As the elusive, tyrannical head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) Lew Wassermann has been the most powerful and feared man in show business for more than half a century. His story has remained largely unknown, until now.... Intensely private and so low-profile that he wouldn't allow press photographers to take his picture for decades, Wasserman ran his beloved MCA with an iron fist.

His career spans the entire history of the movies, from the silent era, through the age of Louis B. Mayer and the studio moguls, to the dawn of television, and up to present-day Hollywood, where money, microchips, drugs, and multinational politics dominate the corporate power struggles for control of the American entertainment industry.

He was guru to such legends as Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, as well as a whole new generation of film magicians, beginning with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Confidant to presidents and popes, Wasserman also had ties to the underworld. Even today, at eighty-five, he remains the Godfather of Hollywood.