Originally a talent agency with artists in the music business as clients, the company became a major force in the film industry, and later expanded into television production.

Early on, MCA booked such prominent artists as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton for clubs and speakeasies run by legendary notorious Chicago mobsters such as Al Capone and others.

[1][2] The Rules were passed down from the Prohibition era, Chicago–area MCA (referenced in books like Citizen Cohn and The King and Queen of Hollywood) to the 1940s Los Angeles–area firm, which focused on representing movie actors.

[3] In 1939, based on Wasserman's recommendation, MCA's headquarters moved from Chicago to Beverly Hills, California, creating a movie division.

The company began to acquire talent agencies, representing established actors such as James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Bette Davis, Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, whom Wasserman became very close with personally.

[5] In 1948, Jules Stein moved up as MCA's first chairman, giving Lew Wasserman charge of day-to-day operations of the company as president.

Although many motion picture studios would not touch this new medium, thinking it was just a fad and would fade away, MCA decided to embrace it.

First, however, the company needed to get a waiver from the Screen Actors Guild, which ruled at the time that talent agencies such as MCA were prohibited from producing TV shows or films.

[14] Decca at the time owned Coral Records and Brunswick Records, and an 89% stake in Universal Pictures Company, Inc. On July 13, 1962, the United States Department of Justice filed suit against MCA, charging that its acquisition of Decca's controlling interest in Universal violated antitrust laws.

[15] To retain Universal, MCA would have to close its talent agency, which represented most of the industry's biggest names (a select few handled by Wasserman personally).

In reality, MCA's talent agency arm became defunct the day the DOJ filed the suit; dissolving it that October was a mere formality.

[16] MCA's now-former agents quickly formed new agencies, many of which are woven into the corporate fabric of today's talent management; Jerry Perenchio's Chartwell Artists represented Elizabeth Taylor and Muhammad Ali.

Former MCA agents Freddie Fields and David Begelman formed Creative Management Associates, another important new agency.

Tanen was behind Universal hits such as Animal House, and John Hughes's Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.

[30] It also bought a TV station in New York City, WWOR-TV (renamed from WOR-TV), in 1987, from RKO General subsidiary of GenCorp, which was in the midst of a licensing scandal.

[33][34] On November 26, 1990, Japanese multinational conglomerate Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. agreed to acquire MCA for US$6.59 billion.

[35][36] MCA was forced to sell WWOR-TV in 1991 to Pinelands, Inc. because of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules that foreign companies could not own over 25% of a U.S. TV station.