Sumner Redstone Passed Away!

American businessman and television magnate Sumner Redstone passed away.

The American businessman and media magnate Sumner Murray Redstone passed away. The chairman emeritus of ViacomCBS who build a media empire from the drive-in to the streaming service passed away at the age of 97.

He turned his family drive-in theater chains into a multibillion-dollar empire encompassing CBS Network and Viacom.

Redstone created National Amusements which led to an acquirement of media companies.

He was worth an estimated $5 billion in revenue. He was the former executive chairman of both Viacom and CBS. But in 2016, he was ousted after a court order examination from a geriatric psychiatrist said he's senile and no longer able to make decisions on his own.

He was succeeded by Les Moonves at CBS who was ousted a few years later and Philippe Dauman at Viacom until his ouster.

Born in 1923, Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) in Boston, he was born to Michael and Belle Rothstein. He grew up in a Jewish family and changed his name from Rothstein to Redstone.

He said that he wanted to use the Yiddish form of his last name and found it to be a successful way to get jobs during a time when anti-Semitic violence during the 1940s. His father was the owner of a the Dedham, Massachusetts (the forerunner of National Amusements) and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub.

Redstone attended the Boston Latin School which he was a graduate. He was first in class. He also attended Harvard College and graduated. He also served as a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was part of the Signals Intelligence Service and was responsible of cracking Japanese codes. After the military, he moved to Washington, DC to study at Georgetown and then off to Harvard Law School for his law degree.

After he got his law degree he would serve as a special assistant to Tom C. Clark, then U.S. Attorney and Supreme Court Justice.

He would leave the government sector soon to help his father. He would end up getting taking his father's company National Amusement into the mainstream and he would end up the CEO.

Redstone would invest in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures and Paramount Pictures which he gained millions off the successes of the companies returns.

In 1979, Redstone suffered serious injuries from a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston. He would go through extensive surgery to regain his strength and movements. He was a fighter. He said that he said that fire was a wake up call and said his determination to live and succeed was the only narrative.

"I was enveloped in flames," Redstone wrote. "The fire shot up my legs. The pain was searing. I was being burned alive." He described staggering to the window of his third-floor room and climbing onto a tiny ledge, waiting desperately until firefighters finally arrived. Suffering third-degree burns over 45 percent of his body, he underwent surgery after surgery to graft his living skin onto the wounded areas. How did he survive this trauma at age 55?

ViacomCBS chairwoman Shari Redstone praised her father for his innovation and strengths.

"Determination," he wrote, "is the key to survival. If I hadn't learned that lesson before, I knew it well now."

With Redstone's determination and his quest for content, National Amusements accumulated shares of Viacom International, the entertainment distribution company. In 1987, taking a huge risk by using debt, he successfully pulled off a hostile takeover of Viacom, which by then included MTV.

"We sold about everything we had," he recalled in the 2012 CNBC interview. "I had acquired a lot of media stocks. In those days, it meant a great deal, because they weren't part of conglomerates. We made some money. We borrowed some money. As they say, we bet the ranch. Something like $5-to-700 million, which is now worth about $8 billion."

In another high-stakes takeover battle, his $10 billion bid outmuscled fellow media moguls Barry Diller and John Malone for Paramount Communications in 1994. In addition to MTV, the Viacom empire later included such TV properties as BET, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Redstone added CBS to his Viacom realm in 2000, then spun it off into a separate company five years later. Its holdings included Showtime and publisher Simon & Schuster.

In the 2012 interview with CNBC, he said his acquisition of Viacom was his biggest business achievement.

"Without Viacom, there would have been no Paramount. And there would have been no CBS," he said. "So I guess the greatest moment would have to be the very difficult battle with, and acquisition of, Viacom."

"My father led an extraordinary life that not only shaped entertainment as we know it today, but created an incredible family legacy," Shari Redstone, Sumner's daughter and chair of ViacomCBS, said in a statement Wednesday. "Through it all, we shared a great love for one another and he was a wonderful father, grandfather and great-grandfather. I am so proud to be his daughter and I will miss him always."

Redstone controlled about 80 percent of the voting stock of Viacom and CBS through his private holding company, National Amusements. In November 2019, his fortune was estimated at $3.9 billion. By Dec. 5, 2019, the first day of trading for the remarried ViacomCBS, it had dropped to a still formidable $2.6 billion. And in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it was valued at $3 billion in May 2020.

"Patience is a virtue that I do not respect," Redstone said in a 2012 interview with CNBC. "If you're patient, you'll never go anywhere. It takes impatience to drive you to succeed."

Under pressure from shareholders because of reports of Redstone's declining health and mental competency, the CBS board on Feb. 3, 2016, announced his resignation as executive chairman and appointed CEO Les Moonves as his successor. A day later, Viacom named Redstone chairman emeritus and CEO Philippe Dauman as his successor as executive chairman. Redstone gave up his voting position on the Viacom board in February 2017.

Viacom and CBS merger with some of the major players of television and news.

"Sumner Redstone was a brilliant visionary, operator and dealmaker, who single-handedly transformed a family-owned drive-in theater company into a global media portfolio," ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said in a statement Wednesday. "He was a force of nature and fierce competitor, who leaves behind a profound legacy in both business and philanthropy. ViacomCBS will remember Sumner for his unparalleled passion to win, his endless intellectual curiosity, and his complete dedication to the company. We extend our deepest sympathies to the Redstone family today."

He was married to Phyllis Gloria Raphael. He had two children: Brent and Shari. He divorced Phyllis in 1999. He would marry Paula Fortunato, a school teacher who was 39 years his junior. He filed for divorce from her in 2008.

He was also dated Sydney Holland for a few years before he split from her.

At the time of his death, he was living with his companion Manuela Herzer.