David Geffen Biography
David Geffen is a business entrepreneur, producer, and film studio executive from the United States. In 1971, he co-founded Asylum Records with Elliot Roberts, followed by Geffen Records in 1980, DGC Records in 1990, and DreamWorks SKG in 1994.
How old is David Geffen? – Age
He is 80 years old as of 21 February 2023. He was born in 1943 in Borough Park, New York, United States. His real name is David Lawrence Geffen.
David Geffen Family
He was born to Abraham Geffen and Batya Volovskaya. Geffen’s mother ran Chic Corsets by Geffen, a clothing boutique in Borough Park. His parents were both Jewish immigrants who met in British Mandatory Palestine before emigrating to the United States. Mitchell (born Mischa) Geffen (1933-2006) was an attorney who graduated from UCLA Law School and lived in Encino, California. Mitchell Geffen had two children, who are David’s only living relatives.
David Geffen Education
Geffen graduated from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn with a “barely passing 66 average” in 1960. He dropped out after a semester at the University of Texas at Austin and later at Brooklyn College. He subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, California, to make his career in the entertainment industry. He attended Santa Monica College (formerly known as Santa Monica City College) in Santa Monica, California, but dropped out shortly thereafter. Geffen ascribed his academic difficulties on dyslexia.
David Geffen Gay – When did David Geffen come out?
Geffen was first embarrassed about his sexual orientation. During the 1970s, he fell in love with Cher and spent 18 months with her, which he described as “the greatest high I had ever experienced.” Cher eventually dumped him for Gregg Allman. Geffen finally admitted to being gay in 1992. Out magazine rated Geffen first on its list of the fifty “Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America” in May 2007.
David Geffen Net Worth
Geffen has an estimated net worth of $9.1 billion as of October 2023, making him one of the richest people in the entertainment industry.
David Geffen Yacht
He has been owning Rising Sun since 2010, after he purchased a 50% stake in the boat in late 2006. Rising Sun is a motor yacht designed by Jon Bannenberg that was built in 2004 at Germany’s Lürssen shipyard in Bremen for Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, and was last renovated in 2007.
Among the yacht’s 82 rooms are a gym, a basketball court, a wine cellar, and a movie theater. Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Julia Roberts, Maria Shriver, Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, Martin Short, Diane Sawyer, Diane von Furstenberg, Karlie Kloss, Peter Harrington-Cressman, Dasha Zhukova, Jen Meyer, Josh Kushner, and Sir Paul McCartney were among the guests on Geffen’s yacht, according to W magazine.
David Geffen House
Geffen sold his Beverly Hills residence to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $165 million in February 2020, the highest price ever paid for a home in a California real estate transaction. Geffen paid $68 million for Casey Wasserman’s Beverly Hills estate in June 2020.
David Geffen Art collection
Geffen is an avid collector of the work of American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. According to Paul Schimmel, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, “there’s no collection that has a better representation of post-war American art than David Geffen’s.”
Geffen sold two paintings by Jasper Johns and one by De Kooning from his collection in October 2006 for a total of $143.5 million. The New York Times reported on November 3, 2006, that Geffen had sold Pollock’s 1948 painting No. 5, 1948 from his collection for $140 million (£73.35 million) to Mexican investor David Martinez. Martinez is the founder of Fintech Advisory Ltd, a financial firm based in London that specialized in buying Third World debt.
The sale makes No. 5, 1948 the most expensive painting ever sold (outstripping the $134 million paid by cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder in October 2006 for Gustav Klimt’s portrait Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I). Wealth-X announced in June 2013 that Geffen has the world’s most valuable private art collection, which was valued at $1.1 billion at the time. Bloomberg News reported in February 2016 that Geffen sold De Kooning’s 1955 oil painting, Interchanged, for $300 million and Pollock’s 1948 work, Number 17A, for $200 million to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin.
David Geffen Documentary
He was included in the American Masters PBS television documentary Inventing David Geffen. Susan Lacy directed the documentary, which premiered on November 20, 2012.
David Geffen Career
In 1964, George Geffen started his diversion vocation as a sorting room representative at the William Morris Office (WMA), where he immediately turned into a headhunter. He found out about showbiz governmental issues while perusing reminders he conveyed between specialists. Geffen professed to have moved on from the College of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in his request for employment and changed a letter from UCLA to WMA which expressed that he had not graduated. He later functioned as an individual chief with Laura Nyro and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
In 1971, Geffen helped to establish Shelter Records with Elliot Roberts after he couldn’t get Jackson Browne a record bargain elsewhere. The name turned into a generator of the Southern California people rock sound and marked specialists, for example, Hawks, Joni Mitchell, Bounce Dylan, Tom Pauses, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Judee Ledge, and J.D. Souther. Afterward, the mark was procured by Atlantic’s parent organization, Warner Correspondences, and converged with Elektra Records in 1972 to become Elektra/Shelter Records. The mark was resuscitated in 2004 as a metropolitan music activity, marking hip-jump specialists, for example, Waka Flocka Fire, Cam’ron, Gucci Mane, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, and Bun B.
Geffen stayed in control until December 1975, when he went to function as bad habit director of Warner Brothers. film studios. In 1977, he was educated (mistakenly) that he had disease. During his retirement period, he spent a brief time frame educating a noncredit workshop on the music business and expressions the board at Yale College, where he highlighted study hall visitors Jackson Browne and Paul Simon.
In 1980, Geffen established Geffen Records and enrolled Warner Brothers. Records leader Ed Rosenblatt as president. The Geffen name’s fleeting ascent to noticeable quality inside the year demonstrated a mixed achievement. Geffen’s most memorable craftsman to sign on was Donna Summer, who was restless to leave Casablanca/PolyGram Records. The collection Twofold Dream, delivered in November 1980, turned into a gigantic merchant. Throughout the long term, Geffen Records/DGC has delivered accounts by specialists including Olivia Newton-John, Asia, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Elton John, Cher, Sonic Youth, Aerosmith, Whitesnake, XTC, Peter Gabriel, Weezer, Solitary Equity, Flicker 182, Firearms N’ Roses, Nirvana, Lifehouse, Tyketto, Pat Metheny, Sloan, the Stone Roses, and Neil Youthful.
The Geffen mark was dispersed by Warner Brothers. Records since its origin however was offered to MCA Records in 1990, with Geffen getting shares in MCA worth $550 million. Matsushita Electric obtained MCA and paid Geffen $670 million. Geffen kept on running the mark prior to leaving Geffen Records in 1995. The Geffen mark is currently essential for the Interscope-Geffen-A&M division of MCA’s replacement, General Music Gathering.