Named in 2009 by Forbes.com as one of the world’s top billionaires, David Geffen has come a long way since his days of dropping out from University of Texas Austin. Geffen is a self made billionaire in the movie and music industry. Geffen’s career started in the William Morris Agency mail room on a false presumption and action by Geffen to forge documents showing that he graduated college. Geffen’s desire to succeed stemmed from a struggling childhood with immigrant parents. Geffen left William Morris for a job at Ashley Famous Agency with his step into the music industry. This step led to movement to Creative Management Associates and the formation of Geffen Roberts, a music management company of his own. Geffen proceeded through his career building his music world around him. Asylum Records was founded in 1971 and was an immediate success. His record company boasted of great musicians including the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Joni Mitchell. Geffen’s Asylum Records was bought by Warner Communications and merged with the Elektra label. In the early merger, almost all hits by the combined label belonged to Geffen.

Geffen previously was a major Bill Clinton support but broke ties with the Clinton family and is currently an Obama supporter. Geffen is an openly gay man named by Out Magazine as one of the 50 The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America. He is listed by Forbes as one of the top 100 billionaires.http://www.out.com/index.asp http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people_David-Geffen_ES8B.html

The Joni Mitchell connection recently resurfaced in 2010 news when speculation ran rampant that David Geffen is the long wondered subject of Carly Simon’s Your so Vain song. Geffen represented Mitchell and rumors speculate Simon was jealous of the relationship between the two and the fact that Geffen paid more attention to Mitchell. Vanity Fair says the world owes Geffen an apology because the rumors can’t be true since Simon was not even on Geffen’s label until the year after the song came out. The rumor began as Simon continued dropping hints on who the subject was in conjunction with her new recording of the song saying there is a name whispered backwards in the song. British media ran with the rumor when the name David was believed to be in the song. Other speculations on who’s so vain include Warren Beatty. http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/02/update-everyone-owes-david-geffen-an-apology.html

Geffen made his move into the movie industry in 1975 when he assumed the position of vice-chairman of Warner Brothers Pictures. One of his earliest movie involvements was the “Oh, God” series with George Burns. http://www.filmreference.com/film/25/David-Geffen.html

In 1994, David Geffen joined forces with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, to found DreamWorks SKG with the SKG coming from their initials. Dreamworks eventually split off to become DreamWorks Animation and has been responsible the huge hit “Shrek” and its sequels. http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=17300