Longtime

Bruce Davis spent more than two decades as the motion picture academy’s chief executive. Even when he retired in 2011, it was not because he didn’t still love the work. In fact, he kept at it in retirement, retaining an office at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study where he focused on writing a definitive history of the early days of the Oscars.

“I don’t think I’ve been bored for a minute in 30 years here,” Davis told the Associated Press upon leaving the academy. “I feel like such a rube sometimes. To this day, when I get out of the car on Oscar night and step up there onto that carpet, you get that rush of energy. The lights are popping — not that anybody’s aiming at me — but still I think it’s one of the great rushes, emotionally speaking, that a person can have.”

Following a battle with leukemia, Davis died Saturday. He was 83.

Davis’ career at the academy was, according to wife Joann, partly a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

“Not that he wasn’t really good at what he did,” she says by phone. “But he was also a lucky man.”

Davis was working as chair of the theater department at Juniata College in Pennsylvania when he and Joann loaded all of their belongings atop their Mazda GLC and headed to Los Angles in pursuit of Hollywood dreams. Davis had been working on a few screenplays while teaching, and his agent told him needed to move closer to the action to network and take meetings.

“Neither of us had jobs when we left Pennsylvania,” Joann says. “We just bit the bullet and drove out. It was a leap of faith.”

Shortly after arriving, Davis met someone at a party whose wife worked at the motion picture academy. That soon led to Davis taking a job arranging lectures and seminars and, later, overseeing the organization’s public programming.

Davis became the academy’s seventh executive director in 1989, leading it through a sizable expansion of staff, relocating the academy’s Margaret Herrick Library to the Beverly Hills Waterworks building in 1991 and setting up its film archive at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in 2002.

“Bruce would drive back and forth to work and see that Waterworks building at the time that they were looking for places for the library to expand,” Joann says. “And one day, it just occurred to him that maybe that would be a building, and so initiated conversation with Beverly Hills. It was kismet.”

Davis had hoped to build an academy museum next to the Pickford, convincing the group’s board of governors to purchase a nearby 3.5-acre site in 2006 for a reported $50 million, but the 2008 recession derailed those plans. His successor, Dawn Hudson, led the push to partner with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, eventually building the museum at the former May Co. building at Wilshire and Fairfax. It opened in 2021.

Davis was also instrumental in doubling the Oscars’ best picture category from five nominees to 10 in 2009, establishing the preferential ballot system that determines the academy’s top prize.

“That way, best picture reflects the choice of the greatest number of people,” Davis told The Times.

Davis’ Oscar book, “The Academy and the Award,” was first published in 2022, long after he originally anticipated it would hit stores.

“He thought a couple months of research, a couple more months to write it, and voila, in two years, he’d have it done,” Joann says. “But he kept finding new things he wanted to explore.”

Shortly before it published, Davis told The Times that he hoped the book would dispel myths surrounding the Oscars, including Susan Orlean’s assertion in her Rin Tin Tin biography that the dog received more votes than any male actor at the first Academy Awards and that Bette Davis gave the golden statue its nickname because its backside mirrored that of her then-husband Harmon Oscar Nelson.

“There’s a lot of nonsense out there,” Davis said, “and the real story is almost always more interesting.”

“He was deeply committed to preserving the academy’s history, establishing dedicated homes for our library and film archive, and relaunching the concept of creating a museum,” current academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a statement. “He had a profound love for the academy.”

Davis loved to read and collect books, devouring anything from John Updike and Margaret Atwood, among other authors, a passion that necessitated having bookshelves in every room of his home. Language itself was an obsession, with many family dinners ending with Davis pulling out his unabridged Oxford English Dictionary to share the derivation of a word.

“He was a really fascinating guy,” Joann says.

Perhaps the only thing Davis didn’t like about the Oscars was the ceremony’s annual in memoriam segment, which pays tribute to those who died in the previous year.

“It is the single most troubling element of the Oscar show every year,” Davis told the Associated Press, “because more people die each year than can possibly be included in that segment.”

Next year’s ceremony now has one certain addition.

In addition to Joann, Davis is survived by four daughters: Brangien Davis, Alexandra Davis, Archer Davis and Roxanne Davis.

