 1971 after the FCC ruled at the time that television networks could not syndicate their own programs. Viacom initially syndicated CBS network shows such as Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O, and I Love Lucy.

Viacom also owned MTV Networks (formerly known as Warner-AMEX Satellite Entertainment), which owned MTV and Nickelodeon. In addition, other properties included pay television networks Showtime and The Movie Channel. Viacom acquired MTV Networks in 1985 for $550 million from Steve Ross' Warner Communications.

Redstone's autobiography, A Passion to Win (co-written with author Peter Knobler), was published in 2001 by Viacom's Simon & Schuster. This book details Redstone's life from a young boy in Boston to the difficult takeover of Viacom and the problems he overcame in purchasing and managing both Blockbuster Video and Paramount Pictures. The book also recounts the CBS merger (Viacom was a spin-off company of CBS to syndicate its programs, and the subsidiary bought the parent almost 30 years later). Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has stated that Redstone's biography A Passion to Win was an influence in creating the series.

Viacom's broadcasting properties at the time of A Passion to Win's release included several radio stations and two TV stations: WBZ CBS 4, which had just become a CBS O&O through a merger with Westinghouse four years before Viacom and CBS merged, and WSBK UPN 38 in Redstone's hometown, Boston.

In 2023, the book Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire was published in Cornerstone Press (Penguin Books), written by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams. The book tells the story of the Redstone dynasty.

A longtime Democratic supporter, with a history of donating to many Democratic campaigns, including regular donations to Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Redstone endorsed Republican George W. Bush over Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election, allegedly because he argued that Bush would be better for his company and the economy. Despite this public endorsement, he donated money to Kerry during the primaries.

Redstone contributed over $150 million to various philanthropic causes.

In April 2007, Redstone announced a commitment of $105 million in charitable grants to fund research and patient care advancements in cancer and burn recovery at three major non-profit healthcare organizations. The cash contributions of $35 million were each paid out over five years to FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, based in Washington, D.C.; the Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer Center in Los Angeles, California; and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Up to at least 2012, Redstone contributed $1.5 million to the Global Poverty Project.

He gave millions of dollars to the Cambodian Children's Fund, a nonprofit program that provides a wide range of critical health and educational services to impoverished and abused children in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Redstone's contribution will be used to create the Sumner M. Redstone Child Rescue Center, a stand-alone facility originally scheduled to open during the fall of 2007 for children 5 to 16. In subsequent years Redstone continued to support this organization.

In early 2010, Redstone pledged a $1 million gift to Autism Speaks in support of scientific research into the causes of autism and effective treatments. Redstone had given financial support to Autism Speaks previously. In 2011, Redstone gave an additional $500,000 to the group in support of its Translational Research Initiative, bringing his cumulative lifetime contribution to Autism Speaks to $1.7 million.

Redstone married Phyllis Gloria Raphael on July 4, 1947. They had two children: Brent Redstone and Shari Redstone. In 1999, they divorced when Phyllis Raphael served Sumner Redstone a $3 billion divorce lawsuit which accused the mogul of adultery and cruelty. Sumner was seen with Hollywood producer Christine Peters in Paris and was quoted as saying at the time that he "wanted to spend the rest of his life with Christine." As a result of the divorce, Redstone moved to Los Angeles where he continued to romantically pursue Peters. Peters went on to produce the hit romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in Canada. As Redstone's patience ran out, he married Paula Fortunato, a former primary school teacher 39 years his junior. Redstone filed for divorce from Fortunato on October 17, 2008. Their divorce was finalized on January 22, 2009. Redstone owned a house in the Beverly Park area of Los Angeles, which he purchased in 2002 for $14.5 million.

On March 29, 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after 30 hours of extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Though he was warned that he might never be able to live a normal life again, eight years later he was fit enough to insist on playing tennis nearly every day and to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom. Redstone discussed the story of surviving the fire as a reflection of his strong determination and will to live.