- Michael Eisner
Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) was CEO of The Walt Disney Company from September 22, 1984 to September 30, 2005. He began his career at ABC, became President of Paramount Pictures in 1976, and then assumed the position of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Co. in 1984. - Zane Grey
Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and pulp fiction that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West. As of June 2007, the Internet Movie Database credits Grey with 110 films, one TV episode, and one entire TV Series based on his novels and stories. - Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director and producer. Spielberg is a three-time Academy Award winner and is the highest grossing filmmaker of all time, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion. As of 2006, "Premiere" listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. "TIME" named him in the '100 Greatest People of the Century'. - David Geffen
David Lawrence Geffen (born February 21, 1943) is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer, philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970 (which merged with Elektra Records in 1972 to form Elektra/Asylum Records), and Geffen Records in 1980, along with his later role as one of the three founders of Dreamworks SKG in 1994. According to "Forbes" magazine, he is a billionaire. - Al Christie
Al Christie, (October 23, 1881 - April 14, 1951) was a Canadian-born motion picture director, producer and screenwriter. Born Alfred Ernest Christie, in London, Ontario, Canada, he was one of a number of Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood who made their way to Hollywood, California, attracted by the newly developing motion picture business. Al Christie began his career in 1909 working for David Horsley's Nestor film company. - Nicholas Schenck
Nicholas M. Schenck, born in Rybinsk, Russia on November 14, 1881 - died March 4, 1969 in Florida, was a motion-picture mogul and impresario. One of seven children, Schenck was born in Rybinsk, a Volga River village in Tsarist Russia. He and his family, including his older brother Joseph Schenck, emigrated to the United States in 1893, whereupon they settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side. - Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg (born December 21, 1950 in New York City) is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG. He is perhaps most famous for his period as studio chairman at The Walt Disney Company, and for producing the movie "Shrek" (2001). - Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was, in his time, an aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer and director, a playboy, an eccentric, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for setting multiple, world air-speed records, building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules airplanes, producing the movies "Hell's Angels" and "The Outlaw", owning and expanding TWA, and for his debilitating eccentric behavior in later life. - Sherry Lansing
Sherry Lansing (born July 31, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois as Sherry Lee Heimann) is the former CEO of Paramount Pictures and the first woman to head a major studio. In 2001 she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal. Her mother fled from Nazi Germany at age 17, and spoke no English when she arrived in the United States. Lansing attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated in 1962. - Roy O. Disney
Roy Oliver Disney (June 24, 1893-December 20, 1971) was, with his younger brother Walt Disney, co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company. Roy served as the company's chief executive officer (1929-1971), president (1945-1971), and chairman (1966-1971). Roy was born to Elias Disney and the former Flora Call in Chicago, Illinois. He married Edna Francis in April 1925, and from this marriage he is the father of Roy Edward Disney, who was born on January 10, 1930. - William Fox
William Fox (born Wilhelm Fuchs in January 1, 1879-May 8, 1952) founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain. Although Fox sold his interest in these companies in a 1936 bankruptcy settlement, his name lives on as the namesake of the FOX Television Network and 20th Century Fox film studio. Wilhelm Fuchs was born to Jewish parents in Tolcsva, Hungary, then part of Austria-Hungary. - Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff, and make very profitable films. Thalberg was born in Brooklyn, New York to German Jewish immigrant parents. He had a bad heart and was plagued with other ailments all his life. - Nina Jacobson
Nina Jacobson (born 1966) is an American film executive who, until July 2006, was president of the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. With Dawn Steel, Gail Berman and Sherry Lansing, she was one of the last of a handful of women to head a Hollywood film studio since the 1980s. - David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick (May 10, 1902-June 22, 1965), was one of the iconic Hollywood producers of the Golden Age. He is best known for producing the epic blockbuster "Gone with the Wind" (1939) which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture. Not only did "Gone with the Wind" gross the highest amount of money at the box office of any film ever (adjusted for inflation), but it also won seven additional Oscars and two special awards. - Broncho Billy Anderson
Broncho Billy Anderson (March 21, 1880 - January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, director, and producer, who is best known as the first star of the Western film genre. - Peter Guber
