How did an Italian waiter bring Louis B Mayer's Hollywood studio to its knees – and live to tell the tale?
"He bought MGM and it unravelled within weeks. The money just wasn't there."
Hollywood has always attracted dreamers and storytellers, so it’s perhaps not so surprising that it welcomed Giancarlo Parretti. But Parretti, who certainly was both dreamer and storyteller, was not a writer, actor or director. He was a waiter turned hotel owner turned businessman and his dream was to own his own Hollywood studio. And he made it happen by telling an improbable story about his past and his wealth.
In 1990, Parretti bought MGM – the studio responsible for The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and the Bond films – for $1.3 billion. But his brief tenure was a disaster, characterised by bounced cheques to movie stars, hundreds of job losses and an FBI investigation into alleged financial irregularities.
How he did it and why is explored in a fascinating BBC feature documentary directed by John Dower, The Man Who Definitely Didn’t Steal Hollywood, which features interviews with Parretti himself. It’s also now set to to become a Hollywood movie.
“It is quite a bonkers story,” says Dower. “I've been making documentaries for 25 years and I'd say he's one of the most fabulous storytellers. There were moments when I was filming when I was wondering why is he telling me all this stuff? It’s nuts.”
Parretti was abandoned as a baby only hours after he was born. “He was found on the steps of Orvieto Cathedral,” says Dower. “We managed to stand that [fact] up.” He later became a waiter, working in London during the 1960s where, he claimed, he became friendly with the Beatles and Winston Churchill. Is any of that true? “He was definitely in London.”
Parretti went from working as a waiter to owning a string of hotels in the 1970s, but how he did this is somewhat mysterious. “I never got to the bottom of that,” admits Dower. “He was just, like, ‘I'm a self-made man, I became successful. I bought one hotel and I buy a few others.’”
By the late 1980s, with the help of what some might call creative accounting, Parretti was venturing into the film business, buying mini-studios and cinemas before securing over a billion dollars to buy MGM. Perhaps surprisingly for someone so keen to buy a film studio, Parretti’s movie knowledge was nonexistent. “He's not even heard of Citizen Kane,” says Dower.
For Parretti, buying MGM was secondary to the lifestyle his money allowed him to enjoy, including owning a $9 million, 14-room Beverly Hills mansion decorated with paintings by Goya, Picasso and Miro – which may or may not have been genuine – and a mahogany desk once used by legendary MGM boss Louis B Mayer. He drove a brown $200,000 Rolls-Royce, flew in a private jet and hung out with film stars. “He liked the art of the deal,” says Dower, “and he liked the status.”
Parretti’s disastrous ownership of MGM lasted a year and the film highlights the absurdities of his tenure – he brought an actual lion to his first press conference and named his 21-year-old daughter as vice-president of finance.
In retrospect, the whole project seems like it was destined to fail, so why did a company with the reputation of MGM allow the sale to go through? “MGM are complicit,” says Dower. “Even at the time, nobody knew anything about this guy. [You would think] it would be a good idea to do some digging, some due diligence? But it was all about the money.”
MGM saw an opportunity, and so did Parretti – and who cared if his reputed fortune was the work of smoke, mirrors and hundreds of shell companies? “I think he just overreached himself,” says Dower. “He got high on his own supply and just kept going. And he suddenly got to MGM and it unravelled within weeks. I think the problem was, the money just wasn't there.”
So why did so many people fall for Parretti? “He’s lovely, he is utterly beguiling,” says Dower. “He is charming, funny and a fantastic cook. I’m a documentary film-maker, used to eating garage sandwiches in the back of the car. This guy was making us homemade ravioli, seafood risotto, cooking it himself with lovely wine.”
In March 1999 Giancarlo Parretti was found guilty of misuse of corporate funds and fraud and sentenced to four years’ prison but fled back to Italy days before sentencing. MGM filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and emerged from bankruptcy later that year. In 2022, MGM Holdings was bought by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.
As for Parretti, he is now 82 and lives quietly in Umbria. “He lives in a palace, so he is not struggling,” says Dower. “He plays tennis, he has nice lunches, he seems to enjoy life. I think he's very happy.” He got away with it, didn't he, I suggest. “Yeah, he did. He did. He got away with it.”
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The Man Who Definitely Didn’t Steal Hollywood is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.
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