It's A Wonderful Life

By NEAL GABLER

( WHEN STEVE ROSS, NEAR death with cancer, checked into a Los Angeles hospital in late 1992, he registered as George Bailey, the self-sacrificing common-man hero of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. No doubt that was how the man who masterminded the merger of Time Inc. (which owns TIME) and Warner Communications wished to be perceived. But the Steve Ross who emerges in Master of the Game (Simon & Schuster; 395 pages; $25), New Yorker staff writer Connie Bruck's intelligent and fascinating biography, is composed equally of George Bailey, Don Corleone, Felix Krull and Oskar Schindler -- Steven Spielberg has said Ross was a model for the portrayal of Schindler in Schindler's List.

Born in Brooklyn in 1927 to a once affluent Jewish family that lost everything in the Depression, Ross was a young opportunist without an opportunity until he married a woman whose father owned a string of funeral parlors. Within a few years, Ross expanded the company's businesses to include car rentals, parking lots and cleaning services. In 1967 Ross acquired a powerful talent agency, and two years later, he bought the faltering Warner Bros. studio.

As Bruck amply demonstrates, Ross's charm made him a natural for Hollywood, where everyone is a vortex of ego and where success belongs not to those who count the beans but to those who extravagantly spoil the stars. If Barbra Streisand wanted a painting, why not buy it for her? If Dustin Hoffman was vacationing in Europe, why not provide him with a yacht? If Steven Spielberg was looking for a home in the Hamptons, why not arrange the sale for him? "It's about people, really -- realizing what they want," Ross once told Bruck.

With Ross expertly stroking egos, Warner prospered astonishingly, but his highly personal, unbusinesslike style had its darker side. Bruck provides the most detailed account yet of an illegal cash-skimming operation at the Mob-run Westchester Premier Theater in the 1970s. Ross's best friend, Warner executive Jay Emmett, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud arising from the scheme, and Bruck leaves the unmistakable impression that Ross himself was deeply involved, which Ross steadfastly denied. (Ross cut off Emmett summarily when Emmett began cooperating with the prosecution.)

The silver-tongued Ross always extricated himself from dicey situations and moved on to the next play in a bigger game. The 1989 merger of Time Inc. and Warner was his triumph. Personally, he reaped $193 million in stock from the deal, and while, technically, Time was acquiring Warner, and Ross and Time chief Nick Nicholas were to be co-CEOs, Ross quietly maneuvered himself into supremacy by dazzling the board with promises of a rich future. He then orchestrated a coup in which the directors ousted Nicholas.

The only thing Ross couldn't wheedle to his own advantage was cancer. On his deathbed, unable to ply his wiles, he was superseded at Time Warner by Gerald Levin. Superseded but not replaced. Ross was the inimitable master of the art of seduction. From Spielberg to the Time Inc. board, he convinced others that he wasn't a venal capitalist -- he was really George Bailey.