Howard Peter Guber (b. 2 March 1942 in Newton, Massachusetts) is an American film producer and executive. One of Hollywood's most accomplished producers, Peter Guber was formerly the studio chief at Columbia Pictures and chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures. He is now chairman of Mandalay Entertainment, which he founded in 1995. The films he has produced -- including Midnight Express, The Color Purple, Rain Man, and Batman, … - Dick Cook
Richard W. "Dick" Cook is Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. He is the only top Disney executive who has worked for the company since before Michael Eisner took charge in 1984. Cook holds a degree in political science from the University of Southern California (USC). - Joseph Schenck
Joseph Michael Schenck (December 25, 1878 - October 22, 1961) was a pioneer executive who played a key role in the development of the United States film industry. Born in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, he and his younger brother Nicholas emigrated to New York City in 1893 where they eventually got into the entertainment business operating concessions at New York's Fort George Amusement Park. - Fay Vincent
Francis Thomas "Fay" Vincent, Jr. (born May 29, 1938 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is a former entertainment lawyer and sports executive who served as the 8th commissioner of Major League Baseball from September 13, 1989 to September 7, 1992. He is a graduate of The Hotchkiss School and Williams College, class of 1960, which he attended on a full academic scholarship, and Yale Law School, class of 1963. - Joe Roth
Joe Roth is an American Entertainment executive, producer and film director. Roth co-founded Morgan Creek Productions in 1987 and was chairman of Twentieth Century Fox (1989–1993), Caravan Pictures (1993–1994), and Walt Disney Studios (1994–2000) before founding Revolution Studios in 2000. Over the course of his career, he has produced over 40 films, and has directed four to date, … - Charles Christie
Charles H. V. Christie (April 13, 1880 - October 1, 1955) was a motion picture studio owner. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, Charles and his brother Al left home to pursue a career in the fledgling motion picture industry. In Hollywood, California, they made enough money working in films to purchase a property at 6724 Hollywood Boulevard and set up their own Christie Film Company to make comedy movies. - Giancarlo Parretti
Giancarlo Parretti is an Italian financier. He formerly owned the movie studio Pathé and in 1989 took over Cannon Film Group Inc. from Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. In 1990, Parretti also bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, using money borrowed from a Dutch subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais and contingent on future profits financing the purchase from mogul Kirk Kerkorian. With the financier, MGM released almost no movies (one victim being the James Bond franchise), … - Marvin Davis
Marvin Davis (August 31, 1925 in Newark, New Jersey - September 25, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California) was the billionaire former owner of Twentieth Century Fox and Pebble Beach, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the Denver Broncos NFL team. Davis built and twice sold the Century Plaza complex in Century City, California. The buildings became famous as the Nakatomi buildings in the original "Die Hard" film. - Spyros Skouras
Spyros P. Skouras was an American movie executive who was the chairman of the Twentieth Century Fox from 1942 to 1962. He resigned June 27, 1962 effective September 30. An immigrant to America from Greece, his accent was so pronounced that Bob Hope would joke "Spyros has been here twenty years but he still sounds as if he's coming next week." Spyros oversaw the production of such epics as "Cleopatra" with Elizabeth Taylor, as well as the creation of Century City. - William Selig
William Nicholas Selig (March 14, 1864, Chicago, Illinois - July 15, 1948, Los Angeles) is noted as a pioneer of the American motion picture industry. Selig was raised in Chicago. He worked as a vaudeville performer and produced a traveling minstrel show in San Francisco while still in his late teens. One of the actors was Bert Williams, who went on to become a leading African-American entertainer. In 1894 Selig saw Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope at an exhibition in Dallas, … - William Goetz
William Goetz was an American Hollywood film producer and studio executive. Born to a Jewish working class family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Goetz was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was ten years old and shortly thereafter his father abandoned the family. Raised by older brothers, at the age of twenty-one he followed some of his brothers to Hollywood where he found work as a crew hand at one of the large studios. - Steve Broidy
Samuel Broidy (14 June 1905 in Malden, Massachusetts - 28 April 1991 in Los Angeles, California) was a notable figure in the 20th-century U.S. motion picture industry. He attended Boston University and entered the film industry as a salesman with the Franklin Film Company in 1925, moved to Universal Studios in 1926, and in 1931 began working for Warner Bros. Studios. - Pat Powers
Patrick A. Powers (1869 - 30 July 1948) was an Irish-American businessman, involved in the animation industry of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in County Waterford, Ireland, he founded the Powers Motion Picture Company that merged with Carl Laemmle's IMP film company and others in 1912 to create Universal Pictures. He served as treasurer of the Universal Motion Picture Company. According to the "Buffalo Courier-Express" obit dated 1 August 1948, … - J. Stuart Blackton
