FIRST OFF . . .

According to MCA Inc.’s most recent proxy statement, actress Lorraine Gary--married to company president Sidney Sheinberg--took home $594,000 for her part in the MCA/Universal Pictures summer bomb, “Jaws 4.” But that certainly wasn’t the fattest figure in the document. Sheinberg is one of 300 MCA employees provided a “golden parachute,” which provides them with payments if they leave after a change in company ownership. Sheinberg would get up to $14.2 million, according to the statement, while 74-year-old MCA chairman Lew Wasserman’s parachute was valued at $1.6 million. But Sheinberg’s 1987 stock compensation appears to have dropped considerably, possibly because the company’s profits dropped last year. In 1986, he got 112,500 shares, then valued at $5.5 million, making him one of the top-paid U.S. executives. The new proxy didn’t specify Sheinberg’s share of the stock plan. But all MCA officers as a group collected 74,280 shares, valued at about $3 million.