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His past is nothing to be ashamed of, either. At his departure, Disney had the year's biggest movie hit (The Lion King), the highest-rated TV show (Home Improvement), the No. 1 soundtrack (The Lion King) and the top-grossing Broadway show (Beauty and the Beast). Katzenberg was the best at a lot of things -- including making a distinctive kind of bad movie. The typical Disney live-action film, like The Mighty Ducks or even the solar-plexus hit Pretty Woman, was a concoction of heavy sentiment and broad comedy designed to appeal to the lowest common spectator.
But, hey, every studio boss makes those films. What none of the others did was to resuscitate the animated feature, a great, dormant tradition that Disney invented and that Katzenberg, 50 years later, helped perfect into a daydream machine that made both money and witty, tuneful, resonant popular art. The kudos he took for this renaissance rankled Roy Disney, who, according to a former studio executive, "had a personal vendetta" against Katzenberg that may have spurred last week's departure. But, as a company insider says, "Jeffrey made a difference in the way animated films are made today. He fulfilled the same role that Walt did in the early days, challenging and cajoling people to do better work." Jeffrey is not a great storyteller, but he knows a great story when he hears it. The next one, due out in June '95, is Pocahontas, but for years the cartoons will bear Katzenberg's stamp. Last week, when he told his daughter Laura, 11, about his departure, she fretfully asked, "What will happen to Pocahontas?" He assured her, "Pocahontas is gonna be the best ever."
One audience that Katzenberg could not sell was the Disney board of directors. "We were looking for a person -- one person or a number of people -- to support Michael Eisner," says Raymond Watson, chairman of the board's executive committee. "Michael didn't want to give Jeffrey what he wanted: involvement in the overall policy of the company, which is what Frank Wells had. Frank could negotiate a contract, meet with the president of General Motors and work out a deal, that sort of thing." The implication is that Katzenberg couldn't. Another board member says, "Look, there are thousands of people involved in the animation unit. We don't think we're going to miss much of a beat. As for live action, our record hasn't been all that good, so we may luck out and find that we can do better."
The Katzenberg camp would dismiss these charges. For 40 quarters in a row, the studio has been within 1% of 20% growth in earnings and revenues. Katzenberg freely admits to being the stingiest executive in movies. But, as he says, "I'm a builder, not a presider," and it was that restlessness that led him to agitate for the No. 2 job.
Two weeks before the announcement, Katzenberg knew it was over. "I knew it wasn't going to work, and I said as much to him." Eisner nonetheless asked him to come up with a proposal that might save the marriage. "So I put together a list of four pages," Katzenberg says. "It took me several days. I dealt with the movie studio, then the company, then the outside world -- things that would reinvent the company, as Michael has often said he wants to do. I met with Michael last Wednesday to discuss them. And you know, that envelope is still in my briefcase. We never got around to the conversation."