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Gulf and Western Industries, Inc., (also styled as Gulf+Western) was an American conglomerate. == History == Gulf and Western's origins date to a manufacturer named the Michigan Bumper Company founded in 1934, although Charles Bluhdorn treated his 1958 takeover of what was then Michigan Plating and Stamping, as its "founding" for the purpose of later anniversaries. Under Bluhdorn the company diversified widely, leaving behind such things as stamping metal bumpers not only for communications properties such as Paramount Pictures (acquired in 1966), but also: * Kayser-Roth (a clothing company that happened to own the Miss Universe pageant because it had bought Pacific Mills, which had invented the pageant to sell its Catalina Swimwear brand) * APS Holding Corp., which manufactured auto parts * New Jersey Zinc (1966) * Taylor Forge (1967) * South Porto Rico Sugar Company (1967), a holding company in Jersey City, New Jersey, with principal subsidiary, also called South Porto Rico Sugar Company, a cane sugar refiner in Ensenada, Guánica County, Puerto Rico owners of Central Guanica, purported to once be the largest cane sugar refinery in the world. * The Associates First Capital Corporation, a financial services company (1968) * Bohn Aluminum and Brass Corporation (1968) * Consolidated Cigars (1968) * Stax Records (1968) * Sega (1969) * Simon & Schuster (1975) * Madison Square Garden and by extension the New York Rangers and New York Knicks (1977) * Thomas Ryder and Son, of Bolton, a machine tool manufacturing company (1982) * Simmons Bedding Company (1979) With the Paramount acquisition, Gulf and Western became parent company of the Dot Records label, and the Famous Music publishing company. After Stax was acquired, that label became a subsidiary of Dot, although Dot was not at all mentioned on the label (rather, Dot and Stax were noted as subsidiaries of Paramount). Later on, the record operation was moved under Famous Music and renamed the Famous Music Group. In 1967, the company also purchased Lucille Ball's Desilu Productions library, which included most of her television product, as well as such properties as ''Star Trek'' and ''Mission: Impossible'', both of which would rank amongst its most profitable commodities over the years. Desilu was renamed Paramount Television. Gulf and Western sold Stax back to its original owners in 1970, and with it the rights to all Stax recordings not owned by Atlantic Records. A year before, Dot's non–country music roster and catalog was moved to a newly created label, Paramount Records (the name was previously used by a label unrelated to the movie studio; Paramount acquired the rights to that name in order to launch this label). It assumed Dot's status as the flagship label of Paramount's record operations, releasing music by pop artists and soundtracks from Paramount's films and television series. Dot meanwhile became a country label. Famous Music provided distribution for several independent labels, such as Neighborhood Records and Sire Records. Famous began distributing yet another independent label, Blue Thumb Records, in 1971, before buying it outright in 1972. In 1974, Gulf and Western sold the entire record operation to the American Broadcasting Company, which continued the Dot and Blue Thumb imprints as subsidiaries of ABC Records, while discontinuing the Paramount label altogether. While working for Paramount, Barry Diller had proposed a "fourth network", but he could not convince the board of trustees/directors of the wisdom of this idea. Fox owner News Corporation was, however, interested in starting a network. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gulf and Western Industries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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