The 1% Makes Itself Felt At Disney/Marvel

The Economic Wars continue even though BigMedia doesn’t want to phrase it that way. (You didn’t know TVWriter™ was so wonderfully radical, did you?)

Ike Pearlmutter, today’s villain, in a 25+ year old pic (cuz he doesn’t want anybody to be able to I.D. him? Suspicious, no?)

Disney And Marvel Do Damage Control After Media Scrutiny Of Big Boss Ike Perlmutter – by Nikki Finke

EXCLUSIVE… UPDATE: Sources now tell me that all three female executives in employments disputes with the Walt Disney Co have settled – including one today. This is many months after the women lost their jobs in a Department Of Consumer Products reorganization set in motion nearly a year ago by Marvel boss Ike Perlmutter who is Disney’s 2nd largest shareholder. Former DCP head of fashion and home products Pam Lifford, former chief financial officer Anne Gates, and former DCP HR  exec Susan Cole Hill were all represented by the same attorney with  the Pasadena law firm Hadsell, Stormer, Keeny, Richardson and Rennick which has sued Disney in other employee rights cases. According to my sources, the three women, who are all African Americans, referred to themselves as “The Help” – a reference to last summer’s hit DreamWorks movie distributed by Disney and set during the civil rights movement about black maids in Mississippi.

The reorganization took place in September 2011 but the negotiations for the exit settlements dragged on. Some insiders claim the law firm didn’t return Disney’s calls because it first wanted a story damaging to Perlmutter to appear in the media. An article appeared on Thursday, and Disney and Marvel and Perlmutter now are in damage control mode. Financial Times LA-based correspondent Matthew Garrahan broke the news about these three African-American female execs, their respective job status after their boss Andy Mooney was replaced as the head of DCP, and their hiring an attorney. At the time he wrote that only one of the three women had settled with Disney.

But the FT story also reported that, when African-American actor Terrence Howard was replaced by African-American actor Don Cheadle in the role of  Colonel Jim Rhodes for Iron Man 2, ”Perlmutter apparently told Mr. Mooney the change cut costs. He allegedly added words to the effect that no one would notice because black people ‘look  the same’,”  Garrahan wrote. A Marvel spokesperson told the FT in a statement: “Mr. Perlmutter and all  of Marvel have a long record of diversity in the workplace and on movie sets around the world as evidenced by both Mr. Perlmutter’s own history and Marvel’s management team.”

Read it all

Ah, racism, how’d  you carry it off? How’d you only pretend to go away?

We're looking forward to your comments!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.