Paul Gregory (producer)

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Paul Gregory (born August 27, 1920 in Waukee , Iowa , † December 25, 2015 in Desert Hot Springs , California ) was an American film , television and theater producer .

Life

Paul Gregory was born the son of a butcher in a village in Iowa. He graduated from Lincoln High School in Des Moines in 1938 , while also doing small jobs on local radio. Then Gregory moved to Hollywood, where he worked as an assistant for stars like Horace Heidt and Carmen Cavallaro . In the late 1940s, the still insignificant Gregory made friends with film star Charles Laughton . Gregory organized a successful Laughton book tour of the United States that grossed $ 200,000 between 1949 and 1950. This was followed by further collaborations between Laughton and Gregory, for example on various Broadway plays with Laughton as director and Gregory as producer. In total, Gregory produced a total of 17 Broadway shows in the 1950s and 1960s, including such hits as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (based on Herman Wouk's bestseller The Caine Was Her Fate ), The Marriage Go-Around and Lord Pengo .

Gregory bought the rights to Davis Grubb's novel The Night of the Hunter (1953) after reading the book beforehand and identifying with the protagonists because of his own difficult childhood. In 1955, for example, Gregory produced the film Die Nacht des Häger with Laughton as director, which today is considered by many critics to be a masterpiece of film history. After that, Paul Gregory Productions only produced one film, the war drama The Naked and the Dead (1958). As a television producer, Gregory won an Emmy in 1955 for Best Television Adaptation , for the adaptation of his Broadway hit The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial based on the novel The Caine Was Her Fate by Herman Wouk . In 1964, Gregory married former film star Janet Gaynor , both of whom were involved in a serious car accident in 1982. He then worked with Gaynor as a cattle breeder on their common farm.

After Gaynor's death in 1984, Gregory married art gallery owner Kathryn Obergfel, who died in the 2000s. Most recently he lived in an apartment in Desert Hot Springs , California, where he committed suicide in December 2015 at the age of 95. Gregory gave several interviews about his time as a producer well into old age.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Tom Longden: Biography of Paul Gregory. Accessed June 16, 2015 .
  2. ^ Robert D. McFadden: Paul Gregory, Risk-Taking Showman in a Golden Age, Is Dead at 95 . In: The New York Times . December 4, 2018, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 27, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Article on Paul Gregory
  4. ↑ Producer Paul Gregory died the way he wanted to in Desert Hot Springs , article in The Desert Sun of November 7, 2016
  5. ^ Robert D. McFadden: Paul Gregory, Risk-Taking Showman in a Golden Age, Is Dead at 95 . In: The New York Times . December 4, 2018, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 9, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Gregory, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film, television and theater producer
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Waukee , Iowa
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 2015
Place of death Desert Hot Springs , California