Sumner Murray Redstone (né Rothstein; May 27, 1923 – August 11, 2020) was an American billionaire businessman and media magnate.

[5][6] Sumner was a second-generation Bostonian; his father Michael was born in Boston in 1902 to Galician Jewish parents originally from Kozova, a shtetl in Austro-Hungarian land now in Ukraine.

[10][11] Michael Rothstein owned Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts, the forerunner of National Amusements, and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub.

[14] Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1940 first in his class, and was accepted to Harvard College on scholarship.

[15] Among his coursework at Harvard was a Japanese course taught by Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, recommended to him by college administrators based on his study of Latin and Greek in high school.

[5][18] After completing law school, Redstone moved to San Francisco to become a clerk with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a job that then paid $43 per week.

[19] Beginning in 1948, Redstone joined the United States Department of Justice Tax Division as a staff attorney with the appellate tax division, in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court case United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. when the government was actively combating anti-competitive practices among Paramount Pictures and other major film studios.

[19] In the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Holland v. United States, Redstone represented the plaintiffs, a married couple of hotel owners convicted of tax evasion following a sudden rise in their net worth.

[19][20] Although the court would uphold their conviction, Redstone's argument that the government had the burden of proof in proving tax evasion in unusual increases in net worth would later become Internal Revenue Service policy.

However, the sale of certain assets such as Madison Square Garden to Cablevision and Simon & Schuster for $4.6 billion to Pearson PLC would eventually help Viacom improve financially, with its stock price in 1998 approaching $60, breaking its 1995 record high.

[41][42] Under Redstone's leadership, Paramount produced such popular, award-winning films as Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, and Mission: Impossible.

[45][46] He oversaw the creation or revitalization of several major franchises, including Transformers, Star Trek and Paranormal Activity.

[47][48] Paramount also forged productive relationships with top-tier filmmakers and talent including J. J. Abrams,[49] Michael Bay[50] and Martin Scorsese.

[51] The 2010 Paramount slate achieved much success with Shutter Island and a True Grit remake, reaching the biggest box office totals in the storied careers of Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers, respectively.

[54] He also purchased Blockbuster Entertainment,[55] which included Aaron Spelling's production company and a huge library of films, much of which has been merged into Paramount Pictures.

Redstone acquired CBS Corporation in 2000 and then spun it off as a separate company in 2005, taking with it all of Paramount's television shows and catalog.

[67] Documents were made public which verify that, as part of a settlement from Sumner Redstone's first divorce, all of his stock was in irrevocable trusts that was to be left for his grandchildren.

After Mel Karmazin resigned in 2004, two heirs apparent were named: Co-President and Co-COO Les Moonves (who was number 2 to Karmazin at CBS; he was the former head of Warner Bros. Television and before that, Lorimar Television) and Co-President and Co-COO Tom Freston (who had been president and CEO of MTV Networks since 1987 and had been with the company since the formation of MTV Networks' precursor company, Warner-AMEX Satellite Entertainment).

[73][74][75] In May 2016, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Redstone was mentally incompetent.

[82] Redstone's autobiography, A Passion to Win[83] (co-written with author Peter Knobler), was published in 2001 by Viacom's Simon & Schuster.

This book details Redstone's life from a young boy in Boston to the difficult takeover of Viacom and the problems he overcame in purchasing and managing both Blockbuster Video and Paramount Pictures.

[84] Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has stated that Redstone's biography A Passion to Win was an influence in creating the series.

A longtime Democratic supporter, with a history of donating to many Democratic campaigns, including regular donations to Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,[88] Redstone endorsed Republican George W. Bush over Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election, allegedly because he argued that Bush would be better for his company and the economy.

[108] On March 29, 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after 30 hours of extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Though he was warned that he might never be able to live a normal life again, eight years later he was fit enough to insist on playing tennis nearly every day[109] and to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom.

According to MarketWatch, "Herzer agreed to pay back $3.25 million of the tens of millions of gifts that Redstone gave her", and "the wide-ranging agreement ends all litigation between the two sides, who have been battling in the courts since the fall of 2015 when Redstone kicked Herzer out of his Beverly Hills mansion, replaced her as his health-care agent and wrote her out of his estate planning.