One of Malibu’s largest property owners, Jerry Perenchio, is being remembered as a “terrific businessman” and a “perfect gentleman” by some Malibu locals. The billionaire, said to be worth $2.7 billion, died May 24. He was 86 years old.
Andrew Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio built his fortune as an entertainment impresario — touching many areas in the entertainment field. As a young man still in college at UCLA, he started in management booking bands at local parties. He then served in the Air Force and flew single-engine jet fighters, but still managed to stay in the business booking bands for officer parties. After his discharge from the military, he joined MCA where his career took off.
Perenchio eventually started his own management firm, signing the biggest acts of the time including Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini and Glen Campbell, to name a few. His agency grew when it merged with another to be known as Chartwell Artists, which not only represented singers, but also actors, directors, writers and musicians. One of his biggest coups at Chartwell was launching the career of Elton John in the United States.
Perenchio then turned his attention to sports, pulling off one of the greatest sporting events of all time, The Fight of the Century, pitting boxing legends Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali in a match at Madison Square Garden in 1971. Millions watched in the United States and around the world through closed-circuit television. Perenchio made a fortune and repeated a similar feat in 1973, promoting “The Battle of the Sexes” a tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that became the highest rated broadcast of the year.
The entertainment mogul’s reach into television included production, distribution and eventually development and ownership of Univision, the most popular Spanish language broadcast network in the United States. In the mid-1980s he owned the Loews Theater chain, bought and sold Tri-Star and other film companies, record companies and brokered deals involving Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
His personal property holdings include the Malibu Bay Company, the city’s biggest landowner with properties in the Civic Center and elsewhere in Malibu.
Former Malibu City Councilmember Sharon Barovsky worked with Perenchio negotiating the sale of the 20 acres of land that became Legacy Park in 2005. The property was sold for well under its market value — it was appraised at well over the $25 million final price tag.
“We approached him to be a willing seller, which he wasn’t really excited about, but he did agree to give us a year to buy it. I found him to always be a perfect gentleman,” Barovsky said. “Regardless if I agreed with him or not, he was a gentleman. You could trust his word. That’s what I liked about him the most. He kept his word. Even when I knew he wasn’t happy to do it. He was a terrific businessman, but he was a perfect gentleman.”
He was also known for his philanthropy, giving anonymously to many causes, according to friends and sources to The Malibu Times who asked not to be named. However, he did bequest $500 million worth of works to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The enigmatic Perenchio was well known as a private man. For 30 years, the Los Angeles Times would run the same dated picture of him because no others were available. Barovsky recalled years ago when Perenchio owned the Malibu Colony Shopping Center, that he would often play janitor unbeknownst to the public.
“He was very fastidious and wanted his property to be in the best shape it could be — and I would see him picking up trash and nobody knew who he was at all when he was doing it,” Barovsky recalled. The center is now owned by the Kroenke Group.
Another former Malibu City Councilmember, Joan House, recalled interacting with Perenchio during the negotiations for the Legacy Park land.
“He was warm, friendly and very involved in Malibu,” House said. “He was very gracious and he met with us to discuss the purchase of Legacy Park. I asked him for a couple of benefits, or ‘give-mes,’ and he said, ‘I don’t give ‘give-mes.’ I take them.’
“He knew what he wanted in his own way and he pursued it according to his standards and to his wishes,” House continued. “He was very straightforward and he basically said what he would and wouldn’t do, and that was the bottom line. He was very generous with his time and his interest in Malibu. He wanted everything for the best. I found him to be very generous.”