Miller sensed the studio needed rejuvenation, and he managed to produce the hit film Splash, featuring an apparently (but not actually) bare-breasted mermaid, under the newly devised Touchstone label. However, the reluctance of freelance Hollywood talent to accommodate Disney’s narrow range and stingy compensation often kept his sound instincts from bearing fruit. “Card [Cardon Walker] would listen but not hear,” said a former executive. “Ron [Ron Miller] would listen but not act.” Too many box office bombs contributed to a steady erosion of profit. Profits of $135 million on revenues of $915 million in 1980 dwindled to $93 million on revenues of $1.3 billion in 1983. More alarmingly, revenues from the company’s theme parks, about three-quarters of the company’s total revenues, were showing signs of leveling off. Disney’s stock slid from $84.375 a share to $48.75 between April 1983 and February 1984. Through these years, Roy Disney Jr. simmered while he watched the downfall of the national institution that his uncle, Walt, and his father, Roy Disney Sr., had built. He had long argued that the company’s constituent parts all worked together to enhance each other. If movie and television production weren’t revitalized, not only would that source of revenue disappear but the company and its activities would also grow dim in the public eye. At the same time the stream of new ideas and characters that kept people pouring into the parks and buying toys, books, and records would dry up. Now his dire predictions were coming true. His own personal shareholding had already dropped from $96 million to $54 million. Walker’s treatment of Ron Miller as the shining heir apparent and Roy Disney as the idiot nephew helped drive Roy to quit as Disney vice president in 1977 and to set up Shamrock Holdings, a broadcasting and investment company. In 1984, Roy teamed up with Stanley Gold, a toughtalking lawyer and a brilliant strategist. Gold saw that the falling stock price was bound to flush out a raider and afford Roy Disney a chance to restore the company’s fortunes. They asked Frank Wells, vice chairperson of Warner Bros., if he would take a top job in the company in the event they offered it. Wells, a lawyer and a Rhodes scholar, said yes. With that, Roy knew that what he would hear in Disney’s boardroom would limit his freedom to trade in its stock, so he quit the board on March 9, 1984. “I knew that would hang a ‘For Sale’ sign over the company,” said Gold.