The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 109

BUSINESS Sunday, December 13, 1981 Cos Atujelce (Times Part I Jerry Perenchio: Hollywood's Consummate Deal Maker By DAVID CROOK and KATHRYN HARRIS. Times Staff Writers Burton, Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda. Perenchio eventually gave up those clients to concentrate on his own business deals, through and his Century City-based Chartwell Communications Inc. But his adroit dealmaking still vie-star contracts to negotiating more daring deals. Not that he had done so badly as a talent agent.

Running his own agency. Chartwell Artists, which he rated as the nation's fifth largest in 1971, Perenchio's stable of stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard hinges on knowing the "talent" among financiers or film makers. "He traffics in interesting people," said Robert D. Wood, the former CBS president who first put "All in the Family" on the air. "Jerry Perenchio is what everybody thinks show business is all about," said his friend of 25 years, TV producer Pierre Cossette.

Unlike many people in show business, Perenchio usually has chosen to remain in the background. He has been known to call reporters with story ideas, but in the past 11 months, he has declined repeated requests for interviews. Nor would Lear or Yorkin be interviewed for this story. Two other close business associates said Perenchio asked them not to talk to reporters about him. Contacted by telephone at his office last week, Perenchio again refused to be interviewed.

Demands Privacy "I really don't want my name in the goddamn paper," he said. "You should respect my privacy. I really don't mean to be rude." He is averse to any publicity, including stories in The Times and other newspapers. "I just don't want to give out any interviews. I just hate them.

Inevitably, I end up hurting some people or leaving some names out or being quoted out of context." But numerous court documents, information on file with federal regulatory agencies and interviews with friends and acquaintances have revealed much about the elusive Perenchio. Despite his reluctance to reveal himself to the public, friends say he is hardly a recluse. His love of and willingness to partake in the finer things in life from staying in exclusive European hotels, to wearing Dunhill's suits and drinking Dom Perignon champagne are as much a part of the Perenchio persona as his eight-figure business deals. Lavish Party Friends say he is a gourmet cook, a connoisseur of fine (and expensive) wines and one of the best party-givers around. Last September, Perenchio threw a lavish weekend-long party in the San Francisco Bay area to celebrate the marriage of his son, John.

Los Angeles guests were shuttled there in what singer Andy Williams, perhaps Perenchio's closest friend, said was a fleet of private planes. The wedding party, Williams said, was archetypal Perenchio: "Everything was first-rate." And so it was. The weekend opened with a get-together for about 80 people at the Burlingame Country Club. Composer Henry Mancini, a former Perenchio client, Please see PERENCHIO, Page 3 Shortly after President Richard M. Nixon first visited mainland China in 1972 and opened the door to that long-closed nation, Los Angeles businessman A.

Jerrold Perenchio boarded a plane for Hong Kong. Perenchio was going after more than a tourist's visa to the People's Republic he was determined to be the first American to capitalize on the warmer relations between the two countries by signing the Peking Opera for a U.S. tour. He failed. He never received his visa and couldn't put together a deal.

Instead, while waiting in his Hong Kong hotel, he lost $5,000 in a 10-day gin game with his wife. Such a losing streak is rare for Jerry Perenchio, a 50-year-old former talent agent who, in the last decade, has built a financial empire spanning commercial and pay television, sports and, most recently, films. String of Deals He has worked his entrepreneurial wizardry largely without public notice or scrutiny. Well-known in the upper echelons of many entertainment and financial companies, he is a total stranger to the millions who tune to his TV programs, watch his sports extravaganzas or fawn over his movie stars. To many in Hollywood, Perenchio is the entertainment industry's consummate deal maker, the quintessential insider.

Up to now, he has triumphed in a remarkable string of multimillion-dollar deals: Three weeks ago. Perenchio and partner Norman Lear, the noted TV producer, agreed to buy Avco Embassy Pictures Corp. for a reported $25 million. In 1977, he and partner Oak Industries of San Diego started the ON TV pay-TV operation in Los Angeles, now the largest and most lucrative subscription TV service in the world. In September, he sold his 49 interest in ON TV for $55 million.

Major Productions He joined producers Lear and Bud Yorkin in 1973 as president of Tandem Productions, the maker of such hit network-TV series as "All in the Family" and "Sanford and Son." In T.A.T. Communications, a separate venture with Lear, he has produced "The Jeffersons," "One Day at a Time" and other commercial TV series. Perenchio dreamed up the March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier "Fight of Champions" boxing match, which grossed more than $20 million. Two years later he put together the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. He collected an $800,000 finder's fee for introducing the owners of Lum's Inc.

to Caesars Palace in 1969, resulting in its $60-million sale. With the finder's fee, friends said, Perenchio pivoted from mo- -VV Jv I in mtaft ii-ifriiiiifrFM-niii'ir Fining iiim ft Norman Lear Joe Frazier TV Producer Boxer I I I 5Lx Robert D. Wood TV Executive Muhammad AM Boxer 1 mm Jane Fonda Actress Jack Kent Cooke Entrepreneur Henry Mancini Composer Elizabeth Taylor Actress Bud Yorkin TV Producer Clifford Perlman Casino Owner i- J. J. ri -sA At i I Li 1 1 gsx L-J Everitt A.

