David Geffen was was born on Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham and Batya Geffen. He has an older brother Mitchell. He started out in the music business as an agent, and soon became one of the top agents in the industry. Although his grades in school were generally poor, he credits his mother with teaching him his business skills, as she had her own store. He has a reputation as being the best friend you can have, but also the worst enemy--he had a very long, very public and very nasty feud with superagent Michael Ovitz. Misdiagnosed with a cancerous bladder in 1976 (it wasn't until 1980 that he found out that he did not in fact have cancer), he has since been a major contributor to many medical charities and foundations, and has had several buildings named after him because of his work in that area, such as The Geffen Playhouse at UCLA. He branched out from the agent business into music publishing, a record company and film production, and in 1990 he sold his company, MCA, for more than one billion dollars, making him one of the richest people in the entertainment industry (his wealth is estimated to exceed $2.6 billion).
Billionaire. Dated Cher Dated Marlo Thomas. Sold his eponymous company to MCA in 1990. Co-founder (with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg) of DreamWorks SKG. Is openly gay. Sits on USC School of Cinema-Television's Board of Councilors Announced a $200 million donation to UCLA medical school in May 2002, the largest single donation to a U.S. medical school in history. The school will be named The David Geffen School of Medicine. The campus already includes The Geffen Playhouse which was also named when the billionaire mogul donated $5 million. Geffen has also given bestowed gifts of $2.5 million to LA's AIDS Project, as well as another $2.5 million to NY's Gay Men's Health Crisis, and $1.4 million to AIDS Action in Washington, DC. In 1980 he signed John Lennon to what would prove to be the latter's last recording contract. In 2005 he lost a California civil suit, forcing him to grant right-of-way to public sunbathers on the beach of his private home in Carbon Beach, California. Same birth date as Mikhail Vartanov, Riccardo Fellini, King Harald V and Nina Simone Ranked #12 on Premiere's 2006 "Power 50" list along with DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. They had ranked #12 in 2005 as well.