Phil McGraw’s longtime publicist has filed a lawsuit against the celebrity therapist, better known as Dr. Phil, on claims of wrongful termination and discrimination.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Jerry Sharell said McGraw recruited him to continue working for him after he left CBS in 2023 and relocated to Dallas, where he planned to start his own television network, Merit Street Media.

But Sharell alleges in his complaint that he was “intentionally excluded” from the group of 20 employees who migrated to Texas because he is openly “homosexual,” and was later singled out before being put on hiatus.

The suit is the latest legal fight for McGraw. Last year his new network Merit Street filed for bankruptcy protection, a little more than a year after he launched the media startup, and then sued its distribution partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Last fall, a federal bankruptcy judge ordered the network liquidated, finding evidence that McGraw deleted text messages to conceal plans favoring certain creditors over others.

At the time, a spokesperson for McGraw’s production company vigorously denied the accusation that he destroyed evidence and said he was appealing the ruling.

McGraw later launched Envoy Media, prompting accusations the bankruptcy was filed in bad faith specifically to escape creditors and fund his new venture, which he denied.

Chip Babcock, a lawyer representing Envoy Media, disputed Sharell’s allegations, calling the lawsuit “an effort to avoid a pending arbitration to which Sharell contractually agreed which he has now violated in a number of ways. The company and Dr. Phil will vigorously defend these claims,” in a statement to The Times.

“Jerry Sharell was put on hiatus over the summer as is common in this industry, especially with a media start up. He was not fired for any reason and certainly not because of his sexual orientation. These allegations against Envoy and Dr. Phil are made up out of whole cloth as he has a 25 year history of treating the LGBTQ+ communities with dignity and respect, including standing up for his guests who were attacked because of their sexual preferences.”

In his complaint, Sharell states that McGraw told him he would remain in California, saying, “you’re Hollywood.” However, the publicist said he came to the realization that “McGraw did not want him present in the building or attending meetings with TBN executives.”

Merit Street was a joint venture with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Christian-based network. Sharell said that he was given a copy of the Employee Handbook, and employees “were asked to sign a ‘Statement of Faith’ declaring their devotion to Jesus.”

Although he remained in L.A., starting in spring 2024 Sharell began traveling monthly to the Dallas headquarters of Merit Street, where he said many TBN employees now worked. During his first visit he alleged that a man known as “Pastor D” came weekly to pray with employees, leaving prayer cards on the desks of those who did not participate including that of Sharell’s.

Pastor D also led prayer services at an open house event for advertisers, prospective investors and media, that Sharell found “both disturbing and shocking, given he had never known Defendant McGraw to be overly religious,” according to the complaint.

During another visit, Sharell alleges that an IT employee noticed a photograph of Sharell while working on a staffer’s computer and said, “There’s too many of THEM around here. And it’s evil.”

While traveling on a private plane with McGraw, wife Robin McGraw and other individuals, Sharell claims he was answering emails and did not hear McGraw, who said, “Jeez, he’s gayer than a fruit basket and not listening.”

The publicist said that he worked for McGraw for 10 years until March 2026, “advancing, protecting, publicizing, protecting, and supporting” McGraw and his enterprises.

According to the suit, Sharell worked through the Merit Street bankruptcy and the subsequent establishment of Envoy Media, “receiving assignments and direction” from McGraw, dealing with executives and securing media placements among other duties.

After the company transitioned to Envoy Media, Sharell states in his lawsuit he went from being treated as an employee with benefits to being characterized as an independent contractor, losing his benefits, including health coverage and his compensation was reduced by 30%.

Sharell alleges that although his job remained the same, that he felt “compelled” to accept the new arrangement while under “a great deal of duress and stress,” during which he said he was “reminded” by Envoy Media Chief Executive Ken Solomon that McGraw valued “loyalty.”

Then, in March, Sharell received a call from Solomon informing him that his position was being put on “hiatus” due to “financial considerations,” even though no other employees were put in hiatus or had their salaries reduced.

He said he told Solomon that he felt he was “being singled out or targeted,” according to the lawsuit.