Jackc Valenti, the colorful, charismatic head of the Motion Picture Association of America for almost four decades and the prime mover behind the movie ratings system, died Thursday. He was 85.
Valenti had checked out of Johns Hopkins University Medical Center on Wednesday where he was hospitalized after suffering a stroke.
A private mass celebrating the life of Jack Valenti will be held in Washington. The family will announce details in the coming days.
The highly articulate and pugnacious Valenti, a former aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson who served as the industry's Washington, D.C., liaison from 1966 to 2004, was among the most visible lobbyists in the country, as comfortable testifying at a government hearing as he was appearing on the Academy Awards.
Even after he handed over the MPAA reigns to Dan Glickman Valenti continued to cut a public profile. He spoke before congressional committees to publicly defend the ratings system, created just two years into his MPAA tenure, as a viable and successful alternative to government enforcement of content.
Valenti also was a staunch defender of the industry's importance in America's balance of trade. He frequently found himself embroiled in skirmishes over Internet piracy, TV ratings and the V-chip, the fin-syn rules, cable deregulation or the constant rise in the cost of movies -- about which he constantly carped, though he rarely was able to suggest a remedy.
His detractors complained that he protected the status quo of the major studios, even to what was viewed as a detriment to other parts of the industry. He championed the industry's 2003 ban on awards screeners as a way to guard against Internet piracy, despite protests from specialty arms and independent filmmakers. After some distributors sued, a court delivered an injunction lifting the ban.
Born Sept. 5, 1921, in a poor neighborhood of Houston, Texas, Valenti aspired to public life from an early age. He graduated high school at 15 and earned his B.A. from the U. of Houston, worked for a time in advertising at Humble Oil, then added a Harvard MBA. He flew 51 combat missions as an Army Air Corps pilot in World War II. After the war, he continued in advertising and branched out into political consulting..
As old Hollywood was giving way to a new permissiveness, reflected in movies... the ratings sytem kept censorship wolves at bay but caused controversy within the industry. The X and then NC-17 ratings were seen as punitive to filmmakers' self-expression. But many agreed the ratings system was the only way to prevent possible government intervention.
In the mid-'70s, with videocassettes becoming a major revenue growth source for the industry, Valenti became a staunch supporter of anti-piracy programs to protect the studios' interests in 68 countries abroad. His non-stop crusading helped the at-first meagerly funded effort ($76,000) grow in budget size to $40 million over the years.
But perhaps more than anything, Valenti acted as a conscience for Hollywood, reminding industryites about their responsibilities and excesses. However, he constantly defended show business from attackers, and rarely criticized the business himself. One rare example was his attack on Oliver Stone's 1991 "JFK." Valenti defended the Warren Commission (established by his mentor Johnson), casting aspersions on Stone's controversial film. However, his timing was, as always, discreet: he waited until four months after the film had opened, after the Academy Awards, before speaking out against the pic.
The silver-haired Valenti was a natty dresser and courtly gentleman, who enjoyed using five-dollar words and arcane historical and literary allusions as he spoke out on numerous issues, all of which seemed to get him into a high lather.
For example, in 1985 at ShoWest, he described new technologies as "metal skeletons whirling about in the heavens, hurling down beams of delivery systems."
The resurgence of JFK conspiracy theories in 1992 caused him to lament, "The Lord only knows how many more conspiratorial badgers are out there burrowing into the entrails of Alice's Nonsense Wonderland, ready to barter their gauzy and grotesque notions for gold in the publishing and movie marketplace."
Even in retirement, Valenti maintained a public profile. He wrote a column for the Politico, including one in which he expressed his opposition to the war in Iraq and made comparison's to Johnson's ill-fated efforts in Vietnam.
"Having served one president in wartime, I'm reluctant to criticize another chief executive because I'm aware of the personal agony they feel in ordering troops into harm's way," he wrote. "Yet in launching the war in Iraq, our commanders ignored the errors of other drawn-out conflicts, inclouding Vietnam. The mistakes made then were repeated in Iraq. How sad."
... His extensive memoir "This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood" was due out in June, 2007.
He and wife Mary Margaret divided their time between Washington and Los Angeles. They had three children, Courtenay, John, and Alexandra.
Read the full Valenti obituary in Variety for more...
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