Jonathan Dolgen, Viacom Entertainment chairman, dies at 78

Jonathan Dolgen, a ten-year Viacom chairman who spent time working for Sumner Redstone and alongside Sherry Lansing, the CEO of Paramount Pictures, as a tenacious dealmaker and skilled numbers cruncher, passed away. He was 78.

A publicist reported that Dolgen passed away on Monday night at UCLA Medical Centre from natural causes while being surrounded by his family. In 2012, he experienced a brain haemorrhage.

Dolgen, a former Wall Street lawyer and native of Queens, held executive positions at Columbia Pictures, Fox, and Sony Pictures. He was recruited by Redstone as the first top executive for the newly merged Viacom entertainment conglomerate created by the $8.2 billion acquisition of Paramount Communications.

“I had known Dolgen off and on over the years when I was a motion picture exhibitor, even before I gained control of Viacom,” Redstone recalled in his 2001 book, Passion to Win. “He was with Columbia Pictures, and I remember sitting with him in one particular meeting that became rather heated and thinking, ‘Boy, there is one smart guy.'”

Dolgen was appointed chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group in April 1994 to assume the function that the expelled Stanley Jaffe had played as president of Paramount Communications, and he immediately began cutting costs.