Gulf+Western

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For the music genre, see Gulf and western (music genre).

Gulf and Western Industries, Inc., for a number of years known as Gulf Western, was an American conglomerate.

Gulf and Western's prosaic origins date to a manufacturer named Michigan Bumper Co. founded in 1934, though Charles Bluhdorn treated his 1958 takeover of what was then Michigan Plating & Stamping as its "founding" for the purpose of later anniversaries.

Under Bluhdorn the company diversified widely, leaving behind things like stamping metal bumpers not only for communications properties like Paramount Pictures (1966) but also clothing (Kayser-Roth, which happened to own the Miss Universe pageant because it had bought Pacific Mills, which had invented the pageant to sell its Catalina brand of swimsuits), APC Holding Corp. auto parts, New Jersey Zinc (1966), the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company in La Romana, Dominican Republic (1967), the Associates First Capital Corporation, a financial services company (1968), Consolidated Cigars (1968), Simon and Schuster (1975) and Madison Square Garden (1977).

The company also purchased Desilu Productions from Lucille Ball in 1967, which included most of Ball's television product, as well as such properties as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible (It and its successor companies would make millions on both series over the following decades with Star Trek's various hit follow-up TV projects and films, beginning in the late 1970s). On June 5, 1980, Gulf+Western unveiled an electric car, powered by a zinc chloride battery that would hold a charge for several hours and permit speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. By year's end, however, the U.S. Department of Energy (which had invested $15 million in the project) reported that the battery had 65% less power than predicted and could be recharged only by highly trained personnel. .^[1]

In 1983 Bluhdorn died on a plane en route home from the sugar plantation to New York headquarters, and the board bypassed president David Judelson and named senior vice president Martin S. Davis, who had come up through Paramount Pictures, as the new Chief Executive Officer.

Davis slimmed down the company's wilder diversifications and focussed it on entertainment, and sold all of its non-entertainment and non-publishing assets. In 1981, former officials of Gulf and Western's Natural Resources Division led a buyout of New Jersey Zinc and made it a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries, Inc. In 1983, Gulf & Western sold Consolidated Cigar Corporation to five of its senior managers. South Puerto Sugar was sold to an investment group including The Fanjul Brothers in 1984. The company was renamed as Paramount Communications in 1989 and promptly sold The Associates to Ford Motor Company.

It was under this name that the company was taken over by Viacom. Davis was named a member of the board of National Amusements, which controlled Viacom, but ceased to manage the company.

Viacom split into two companies in 2006, one retaining the Viacom name (which continues to own Paramount Pictures), while another was named CBS Corporation (which now controls Paramount Television, which was renamed CBS Paramount Television, and Simon & Schuster). National Amusements retains majority control of the two.

Together, these two companies own many of the former media assets of Gulf+Western today. Meanwhile, the Madison Square Garden properties (including the Knicks and Rangers) were sold to Cablevision not long after the Viacom takeover. They are still owned by Cablevision today.

Another communications company, Western Gulf Media, was incorporated in Texas in 1994. This media company owns internet publications and on-line radio streams. It has no relationship with the former communications group mentioned above.

[edit] In Popular Culture

The Talking Heads song "Puzzling Evidence" which is about the commercialization of America mentions the conglomerate in the line "With your Gulf and Western and your Mastercard, got what you wanted and lost what you had".

In Mel Brooks' 1976 film, Silent Movie, the main characters make a colorized silent film to prevent "Engulf & Devour" from taking over a film studio. This was in reference to the Gulf+Western takeover of Paramount Pictures in 1966.

[edit] Famous Music

Gulf+Western owned Famous Music, a music publishing company, through Paramount Pictures Corp. The music publishing company was created in 1928 by Famous-Lasky Corp., Paramount's predecessor.
Viacom sold Famous Music in 2007 to Sony-ATV Music Publishing, LLC.