Edgar Bronfman, Sr.
Edgar Miles Bronfman (born
June 20,
1929) is a
Jewish-
Canadian businessman and a member of the Bronfman dynasty, and the father of
Edgar Bronfman, Jr.He is the son of
Seagram's founder
Samuel Bronfman. After graduating from
McGill University with a B.A. degree and honors in history in 1951, he joined the family business. In
1957 he took over as head of Seagram's American subsidiary. He increased the range of products sold by the company, improved distribution and expanded the number of countries in which Seagrams products were sold. In
1966 Cemp Investments, which managed the family's investments, bought 820,000 shares of
MGM and in 1969 Bronfman took over the chairmanship of MGM, albeit briefly. Following his father's death in
1971, Bronfman took over as president, treasurer, and director of Distillers Corporation-Seagrams Ltd. His son
Edgar Jr. succeeded him as chief executive officer of the company in
1994.
Edgar is the son of Samuel and Saidye Bronfman; his siblings are the late Minda de Gunzburg, architecture maven
Phyllis, and
Charles. He has been married five times. His first marriage, to Ann Loeb on January 10, 1953, produced five children: Sam Jr., Edgar Jr., Matthew, Holly, and Adam. Edgar and Ann divorced in 1973.
He was then briefly married to Lady Carolyn Townshend. Bronfman's marriage to Lady Townsend was annulled on
November 21,
1974 (the marriage lasted less than a year), and was followed by a high-profile messy divorce proceeding. The case reportedly included testimony that the British noblewoman had spent her wedding night with another man. Bronfman also holds the distinction of being the only billionaire to marry (and divorce) the same woman twice. Georgina Webb was a 25-year-old barmaid in an English pub when Bronfman, then aged 45, married her for the first time. The two split up in 1983, only to remarry in 1984, and divorced again a few years later. Bronfman had two daughters with Webb before the second breakup.
In 1994 he married artist Jan Aranson. Bronfman, who now owns a large chunk of the struggling French conglomerate
Vivendi (nyse: V - news - people), admitted to his issues with matrimony in a 1989
Newsday interview: "Marriage is an institution, and if you like living in an institution, well then go right ahead."
In 1981, Edgar M. Bronfman was elected president of the
World Jewish Congress, the federation of Jewish communities outside Israel. Together with his deputy Israel Singer, Bronfman has led the World Jewish Congress in becoming the preeminent international Jewish organization. Through the campaigns to free Soviet Jewry, the exposing of the Nazi past of Austrian president
Kurt Waldheim, and the campaign to compensate victims of the Holocaust and their heirs, notably in the case of the Swiss banks, Bronfman became well-known internationally during the 1980s and 1990s.
Edgar Bronfman is also a philantrophist who has given large amounts of money to Jewish causes.
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Bronfman family
