David Geffen

According to the Arizona Republic newspaper of August 22, 2014, two days of filming The Explosive Generation (1961) occurred at Mesa High School in Mesa, Arizona. About 350 students got to play extras in the film. A 17-year-old Geffen made his Hollywood debut as one of these extras.

UCLA announced in December 2012 that this 'visionary donor'/ philanthropist had also established a $100-million scholarship fund for students of the Geffen School of Medicine.

Ranked #12 on Premiere's 2006 "Power 50" list along with DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. They had ranked #12 in 2005 as well.

In 2005 he lost a California civil suit, forcing him to grant right-of-way to public sunbathers on the beach of his private home in Carbon Beach, California.

Announced a $200-million donation to UCLA medical school in May 2002, the largest single donation to a US medical school in history. The school will be named The David Geffen School of Medicine. The campus already includes The Geffen Playhouse. which was named after him when he donated $6 million to the university. He has also bestowed gifts of $2.5 million to Los Angeles' AIDS Project, as well as another $2.5 million to New York city's Gay Men's Health Crisis, and $1.4 million to AIDS Action in Washington, DC.

In 1980 he signed John Lennon to what would prove to be the latter's last recording contract.

David Geffen was born in Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham and Batya Geffen. He has an older brother Mitchell. Although his grades in school were generally poor, he credits his shopkeeper mother with teaching him his business skills, especially since his father died when Geffen was 16. Having started working in the mail room of CBS, he launched himself in the music business as a manager and agent, most notably for singer/songwriter sensation Laura Nyro and quickly became one of the top agents in the industry. He earned a reputation as being the best friend you can have, but also the worst enemy--he had a very long, very public and very nasty feud with super-agent Michael Ovitz, and eventually with Nyro, too. Misdiagnosed with bladder cancer in 1976 (it wasn't until 1980 that he found out that he was not afflicted), he has since been a major contributor to medical charities and foundations, and has had several buildings named after him, such as The Geffen Playhouse and The David Geffen School of Medicine, both at UCLA.

A supporter of Leonard Peltier, whom he believes was wrongly convicted of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents, he said he became disillusioned by Bill Clinton's decision to pardon financier Marc Rich, instead of Peltier. This caused a rift between him and the Clintons, and led to his decision to endorse Barack Obama for president, instead of Hillary Clinton.