Biography | Michael Eisner — The Burbank Lot the Board Handed Him on a Saturday

People treat a Disney handover as a castle dedication on Main Street.

This one was a Saturday board vote in September 1984.

On 22 September the directors of Walt Disney Productions chose Michael Eisner as chief executive officer and chairman, and Frank Wells as president and chief operating officer.

The New York Times reported the choice the next morning. Ron Miller, Walt Disney's son-in-law, had been forced out as chief executive on 7 September. Raymond Watson had been chairman.

Roy E. Disney and Sid Bass had recruited the pair after the company survived takeover pressure and a thin animation slate.

Eisner's first morning on the lot was Monday 24 September. James B. Stewart later wrote that he had to telephone his lawyer from the car for directions to 500 South Buena Vista Street.

The campus then was a low cluster of buildings on a few acres, not the gated Melrose lot he had just left.

Katzenberg followed from Paramount months later to run motion pictures and television.

The titles lasted twenty-one years. The pin is the Burbank studio the board put him over, not a park gate.

Photo: Team Disney building on the Burbank lot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Michael Eisner, 1977, public domain.