Like Aladdin's hyperactive Genie, Jeffrey Katzenberg performed one trick after another during his intensely busy 10-year reign over the Walt Disney Studios. Some of his highs—and lows:
*1986 Rehabilitating Bette Midler, he turns Ruthless People ($72 million in grosses) and Down and Out in Beverly Hills ($62 million) into hits.
*1990 By transforming a hard-edged script about a call girl into a frothy fairy tale, he turns Pretty Woman (right) into a $178 million smash. *1991 After the lackluster 1990 release of Dick Tracy, he writes his infamous 28-page cost-cutting memo. In hindsight, Hollywood applauds his cost- consciousness, if not his politesse.
*1991 The Marrying Man becomes a donnybrook as Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger feud with the Disney suits and Baldwin dubs Katzenberg ''the eighth dwarf, Greedy.'' *1991 Beauty and the Beast grosses $146 million and becomes the first animated movie ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
*1993 Mediocre movies (Super Mario Bros., Hocus Pocus, left) make his live- action division look more like a cheese factory.
*1993 Aladdin (below), which he had re-worked in midstream, is a record- breaking success, with a mind-boggling $217 million gross, not to mention nearly $1 billion in merchandising tie-ins and international box office.
*1994 The Lion King (left) becomes the top-grosing movie in Disney history, at $256 million and still going and going...--Gregg Kilday
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