Bronfman handed over the check to a groggy Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the sprawling Japanese consumer-electronics company that couldn’t stomach the movie business. In gathering up the pieces of the misadventure, Bronfman is writing a comming-of-age story in movieland, starring himself. the handsome, bearded heir to a colorful dynasty stretching back tour generations in North America. Whether Bronfman, who wouldn’t be interviewed for this story, can do better than the Japanese is arguable. What’s clear is that the deal represents the boldest sign yet of the changing of the guard at Seagram, where Bronfman was named chief executive last year after 12 years of grooming under the watchful eye of his father. Finally, at 39, he is reshaping the family business by splicing Hollywood onto the core spirits business that is the foundation of the family’s fame, influence and fabulous fortune.

Yet Bronfman’s Hollywood dreams hold enormous risks. The entertainment industry is in ferocious ferment as it adjusts to unprecedented changes. New players and high-tech ways to distribute entertainment are transforming the industry.

For Bronfman, Sunday’s planned deal marked the end of a long journey from family rebel to the keeper of the family fortune. More at home in Hollywood than at Seagram, Bronfman has always kept company with the likes of actor Michael Douglas and mogul Barry Diller and superagent Mike Ovitz. His love affair with show business started early. As a teenager, Bronfman produced his first movie. And during his twenties, he turned out a string of mostly box-office flops, and penned pop tunes for, among others, Dionne Warwick. She introduced him to a black actress, the former Sherry Brewer, whom he later married against his father’s wishes. They later divorced, and last year Bronfman remarried a Venezuelan oil heiress, Clarissa Alcock.

Bronfman’s unconventional ways, as it turns out, aren’t all that unusual in a family that has had its share of divorces, feuds and scandals. His grandfather, “Mr. Sam,” was a rumrunner in Canada, where he founded the family business. Mr. Sam later supplied bootleggers in the United States. Edgar Bronfman’s branch of the family, based in New York, yielded particularly sensational headlines. One such scandal was the suspicious kidnapping of Edgar’s older brother, Samuel 11, In 1975, he turned up missing, and was rescued after Edgar Sr. paid a $2.3 million ransom. The police nabbed two suspects, but they were acquitted of kidnapping, the most serious charge. One defendant testified that Sam II was his homosexual lover and had helped plan the abduction to extort money from his father. To the press, Sam II later expressed his “shock [that] people could believe I was a homosexual and an extortionist.”

The younger Edgar Bronfman acquired his taste for the movie business from his father. In the late 1960s, Edgar Bronfman Sr. plopped down $40 million of family money for 15 percent of MGM enough for voting control and the chairman’s post. His family, like many of young Edgar’s current critics, was skeptical about his lust for Hollywood. “Tell me, Edgar, are we buying all this stock in MGM just so you can [seduce women]?” Mr. Sam was quoted as asking his son in Peter C. Newman’s unauthorized 1978 book on the Bronfmans, “King of the Castle.” Edgar Sr. answered: “Oh, no, Pop. It doesn’t cost $40 million [to do that].”

The elder Edgar Bronfman ended up losing an estimated $10 million on that investment. To the dismay of some Seagram stockholders, that track record in entertainment hasn’t discouraged his son, who joined the company in 1982. Many of Edgar Jr.’s moves have looked good on the surface: with liquor consumption continuing to slide, Bronfman has expanded into other types of beverages, including the 1988 purchase of Tropicana for $1.2 billion. This year, he agreed to pay almost $300 million for Dole’s fruit-juice business. In addition Seagram has added to its premium lines of alcohols by acquiring Martell cognac and distribution rights to Absolut vodka. But Bronfmans record as a beverage mogul has been mixed. He’s been criticized by some Wall Street analysts for paying too much for companies like Tropicana, which have added little to the bottom line.

Some would say the same about his ventures so far into the entertainment business. In the summer of 1993, Seagram quietly began buying Time Warner stock accumulating a 15 percent stake. If Bronfman had dreams of running the New York based company, they were quickly dashed when Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin inserted new anti-takeover rules into his firm’s bylaws and refused to give Bronfman a seat on the board. How has Bronfman’s bet fared? Seagram is nursing a slight loss on its $2 billion investment.

Unlike Time Warner, MCA provided a convenient target for Bronfman. Matsushitecs $6.6 billion acquisition of MCA five years ago proved an enormous debacle. Calling Matsushita stingy, MCA chairman Lew Wasserman and president Sidney Sheinberg late last year issued an extraordinary public ultimatum: invest in expansion or they’d walk. Worse, Steven Spielberg, the legendary moviemaker behind Universal’s biggest hits, such as “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List,” stalked off to form DreamWorks with music mogul David Geffen and former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. Into the breach plunged Bronfman. According to investment bankers involved in the deal, Bronfman twice flew off alone to Osaka to meet with Matsushita’s top executive in the past month, ultimately extracting an exclusive two-week right to negotiate for the company. Speed and secrecy was critical. While others such as PolyGram have been known to lust after MCA, NEWSWEEK has learned that Revlon billionaire Ron Perelman was ready to pounce.

The hard part for Bronfman is now ahead. First, Bronfman must find a management team. Executive s close to him say Wasserman, a wealthy octogenarian, will be offered the honorary title of chairman, and Sheinberg “will be offered something.” One executive adds that Bronfman “absolutely wouldn’t run it.” Nor will Bronfman pal Barry Diller, who answers when asked about such speculation: “No, permanently.” Other names floating around include Warner Bros. co-chief executives Bob Daly and Terry Semel and HBO chief Michael Fuchs. But each reports to Time Warner’s Levin, who is unlikely to free them from lucrative contracts to work for Bronfman, whom Time Warner executives say initially hedged when Levin asked him about the MCA rumors last week. Another perennial prospect for top studio jobs: superagent Ovitz, who was expected to share the spotlight with investment banker Herbert Allen Jr. as Bronfman closed the deal.

By trading in the DuPont investment, Bronfman has shut off a spigot of cash dividends that steadily provided some 70 percent of the company’s profits. Seagram put almost $3 billion into the chemical and oil giant 15 years ago, and took out $8.8 billion for most of the stake, a big chunk of which will be shielded from the tax man (box). But Seagrams shareholders will now be following another story fine: can Bronfman hit a big enough gusher in Hollywood to replace the cash that flowed for DuPont?

1970: Edgar Jr., 14, finds a script on the table at home and talks dad into bankrolling the film “melody.'

1973: At 17, co-produces “The Blockhouse,’ starring Peter sellers.

1980: Bronfman elopes with Sherry Brewer. He later pens a song for singer Dionne Warwick, who introduced them.

1982: The heir apparent joins the family company. In 1986 he casts actor Bruce Willis to pitch Seagram’s new wine coolers.

1988: Edgar Jr. spends $2.06 billion on Soho Natural Sodas, Tropicana and Martell cognac to diversify the Seagram empire.

1993: Pays $2 Billion for Time Warner stake; $700 million to distribute Absolute Vodka.

1994: Marries Clarissa Alcock, daughter of a Venezuelan oil exec.

1994: Rumors swirl that Bronfman wants to increase his stake and take over Time Warner.

1995: Bronfman sells most of his stake in Dupont and negotiates to buy control of MCA from Matsushita for more than $5.5 Billion.