Wikipedia

Marcia Nasatir

Marcia Nasatir (May 8, 1926 – August 3, 2021) was an American film producer and studio executive. She was the first female vice-president of a major movie studio, when she became a vice-president at United Artists in 1974.

Marcia Nasatir
A white woman with coiffed dark hair
Marcia Nasatir, from a 1977 newspaper photo
Born
Marcia Birenberg

May 8, 1926
Brooklyn, New York
DiedAugust 3, 2021 (aged 95)
Woodland Hills, California
Occupation(s)Film producer, studio executive
RelativesRose Spector (sister)

Early life

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Marcia Birenberg was born in Brooklyn and raised in San Antonio, Texas,[1] the daughter of Jack Birenberg and Sophie Weprinsky Birenberg. Her parents were both Russian Jewish immigrants; her father was in the garment trade.[2] Birenberg graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1943.[3][4] She attended Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin, but did not earn a degree at either school. Her sister Rose Spector was a judge, and the first woman elected to the Texas Supreme Court.[5]

Career

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Nasatir was a divorced mother of two young sons in 1955, when she took a secretarial job with Grey Advertising in New York. "I didn’t need to watch Mad Men — I lived it", she later quipped.[3] She worked as an editor at Dell Publishing and Bantam Books, and as a literary agent with the Ziegler Diskant Agency,[6] where she represented screenwriters including Robert Towne and William Goldman.[7]

Nasatir became a story editor at United Artists (UA) in 1974,[8] with the title of vice-president of West Coast Development.[9] Nasatir was the first female vice-president of a major film studio.[10][11] Among the films she developed at UA were Rocky (1976),[12] Carrie (1976),[13] and F.I.S.T. (1978).[14] In 1978, when Mike Medavoy, Arthur Krim, and three other partners left UA to form Orion Pictures, she became a vice-president at Orion.[5][15]

At Carson Entertainment and later as an independent producer,[3] Nasatir was one of the executive producers of The Big Chill (1983), Vertical Limit (2000), Death Defying Acts (2007), and the documentary Elle (2013), and a producer of Hamburger Hill (1987)[16] and Ironweed (1987).[7] She produced a number of television movies, including Stormy Weathers (1992), The Spider and the Fly (1994), The Courtyard (1995), The Ultimate Lie (1996), A Match Made in Heaven (1997), She made two on-screen film cameos, in Heart Beat (1980) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008),[17] and appeared in several documentaries, including The Big Chill: A Reunion (1999), The Human Face of Big Data (2014), Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women (2014), A Classy Broad: Marcia's Adventures in Hollywood (2016),[18] and What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018).

In 2008, Nasatir found a new audience on YouTube, in Reel Geezers, a film criticism web series, co-starring with her friend, screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr.[17] From 2013 to 2017, she served on the board of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.[3]

Personal life

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Marcia married music industry executive Mort L. Nasatir in 1947.[19] They had two sons, Mark and Seth, before they divorced in 1953. She died in 2021, aged 95 years, in Woodland Hills, California.[5][15] Her papers are archived in the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[20]

References

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  1. ^ Martinez, Kiko (October 4, 2018). "92-year-old Former Hollywood Exec, San Antonio Native Marcia Nasatir Hosts Movie Screenings This Weekend". San Antonio Current. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  2. ^ Hecker, Gaylon Finklea; Odom, Marianne (2021). Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-9997318-4-0.
  3. ^ a b c d Barnes, Mike (2021-08-03). "Marcia Nasatir, Pioneering Studio Executive, Dies at 95". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  4. ^ Jakle, Jeanne (2016-06-14). "Charming film "A Classy Broad" chronicles San Antonio's Hollywood trailblazer". mySA. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  5. ^ a b c Sandomir, Richard (2021-08-11). "Marcia Nasatir, Who Broke a Glass Ceiling in Hollywood, Dies at 95". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  6. ^ Farber, Stephen (2021-08-18). "A 'Classy Broad' and a Trailblazer". The Los Angeles Times. pp. E1. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b Thompson, Anne (2021-08-04). "Marcia Nasatir Didn't Wait for Permission to Become Hollywood's 'First Mogulette'". IndieWire. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  8. ^ Malone, Aubrey (2015-04-10). Hollywood's Second Sex: The Treatment of Women in the Film Industry, 1900-1999. McFarland. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-7864-7978-8.
  9. ^ Medavoy, Mike (2013-06-25). You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot. Simon and Schuster. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-4391-1813-9.
  10. ^ Pedersen, Erik (2021-08-03). "Marcia Nasatir Dies: Pioneering Production Exec Worked On Best Picture Winners 'Rocky', 'Cuckoo's Nest'". Deadline. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  11. ^ "Marcia Nasatir: The Pioneer Who Paved the Way For Women in Film | The Takeaway". WNYC Studios. June 13, 2017. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  12. ^ Etheridge, Anne (1977-05-28). "Marcia Nasatir: The Woman Behind Rocky". The Sacramento Bee. p. 15. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ Farber, Stephen (2016-02-10). "'A Classy Broad': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  14. ^ Eszterhas, Joe (2010-05-05). Hollywood Animal. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 77–78. ISBN 978-0-307-53087-5.
  15. ^ a b Lang, Brent (2021-08-03). "Marcia Nasatir, Film Executive Who Shattered Barriers for Women in Hollywood, Dies at 95". Variety. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  16. ^ Devine, Jeremy M. (2017-08-25). Vietnam at 24 Frames a Second: A Critical and Thematic Analysis of 360 Films About the Vietnam War. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-0535-7.
  17. ^ a b Goldstein, Patrick (2008-01-05). "Hollywood's new It couple is neither new nor young". The Gazette. p. 49. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ "A Classy Broad". Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  19. ^ "Mort L. Nasatir Dies". GRAMMY.com. 2014-12-02. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  20. ^ "Marcia Nasatir papers". Online Archive of California. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
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