Sam Jaffe

Sam Jaffe (May 21, 1901 – January 10, 2000) was, at different points in his career in the motion picture industry, an agent, a producer and a studio executive. He was brother-in-law to B.P. Schulberg which no doubt helped him get his first job at Paramount.

Jaffe began as an office boy for Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky Company where he worked his way up through the ranks to become the executive in charge of production. In the early 1930s he worked at Columbia Pictures briefly before leaving to join the talent agency founded by his older sister, Adeline Jaffe Schulberg. When she opened a branch in London, he assumed control of the agency. He successfully represented several stars of the era, including Lauren Bacall, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, David Niven, Zero Mostel, Richard Burton, and Stanley Kubrick, until the 1950s when his business was negatively affected by investigations of many of his clients by the House Un-American Activities Committee investigations into Hollywood.

In 1959, he moved to London and became a film producer and a well known collector of modern art.

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Sam Jaffe, the pre-eminent agent of his day and a producer credited with saving Paramount Studios from financial ruin in the 1920's, died on Jan. 10 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 98 and lived in Beverly Hills.

In addition to representing some of the biggest stars in Hollywood from the 1930's to the 1950's, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, David Niven and Richard Burton, Mr. Jaffe invented the production method of shooting ''night for day,'' a gamble that allowed Paramount to continue making movies despite an electrical fire on Jan. 16, 1929, that destroyed stages being soundproofed for talking pictures.

With disruptive repairs estimated to take five months, the studio feared financial ruin because of the difficulty of filming in the daytime. Mr. Jaffe came up with the idea of shooting at night, using strong lighting to simulate daylight. The inventive measure was credited by many with allowing Paramount to maintain its financial footing and move from silent to sound pictures.

Born in Harlem, Mr. Jaffe dropped out of DeWitt Clinton High School to enter the movie industry as an office boy at Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky Studios in New York. By 22 he had become a local movie mogul as the production manager of films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg and Rouben Mamoulian. He also helped to negotiate the deal for the studio's move to Los Angeles.

In the 1930's Mr. Jaffe worked briefly for Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures until his wife persuaded him to go into business on his own. He opened the Jaffe Agency and represented film icons like Bogart and the directors Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh and Stanley Kubrick.

While an agent, Mr. Jaffe kept his hand in movies, persuading Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox, to let him produce ''The Fighting Sullivans,'' the 1944 film based on the story of the five Sullivan brothers who lost their lives when the Japanese sank their destroyer during World War II.

The Jaffe Agency suffered during the McCarthy era, when many of its clients were singled out by the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1959 Mr. Jaffe retired and moved to London, where he lived for 20 years and produced the 1966 film ''Born Free,'' Joy Adamson's story of raising Elsa the lioness in the wilds of Africa, and ''Theater of Blood,'' a 1973 comedy, starring his longtime friend and fellow art-collector Vincent Price, about a Shakespearean actor who kills his critics.

He is survived by three daughters, Naomi Carroll and Barbara Kohn of Los Angeles and Judith Silber of Chevy Chase, Md.; four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Source: nytimes.com