Biography | Michael Eisner — The Melrose Gate Where Diller Made Him Paramount's President

People treat Paramount as a mountain logo and a later Viacom tower.

From 1976 to 1984 the studio's president was Michael Eisner.

Barry Diller, then chairman of Paramount's board, hired him out of ABC programming and put him in charge of the lot at 5555 Melrose Avenue.

The Melrose Gate is the working entrance. The older Bronson arch sits inside the property.

Under that presidency the studio released Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ordinary People, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and Airplane.

Diller left Paramount on 30 September 1984. Eisner had expected the chair. When the studio passed him over, he resigned as president on 12 September, before Diller's last day.

The resignation is why a Disney board looking for a studio operator could reach him that same month.

The lot is still a working studio. Visitors see the Melrose arches, not the office where the 1976 offer was made.

The pin is the public gate that still carries the company's name on the street.

Photo: Chris Brown, Paramount Pictures Melrose Gate, 2005, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Michael Eisner, 1977, public domain.