As a young woman in Hollywood, Sherry Lansing was mainly mentored by men. Back then, in the 1970s, most of the mentors around had Y chromosomes; very few women had ascended the heights that Lansing scaled as she climbed her way to becoming, in 1980, president of production at Fox, the first female in history to run a major studio.
Four and a half decades later, one could argue that the majority of America’s cultural output is overseen by women. Bela Bajaria at Netflix, Jennifer Salke at Amazon, Dana Walden at Disney and Donna Langley at Universal, along with scores of other powerhouse women — many of them taking bows in THR’s annual Power 100 list (see page 61) — can today claim credit (and, occasionally, blame) for a huge…