Biography | Stacey Snider — The Universal Lot Where She Was Named Co-Chair

People treat the chair of Universal Pictures as a post that turns over once a generation.

On 17 June 1999 the studio named Snider and Brian C. Mulligan co-chairs of Universal Pictures.

The Los Angeles Times printed the news the next morning and said the appointment made official a working arrangement already in place.

Both reported to Ron Meyer, then president of Seagram's Universal Studios Inc.

They replaced Casey Silver, who had been dismissed the previous November after a run of expensive flops.

Snider had arrived from TriStar in December 1996 as co-president of production, then became sole president of production in April 1998.

The 1999 title put her, still in her late thirties, among the few women then running a major motion-picture studio.

The pin is the Universal lot at 100 Universal City Plaza.

The office tower that now dominates the plaza, 10 Universal City Plaza, was already standing; MCA had used it to house Universal Pictures after buying the building.

Under her watch the slate included Gladiator, Erin Brockovich, A Beautiful Mind, and The Pianist.

Those titles are the public record of the years 1999 to 2006, not a claim that she directed any of them.

The lot is a working studio and a theme park.

A visitor sees the public face of CityWalk and the black-glass tower, not the production office she sat in.

That is still the place the announcement pointed at when Seagram made her co-chair.

Photo: Benoît Prieur, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons