STEIN, JULES CEASAR

STEIN, JULES CEASAR (1896–1981), U.S. entertainment executive; ophthalmologist. Stein was born in South Bend, Indiana, to Orthodox retailer M. Louis and Rose (nee Cohen) Stein. Stein's mother was an invalid, and the resulting financial drain for her medical care forced Stein to work at age 12, playing the violin and saxophone. He had established his own band and was booking musical acts by 1910 and graduated high school early two years later at age 16. Stein went on to attend the University of West Virginia (1912–13), the University of Chicago (1915), University of Chicago's Rush Medical College (1921) and the University of Vienna (1921). Following a residency in ophthalmology at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Stein set up a private practice in 1923. He continued to book bands on the side, and, with William Goodheart, in 1924 Stein co-founded the Music Corporation of America, an agency that excelled at setting up exclusive contracts and perfected packaging, which would provide venues for an entire season of bookings and net the agency a separate fee. In 1938, he sent employee Lew Wasserman to Hollywood to open an mca film division. As the agency gained momentum in southern California, Stein moved his family to Beverly Hills. In 1946, he turned the presidency of mca over to Wasserman, but remained chairman. mca was active in breaking the standard seven-year studio contract, and in 1952 Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan helped secure a deal that would allow mca to represent and hire actors for the agency's television production company Revue Productions. In 1959 the agency's name was officially changed to mca and went public. mca also purchased Decca Records in 1959 and started acquiring other businesses, including a consolidated Universal Pictures, Spencer Gifts, and book publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons. In 1962, the Justice Department forced mca to give up its agency, leaving the company to focus on television and film production. Stein began promoting vision research in 1960, founding Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., which helped pave the way for corrective surgical procedures. The University of California at Los Angeles dedicated the Jules Stein Eye Institute in 1966, and two years later Stein pushed for Congress to establish the National Eye Institute under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health. In 1973, after undergoing surgery a few years earlier for an intestinal disorder, Stein turned over chairmanship of mca to Wasserman, but remained primary shareholder of the company. Upon his death from a heart attack, Stein left behind an estate worth $150 million.

bibliography:

"Stein, Jules," in: The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, vol. 1: 1981–1985 (1998); Jules Stein – American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, http://www.ascrs.org/Awards/Jules-Stein-MD.cfm; T. Schatz, "The Last Mogul," The Nation (June 30, 2003), http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030630&s=schatz.