Sumner Redstone - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Sumner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Michael and Belle (née Ostrovsky) Rothstein. "Red stone" is a literal translation of the German-Jewish 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.

Sumner Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, from which he was graduated first in his class. He then attended Harvard College, where he completed the studies for his baccalaureate in three years. Later, Redstone served in World War II, with a team that decoded Japanese messages for the United States Army. After this military service, he worked in Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown University Law School. He transferred to Harvard Law School and received his LL.B., later amended to a Juris Doctor, from that institution.

After completing law school, Redstone worked for the United States Department of Justice Tax Division in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, then entered private practice. After a few years later, he joined his father's theater chain.

As National Amusements grew, Redstone came to believe that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms: channels of distribution (in varied forms) would always exist, but content would always be essential (Redstone coined the phrase, "Content is king!"). He invested in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (Redstone's Viacom would buy Paramount in the 1990s), all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell their stock in the early 1980s.

In 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.