Scion of a Neapolitan hairdressing clan (the Paganos), seventh grade graduate Jon Peters entered the family business at age 14 and had established a highly lucrative beauty parlor empire (and reputation with the ladies) before gaining entrance to the film world as personal manager (and lover) to Barbra Streisand. Reportedly the model for the womanizing hairdresser played by Warren Beatty (who was a client) in "Shampoo" (1975), the brash, street-smart stylist (who claims to have introduced the blow-dryer to Southern California) scored big with his first film as producer, the Streisand vehicle "A Star is Born" (1976), a commercial smash yielding over $100 million at the box office which earned four Oscar nominations. He produced a string of best-selling Streisand albums, as well as "The Main Event" (1979), which paired his amour (and co-producer) with her "What's Up, Doc?" (1972) co-star Ryan O'Neal, but he also had success outside the Streisand orbit, producing "The Eyes of Laura Mars" (1978) and executive producing "Caddyshack" (1980).

Peters launched one of the most successful production ventures of the 1980s when he joined with Peter Guber in 1982 to form the Guber-Peters Company. They made a perfect team, Peters playing the flamboyant say whatever comes to mind "bad cop" to Guber's intelligent, non-confrontational stay-in-the-background "good cop." Guber appeared the more likable since Peters, unafraid to alienate, always did the ugly work, provoking some to portray him as movieland's most mercurial, swaggering, power-intoxicated mogul since Harry Cohn, but the two were equal partners in their lust for money and power, always enlarging their personal fortunes regardless of how their projects fared. Together they produced "Six Weeks" (1982), "Vision Quest" (1985) and "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987) but more frequently received credit as executive producers on successful movies like "Missing" (1982), "Flashdance" (1983), "The Color Purple" (1984), "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Rain Man" (both 1988). They displayed their genius for self-promotion when "Rain Man" (a project for which neither had shown much initial interest) swept the Oscars, borrowing one of the writers' statuettes and posing with it for a widely-circulated photo that gave the illusion they had produced the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, forever relegating actual producer Mark Johnson to the shadows.

Guber and Peters would go to any length to get material they wanted, even if it meant grabbing properties from others (as when they bought the film rights to "The Witches of Eastwick" out from under Rob Cohen and Don Devlin, the film's eventual executive producers), but they were at their double-dealingest, back-stabbing best when it came to their "Batman" (1989) triumph. Michael Uslan and Ben Melniker had persuaded DC Comics to sell the licensing rites for a series of "Batman" movies. Their first deal with Guber-Peters guaranteed 40 percent of whatever profit Guber and Peters received and also promised Uslan and Melniker "shall be accorded credit as the producers of the picture." The project languished for years until one day the trade papers reported "Batman" was going into production with Guber and Peters as producers. When Melniker and Uslan contacted Warner Bros. to inform them the studio was breaching the original agreement, they received an ultimatum: sign an amended contract or they would be thrown off the picture entirely. The new deal gave them nominal credit as executive producers and granted them 13 percent of "pie in the sky" net profits. Seven years after the movie's release, with box-office revenues topping $400 million, Melniker and Uslan had not seen a penny and had to content themselves with their executive producers' fees of $300,000 apiece.

When Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989, it needed managers to put in charge of the studio and, on the strength of "The Witches of Eastwick", "Rain Man" and particularly that year's mega-hit "Batman", Guber and Peters--a pair of cowboy producers with little corporate management experience between them--were hired to run the show. It was probably the worst business decision in the history of Hollywood. The deep pockets of the Japanese conglomerate could withstand the profligate spending but could not abide Peters' knock-around persona, and the hard-nosed Sony view that business should be conducted in a businesslike fashion prevailed. Peters was out while the more administratively capable Guber stayed. Post-Guber, Peters has produced the relatively uninspiring "Money Train" (1995), "My Fellow Americans" (1996) and "Rosewood" (1997) but has his sights set on another big blockbuster with the movie version of "The Wild Wild West" (1999). Other projects in the works are a movie about Muhammad Ali to be directed by Ron Howard and a "Superman" movie starring Nicolas Cage as the 'man of steel' under Tim Burton's direction. With any luck, this P T Barnum of producers could roar to the forefront yet again.