MARTIN RANSOHOFF

(7 July 1927 - 13 December 2017)

The American producer and writer Martin Ransohoff, who has died aged 90, had a thirty-five year career, mainly in films. After starting out in advertising, he made his first film as a producer, Boys’ Night Out, in 1962, a comedy with Kim Novak and James Garner, followed by The Wheeler Dealers, with Garner and Lee Remick. He produced The Americanisation of Emily with Julie Andrews and wrote the story of The Sandpiper, but the combined efforts of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, Robert Webber and Tom Drake (under the direction of Vincente Minnelli) couldn’t make this odd romance rise above the level of tosh. However, it did win an Oscar for best song, ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’. Ransohoff’s choice of films was eclectic: Tony Richardson’s The Loved One and Hamlet, Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid (after he fired Sam Peckinpah) with Steve McQueen, Eye of the Devil with Deborah Kerr (after he fired Kim Novak), and the debut of Sharon Tate who later on was in Ransohoff and Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers. Other films included Jack Clayton’s Our Mother’s House, Alexander McKendrick’s Don’t Make Waves, John Sturges’ Ice Station Zebra, Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sydney Pollack’s Castle Keep, Mike Nichols’ Catch-22, Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place, John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger and comedies with Gene Wilder and/or Richard Pryor, namely Silver Streak, See No Evil and Hanky Panky. One of Ransohoff’s biggest successes was Jagged Edge (1985) with Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges. His last film was Turbulence in 1997 with Ray Liotta. Martin Ransohoff was married twice, first to Nancy Hope Lundgren and later to Joan Marie Madgey, who survives him.

MICHAEL DARVELL