Sumner Redstone Way (Manhattan)
Present name:None
Location:At the intersection of 44th Street and 7th Avenue
Honoree:  Sumner Redstone (1923-2020), over a long career in law, entertainment and media, built the conglomerate ViacomCBS, which in February 2022 was renamed Paramount Global. Redstone graduated first in his class from the Boston Latin School in 1940 and graduated from Harvard in 1944. Fluent in Japanese, Latin, French and German, he served until the end of World War II on the elite U.S. Army intelligence team responsible for breaking Japanese military and diplomatic codes. After earning his law degree from Harvard in 1947, he served as a Law Secretary with the U.S Court of Appeals and then as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General. In 1951, he was named a partner in the Washington law firm of Ford, Bergson, Adams, Borkland & Redstone. Three years later, in 1954, he joined National Amusements, a chain of movie theatres that had been founded in the 1930s by his father. A skilled manager, he helped National Amusements expand to 129 screens by 1974. In line with his conviction that “content is king,” he began accumulating stock in Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Pictures and other content companies, all of which he turned over for significant profits when he sold his positions in the 1980s. In 1987 he purchased a controlling in Viacom for $3.4 billion and became its Chairman. He quickly oversaw a series of acquisitions including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster Entertainment, DreamWorks SKG, and CBS. In 1996, he was appointed CEO of Viacom, a position he held through 2005. He served as Chairman of Viacom and CBS until 2016. In December 2019, on completion of the merger of Viacom and CBS, he assumed the role of Chairman Emeritus of the combined company. (Speaker Johnson)
LL:2022/54