Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Meet the Israeli Behind Hollywood’s Superheroes

Hollywood’s newest superhero is an Israeli émigré whose powers include an uncanny cheapness “that has become the stuff of lore.”

The Los Angeles Times just profiled Ike Perlmutter, the chief executive of publisher Marvel Comics, and now one of the largest shareholders in Disney after the conglomerate bought his company.

As the Times notes, superheroes are big business in Hollywood, accounting for three of the top-grossing films in the U.S. this year; two of them, “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spider Man,” were inspired by Marvel characters. The third, “The Dark Knight Rises,” arose from DC’s Batman franchise.

“With great box-office strength comes great influence,” the Times says. Although Perlmutter does not hold a Disney board seat, sources tell the paper he’s in regular contact with CEO Bob Iger — and has even played a role in top-level personnel changes at Disney Consumer Products.

But people who know the 69-year-old Israeli say he’s also known for almost spectacular frugality. “Former executives say Perlmutter would retrieve paper clips from the trash and tear up old memos to create new notepads. One college intern called home to report that Marvel refused to turn on the air conditioning during one sweltering New York heat wave,” the Times says. Perlmutter’s thriftiness and shrewdness “were evident from his earliest business ventures.” According to Dan Raviv’s 2004 book Comic Wars: Marvel’s Battle for Survival, Perlmutter “would wait outside the entrance of Jewish cemeteries in Brooklyn, wearing a yarmulke on his head and offering, for a fee, to recite the Kaddish prayer for the dead.”

“He’s unafraid. He doesn’t care about public sentiment or what people think about him,” one insider tells the Times. “He cares about what makes most sense to him.”

These days, Perlmutter has a net worth that Forbes magazine estimated at $1.9 billion, ranking him among the 500 wealthiest Americans. He splits his time between a $3.2-million Palm Beach, Fla., condominium and a Manhattan apartment near the East River, the Times says.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.