Marvin Davis

He made his fortunes as the chair of Davis Petroleum and at one time owned 20th Century Fox, the Pebble Beach Corporation, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the Aspen Skiing Company.

His father came to the United States from London as a teenager in 1917 and later joined the British Navy after reportedly applying for a college scholarship but being denied it because he was Jewish.

In 1960s–1980s, it became a leading independent oil and gas producer in the United States,[4] focusing on drilling in Wyoming, where the company owned a 150-mile pipeline.

[6] Davis offered to purchase the Oakland Athletics from Charlie Finley for $12 million on December 12, 1977, with the intention of moving the franchise to Denver.

The Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Authority filed a lawsuit to block the sale because Finley had ten years remaining on a lease that began with the transfer of the ballclub's operations from Kansas City for the 1968 season.

While Davis was head of 20th Century Fox, President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, complained to him about excessive sexuality in films.

Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge's Metromedia television stations, which would form what is now the Fox network.

Winning a bidding war against the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, Davis bought the Beverly Hills Hotel for $135 million in 1986.

In later years, Davis was linked to takeover targets including Northwest Airlines, US Airways, CBS, NBC and T. Boone Pickens' Mesa.

They had five children and as of November 2005, fourteen grandchildren:[13] Friend Aaron Spelling loosely based the Carrington family of his TV series Dynasty on the Davises, even filming an episode at their Colorado home.

[2][6] In Davis's last decade, he experienced a series of ailments, including diabetes, heart disease, a spinal tumor, pneumonia, and sepsis, and he died at The Knoll on September 25, 2004, at the age of 79.

[28] Nancy Davis alleged that her brother and his partners vastly undervalued the company and thereby denied her (and her mother and siblings) of as much as $50 million in proceeds.

The Texas bankruptcy court that had originally approved the deal to sell Davis Petroleum ruled in favor of Gregg and his partners, then a district-court judge dismissed Nancy's appeal.