American entrepreneur, one of the 400 wealthiest persons in the U.S., worth over $6.9 billion and the owner of Turner Broadcasting, CNN, two sports teams and some of MGM, a self-made mogul. Controversial and bombastic, he is known as “Ted the Terrible,” “Captain Outrageous” and “Mouth of the South.” Tending to talk first, think later, he is hard-drinking and loves attention.
His dad, a driven, demanding man who pushed Turner to do more, committed suicide at age 53. He lost his only sister to lupus in the 1980’s. A super-patriot and iconoclast, he was raised by his dad to view insecurity as the secret of success. When his dad shot himself to death on 3/05/1963, Turner took over the family bankrupt billboard business. Gradually, he moved into his entrepreneurial position in TV stations and baseball teams.
While a student at Brown University, Turner developed a passion for the classics and immersed himself in Virgil and Homer. He had come to see himself as a kind of latter-day Odysseus who feels that his life will end before its time. His major battles have been against nuclear weapons and for peace, population control and environmental causes.
Approaching sports with the intensity that he puts into all his projects, Turner bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team in 1966 and the following year, the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. An avid ocean racer, he holds four Yachtsman of the Year titles. He organized the Goodwill Games, international athletic competitions that began in 1986 in Moscow. The second games featured more than 2,500 athletes from 40 nations competing in 21 sports, set in Seattle, WA, 1990. As the founder of CNN television, he transmits low-cost sports and entertainment programs via satellite to cable systems across the country.
He was married to Janie Smith Turner for 22 years. A womanizer, he went through several marriages. After his first divorce, from Judy Nye with two kids, he married a second time, to Jane Smith, on 6/02/1964; three kids.
A twosome with Jane Fonda in 1990, they married on 12/21/1991 in northern Florida. An unlikely couple, both with strong egos and commitments, they nonetheless were a power-pair and seemed to fit together until 1/04/2000 when they announced their separation, saying that they had reached a juncture “where we must each take some personal time to ourselves.” They had often been pictured on one of Turner’s nine massive ranches, including a 107,000-acre ranch in Montana, a 350,000-acre ranch in New Mexico and a 578,000-acre ranch spreading over New Mexico and Colorado. Over the years he and Fonda have vied for the reputation of the one most apt to put their foot in their mouth, she with her anti-Vietnam war protest and he with his public jokes that the Pope should eliminate the commandment against adultery as being out of date. Both are high-energy people, strongly committed to their beliefs. Though Fonda is worth a $670 million aerobics and fitness empire, Turner married to the tune of an iron-clad pre-nuptial contract.
His philanthropy includes a donation of one billion dollars to the UN on 9/19/1997. As of 2000, his donations had reached $1.38 billion to the U.N. Foundation and Turner Foundation, which supports international children’s health and environmental programs.
In 1996, Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner and in January 2000, they agreed to join with the Internet company, American Online. Four months later, Turner was fired and stripped of his vice-chairman title as well as management of his particular interest, CNN and the other cable networks he had established. It was a bitter addition to what Turner called the most miserable year of his life. Along with the end of his eight-year marriage to Fonda, he had smashed his foot in a skiing accident; his beloved black Labrador was ill and two of his grandkids were diagnosed with Hurler’s syndrome, a rare and sometimes lethal enzyme deficiency.
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