Is America’s Ahab, Sumner Redstone, all washed up?

Sumner Redstone is the nasty old man of America's 'new establishment' tycoons, and there is secret joy that he seems destined to be the first to lose his shirt in the economic collapse.

He owns the media conglomerates Viacom and CBS, which between them include the CBS television network, MTV and a host of cable companies, and Hollywood's legendary Paramount film studios.

His problem is that he has to make repayments on $1.6bn he borrowed from banks to finance his buying spree, and he hasn't got the cash. He has already sold $200m of his own controlling stake in Viacom and Paramount, but it's not enough.

Just a few years ago, when he bought Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio, the absolute pinnacle of Hollywood glamour, Redstone was a player. He ranked at number three on Vanity Fair magazine's zeitgeist list of the dot.com and media 'new establishment', just behind Rupert Murdoch, and, after spending years in hotel rooms, moved to Beverly Hills as neighbour to Sylvester Stallone, Rod Stewart and Denzel Washington. It looked like a happy ending to the lifetime of business graft described in his ghost-written autobiography, A Passion to Win.

Redstone’s fall-out with Hollywood began with his fight with Dreamworks

But now, at 85, his demons have come home to roost. He lives alone in his mansion, famously miserly, shaving naked in the hot tub and obsessively feeding his tropical fish, his only constant companions since the collapse this year of his five-year marriage to Paula Fortunato, a former New York City teacher who was as much nurse as wife. He runs his disintegrating empire from the speaker-phones in his study.

With barely repressed glee, Hollywood and Wall Street are a-chatter with reports of Redstone bumping into walls and suffering long "senior moments" between bouts of incandescent anger.

His slide from the Hollywood firmament began with the fight he picked with the Dreamworks team, particularly with Spielberg's partner David Geffen, who always wins his fights. Paramount bought Dreamworks, and then Redstone complained that they didn't make him any money. Spielberg and Geffen reacted by dismantling that deal and selling themselves to Bollywood's Reliance ADA Group instead.

"I am not responsible for the public discourse about Mr Redstone at all," sniffs Geffen, whom Redstone accuses of spreading gossip. "I don't care for Sumner's behaviour, and I have that in common with a great many people in the entertainment business. I don't like the way he treats people."

The reason he is so disliked is that Redstone, a Harvard-trained lawyer, sues everyone, always for everything they own. He is even locked in litigation with his own son, Brent, wrangling over a $1bn legacy.

Redstone’s survival following the Copley Plaza fire was an extraordinary act of will

The first son of a family of German Jewish immigrants to Boston, Redstone might have remained a relatively normal American tycoon, by definition hyper-competitive, ruthless and of unlimited ambition, had it not been for his Captain Ahab moment. Just as it was the terrible wound inflicted on Ahab in his first battle with Moby Dick that left him the monomaniacal tyrant of Herman Melville's great novel, it was a brush with death that created Sumner Redstone.

When fire engulfed the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston one night in 1979, Redstone was left hanging from his windowsill by one hand, the other and both his legs crippled by the burns which covered 40 per cent of his body. His survival was an extraordinary act of will and, as described in his book, he recovered "with a vengeance". It was after that that he joined the Wall Street frenzy of the 1980s, using his family firm of local cinemas to become the most ferocious corporate raider of them all.

"He's not a man who has many friends," a Hollywood 'insider', thought to be Spielberg himself, confided to Vanity Fair. "He doesn't know what a real friend is. He has no sense of other people. It's all about him, and it always has been. He has a tremendous ego. But he has no grace, no charm. He's not loyal to anyone but himself."

Daughter Shari is a chip off the old block, fabled for shopping with coupons

So there has been no sympathy as the value of Viacom and CBS have plummeted 67.5 per cent and 78 per cent respectively. The New York Times is now wondering "whether Mr Redstone remains a billionaire".

His last asset is the original movie theatre company, also his holding company, National Amusements. It is run by his daughter Shari, 54, whom he has regularly sued and been sued by. She is a chip off the old block - fabled for shopping with supermarket coupons regardless of her wealth. The business press anticipates fire sales, but wonders if even the holding company is worth enough to meet their debts.

When ordinary Americans turn against the 'banksters' and barons as they did in the last Great Depression, Redstone is set to become the national caricature of the mean-spirited Dickensian miser who pays the price with his own bankrupt soul. ·