Viacom Chairman Sumner Murray Redstone, the multi-billionaire who is the controlling shareholder of media conglomerate Viacom and of CBS Corp., was born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Michael Rothstein. His father created National Amusements, a chain of three drive-in theaters, in 1936, after starting out with one drive-in in Valley Stream, New York.

Sumner Redstone attended Harvard College after graduating at the top of his class from the elite Boston Latin School, completing his bachelor of arts degree in three years during World War II, when college years were accelerated so that graduates could serve in the military. Redstone served in the army during World War II, working at the Pentagon decoding Japanese messages. After being demobilized, he remained in Washington and matriculated at Georgetown University Law School before transferring to Harvard Law. After graduating from Harvard Law with an LL.B, he returned to Washington, DC.

After working for the U.S. Department of Justice in San Francisco, Redstone went into private practice for several years before eventually returning to his father`s National Amusements, which he turned into a major motion picture exhibitor in New England. He first made National Amusements one of the premier drive-in circuits in the country before turning to indoor exhibition. In 1964 National Amusements started building multi-screen theaters, originally called "twin theaters". These developed into the "multiplexes" and "megaplexes" that made National Amusements one of the top indoor exhibitors in the country, a great repositioning of the company, and a fortuitous one as the drive-in circuit faded away.

Redstone branched out of exhibition, as he believed that controlling the content was the way of the future--though distribution channels constantly change (from movie theaters, to TV, to cable, to videotape, to DVD), content remains constant. With this philosophy he began investing in motion picture production companies, turning a profit on buying, holding and selling shares.

In 1987 Redstone engineered a hostile takeover of Viacom International by National Amusements. Viacom began as a subsidiary of CBS, syndicating programs for the network. However, when the FCC in 1971 established its now rescinded "fin-syn" rule (that television networks could not syndicate programs they produced), Viacom was spun off from CBS. As a separate company Viacom continued to syndicate most of CBS` TV programs but was free to syndicate programs for others. After syndicating programs for cable TV channels, Viacom itself moved into cable and acquired MTV Networks in 1985. It represented a good platform from which to develop a content-distribution behemoth.

After winning voting control of Viacom, Redstone engaged in a series of acquisitions to make Viacom one of the top players in the modern media industry. During the 1990s Viacom eventually would own Columbia Pictures, Twentieth-Century Fox, Orion Pictures and Paramount Pictures, making huge profits from the sale of all but Paramount, which would become the motion picture arm of the conglomerate.

Paramount Communications, parent of Paramount Pictures, was acquired in 1993. Although criticized initially for paying too much for the company, Redstone helped pay for the acquisition by selling off some of its assets, including Madison Square Garden and its cable TV properties, and Simon & Schuster`s educa