James Stuart Blackton, usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation. Considered the father of American Animation. Blackton was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in 1875. At the age of ten, he and his family immigrated to New York City. In 1894, Blackton and two fellow English émigrés, … - Jesse L. Lasky
Jesse Louis Lasky (September 13, 1880 - January 13, 1958) was a pioneer Hollywood film producer, and also a key person to invent Paramount pictures with Adolph Zukor. Born in San Francisco, California, he worked at a variety of jobs but began his entertainment career as a vaudeville performer that eventually led to the motion picture business. - Lewis J. Selznick
Lewis J. Selznick (May 2, 1870 - January 25, 1933) was a US film producer. Born Lewis Zeleznik to an impoverished Jewish family in Kiev in what is now the Ukraine, as a young boy he emigrated to London, UK. He eventually moved to the United States, settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he worked as a jeweler. Fascinated with the fledgling motion picture business, and recognizing a business opportunity with great potential, … - Jules Brulatour
Jules Brulatour, was a pioneering figure in U.S. silent cinema. Beginning as American distribution representative for Lumiere Freres raw film stock in 1907, he joined producer Carl Laemmle in forming the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company in 1909, effectively weakening the stronghold of the Motion Picture Patents Company, headed by Thomas Edison, a large trust company that was then monopolizing the American film industry through contracts with hand-picked, … - Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux (January 2, 1893 - March 25, 1951) was a pioneering African American author and is widely recognized as being the first African-American filmmaker (although he was predated by the shortlived Lincoln Motion Picture Company). He is without a doubt the most famous producer of race films. Micheaux (or sometimes written as "Michaux"), was born near Metropolis, Illinois and grew up in Great Bend, Kansas, one of eleven children of former slaves. - Siegmund Lubin
Siegmund Lubin was an American businessman and motion picture pioneer. Born as Siegmund Lubszynski in Breslau, Silesia, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) to a German Jewish family, in 1876 he emigrated to the United States where he became a successful optical shop owner in the city of Philadelphia. His business led to a fascination with Thomas Edison's new motion picture invention and eventually Lubin entered the film business. - Morris Ruskin
Morris Ruskin is an independent film producer and CEO of Shoreline Entertainment. Beginning in the early 1990s, Ruskin has produced a number of films, such as "Glengarry Glen Ross", "The Man From Elysian Fields", "Lakeboat", "Price Of Glory", "Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School", and "The Visit". As Vice President of Zupnik Enterprises, he managed productions and obtained financing for a series of independent films, … - Frank J. Marion
Frank Joseph Marion (c.1870 - March 28, 1963) was an American motion picture pioneer. At the turn of the 20th Century when the film industry was still in its infancy, Frank Marion was employed at Biograph Studios in New York City as a sales manager as well as a screenwriter in collaboration with head writer Wallace McCutcheon. In 1907, Marion along with Biograph production manger Samuel Long, left the company to form their own film production business. - Margaret J. Winkler
Margaret J. Winkler (or M. J. Winkler) was one of the key figures in silent animation history, having a crucial role to play in the histories of Max and Dave Fleischer, Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer and Walt Disney. She was also the first woman to produce and distribute animated films. Winkler began her career as personal secretary of Harry Warner, one of the founders of Warner Brothers. - Thom Mount
Thom Mount is the former President of Universal Pictures and one of America's most well-known independent producers. Born in Durham, North Carolina, Thomas Henderson Mount grew up in the sleepy southern town, graduating from Durham High School and, like so many of his generation, leaving home to travel across America. In 1972, he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. - Andrei Boncea
Andrei Boncea is a Romanian film producer born on February 6th, 1972 in Suici, Arges, Romania. He was involved in numerous international productions filmed in Romania, such as AMEN, directed by Costa Gavras, CALLAS FOREVER, directed by Franco Zefirelli, MODIGLIANI, directed by Mick Davis, starring Andy Garcia, and 2006 Academy Award nominee for Foreign Film MERRY CHRISTMAS, directed by Christian Carion. He produced also Romanian films like FURIA, directed by Radu Muntean, … - Charles B. Mintz
Charles B. Mintz (1896 - January 4, 1940) was an American film producer and distributor, who took control over Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures after marrying her in 1924. Mintz is noted for sneakily stealing Walt Disney's animators and the "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" series from Walt Disney in February 1928 and starting the Winkler Studio with Margaret Winkler's brother George to produce the films. After losing the "Oswald" contract to Walter Lantz, …
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