Eisner, Sheinberg Silent on ‘Power Breakfast’ Agenda

Walt Disney Co. and MCA have had some serious spats in recent years over hegemony in the theme park business. Just last month, MCA was so enraged by Disney’s proposal to build a studio tour in Burbank that it sued a city agency, contending that Burbank made an illegal, secret deal to award a contract to Disney.

Small wonder, then, that Hollywood tongues wagged when Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner and MCA President Sidney J. Sheinberg met in public last week for a two-hour breakfast at the Registry Hotel, a stone’s throw from MCA’s own studio tour at Universal City.

Eisner and Sheinberg won’t say just what was on the agenda.

Downplays Meeting

“It was a breakfast that Michael called for, because he thought it would be constructive, but part of the agreement was that neither of the two of them would discuss it publicly,” Disney Vice President Erwin Okun said. Sheinberg said there is a “written agreement” not to divulge the nature of the talks.

Disney recently broke its usual silence on corporate strategies to deny speculation that it might be accumulating MCA shares, which have traded heavily in recent weeks after the hospitalization of MCA’s 74-year-old chairman and largest shareholder, Lew R. Wasserman.

On Monday, Wasserman was back in his office and lunched at his usual table in the Universal Studios commissary, trading greetings with executives and answering frequent rings on the telephone at his elbow.

MCA shares closed Monday on the New York Stock Exchange at $58.375, up 75 cents on a volume of 529,000 shares.