Charles George Bluhdorn (born Karl Georg Blühdorn; September 20, 1926 – February 19, 1983) was an Austrian-born American industrialist. Early life Bluhdorn was born in Vienna, Austria, to an Austrian Jewish mother Rosa Fuchs and father Paul Blühdorn. Per Who's Who in Ridgefield (CT), he was considered such a "hellion" that his father sent the 11-year-old to an English boarding school for disciplining. At 16, he moved to New York, studying at City College of New York and Columbia University. Career In 1946, Bluhdorn went to work at the Cotton Exchange, earning $15 a week. Other accounts say that he emigrated to the United States in 1942 and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Details of his upbringing are unknown, but Vanity Fair reported that: "Truth be told, Charlie wasn't elucidative about a lot of things, including whether he was Jewish, which he kept Hollywood guessing about by posting a sentry outside the men's room door." Gulf & Western Three years later, he formed a company that would make him a millionaire at 30; in 1956, he acquired Michigan Bumper, a small auto parts company that eventually grew into Gulf and Western Industries, a conglomerate that ranked 61st in the Fortune 500 by 1981. According to Robert Evans, in 1970 Bluhdorn had told him: "Imagine, twelve years ago I was walking the streets selling typewriters door to door." Holdings of Gulf + Western were blue-chip names such as Paramount Pictures (acquired in 1966), Madison Square Garden, and Simon & Schuster publishing, the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company, the Consolidated Cigar Corporation, as well as less glamorous assets such as the New Jersey Zinc Company. Paramount was suggested to Bluhdorn by Sumner Redstone and the acquisition was encouraged by Paramount's head of publicity, Martin Davis. It was during Gulf + Western's ownership of Paramount that it went from being number nine at the box office based upon total receipt sales, to number 1. After the marketing success of Love Story in 1970, Bluhdorn appointed Frank Yablans as president of the studio and Robert Evans as head of production. Together they oversaw the studio in its heyday, releasing such hits as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II , Chinatown. In 1974, Bluhdorn stepped down as Chairman of Paramount and hired Barry Diller as Paramount's chairman and chief executive, making Diller, at age 32, the youngest studio chief in history and the