Carter Pay -TV Executive Billie Jean King Tennis Pro Pierre Cossette TV Producer Andy Williams Pop Singer Harry James Bandleader Bobby Riggs Tennis Pro CEORCE E. CAREY Lot Angrln Timt S. J. Diamond For What It's Worth Marketers' Woe: Shelves Bulge, Costs Boom A Valuable Gift to Leave Heirs Is Up-to-Date Will and de-escalating marketing expenditures." One reason marketing expenditures are rising is that consumer usage of many packaged goods is near the saturation point. Twenty-five years ago, most men didn't use an underarm deodorant or antiperspirani regularly.

Today, six of seven do. So the tens of millions of dollars now spent each year to ad vertise deodorants and antiperspirants for men serve mainly to induce current users to switch brands, Manufacturers of national brands are also spending more on marketing to combat the inroads of lower-priced supermarket, or private-label, brands, and the even cheaper generic products that come in plain packages and aren't advertised at all. Packaging has grown more clalora(c in recent years partly because of the trend to self-service retailing In the absence of sales clerks, manufacturers explain iheir produrK more fully on the package, They package items nuts, bolts and picture hooks, for instancethat clerks formerly scooped out of bins and bagged, And they make more dif -ficult to shoplift small Hems such as razor blades and lipstiik by attaching the.n to much larger packages. Manufacturers aNo Cater toronsumers by using more throw a at containers, such as aluminum er cms that cost five times the beer ingredients. Civrn the trend to more pat kagmg.

Manufacturers of national brands are also spending more on marketing to combat the inroads of lower-priced Supermarket, or private-label, brands, and the even cheaper ge. rims MIKKTING. 2 back titles a month into supermarkets, drugstores and other retail outlets that typically stock only a couple of hundred titles exemplifies the irrationality and waste of marketing. Hut to those in the magazine and paper-bark hook business, mass destruction of unsold merchandise is just business as usual. "Returns are a fact of life in this business," W.

Art Renfro. general manager of Sunset News, says above the whine of Sunset's shredder. "You've got to keep putting merchandise out there. Returns are healthy to a certain extent in order to maximize sales." The futility symbolized by Sunset's shredder of trying to make an already saturated market absorb more merchandise extends beyond magazines ami paperback books into nearly every nook and cranny of the nation's supermarkets, drugstores and other outlets for consumer packaged goods. From aspirin to aerosol sprays, from canned soup to shamiwo.

manufacturers' efforts to carve out a bigger market share or simply protect the one they have are running up costs and consumer prices. As packaged -goods manufacturers rom-pete harder for shelf spare, consumers' attention and shares of slow-growth, no-growth and even declining markets, they are rapidly escalating marketing expenditures, "It's wore than an arms rare." says Northwestern t'niversity marketing professor Philip Kotler. "In an arms rare the two side can negotiate limitations, but In a marketing rare competitors are forbidden (by antitrust laws) from talking to each othrr American consumers are the target of a vast increase in the number nf commercial messages as the battle for market share among major advertisers intensifies. This is the fourth in a series of articles examining the effectiveness of all this effort and expense. The lust will appear next Sunday in the Husmess Section.

nvA.KKNTMacDOUGALL Times Staff Writer Mechanized mass production is the cornerstone of American industry, hut in magazine and paperback book distribution the most advanced technology is devoted to the mass destruction of unsold merchandise. At Sunset News mixlern distribution plant in Ixis Angeles, a big. noisy shredder runs uninterrupted throughout the day converting tens of thousands of copies of brand-new, never-read I'laylsiys, Header's Digests, romance novels, murder mysteries and other magazines and paperbacks that have been relumed by retailers into 7)0-pound bales of scrap paper. Sunset News and the nation's 4V) other wholealers of magazines and paperback Ixioks destroy, cm average, half of all copies they receive from publishers. tiM year alone thry shrrdded about 2.1 billion magazines that cost their publishers a staggering $3I million to print and ship, the Magazine Publishers Association estimates To emirs of mlern mass marketing, pub.

Iishers' less.than-siirrcstfwl attempt to forre alKiul magazine and -7X) new paper- whose members want the legal business. lawyers should also be sources of Information, but It seems amazingly hard for lawyers and people needing only occasional legal services to find each other. "I don't know how to get proper and reasonable estate planning to the great middle class." says Los Angeles estate-planning attorney Hichard Josslirt, "and they don't know how to get to me. The big downtown firms don't get enough from such small clients; the smaller practitioners may not have the expertise." Some local bar associations offer through volunteers a half hour of estate planning advice for only $15 potentially no less a service because it is good marketing. Some people often colleagues who are not into volunteering anything say the volunteers arc mostly inexperienced or unpopular and in need of work, tlul If so.

The Times drew by rhanee a clear exreption Josslin. who is hardly hungry or inexperienced but simply wants to help the nort 'Corporate customer find access "A very small percentage of people have a will." says UCLA law professor Jesse Dukemimer. "A lot avoid it because it's associated with ihoir own death, and they can't face that." Many people are jusl afraid to confront a lawyer, or don't know how to find one to confront. And although they realize they should sum up and provide for transfer of their estatethe function of a will thry don't know what kind of will thv personally nerd. The new tax laws passed this year rompliratc the situation further, rnakini? tt possible to leave unlimited amounts to a spouse tax-free, and much more than before to other twopie.

Thus, even those who already have wills and perhaps rla-Iwirate l.tx s.i vintr estate planrt may now have to change ihem i n-tirrly. hirtunalrly, there's a lot of information available from library nd popular periodicals, from Irrturrs offered by schools, clubs and churrhes. Moreover, surprisingly detailed pamphlets are often pijbliihed by banks, which want trul and reriit(tr amiRnmcnis, and by bars (California's, for nr)..