EGN NEWS DESK
A educated accountant, Mr. Leibner was described in a 1989 profile by Ben Yagoda in The New York Times Magazine as an idiosyncratic character with a “exceptional emotional vary.” “He might be plaintive, cajoling, jocular, terse, profane, sentimental, jovial, respectful, dismissive, analytical or expansive: The one fixed is the pressure of his native Brooklyn in his voice,” Mr. Yagoda wrote.
He was additionally identified for telling extremely soiled jokes.
Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News, mentioned in a telephone interview: “It would have been simple to dismiss him as a Damon Runyonesque showman, however when it got here to precise negotiations, he’d are available in, sit on the sofa with a authorized pad and pen, and we’d undergo the main points collectively. He was scrupulously detailed and sincere.”
But if a consumer was concerned in a disaster, Mr. Heyward mentioned, Mr. Leibner would counsel that they meet at his workplace: “He’d say, ‘Come to the jukebox,’ and we’d have discussions close to his Fifties jukebox. That was the place for a delicate summit.”
Richard Allen Leibner was born on March 15, 1939, in Brooklyn. His father, Sol, was a licensed public accountant. His mom, Eleanor (Zelon) Leibner, was a schoolteacher.
After graduating from the University of Rochester with a bachelor’s diploma in enterprise in 1959, Mr. Leibner earned a Master of Business Administration diploma from New York University in 1963. By then, he was working as an accountant along with his father, who had shoppers within the music publishing and file companies.
