[Infowarrior] - MPAA's (former) Jack Valenti Dies at 85

[Richard Forno]

Film Lobbyist Jack Valenti Dies at 85

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 26, 2007; 7:52 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042601
990.html?hpid=artslot

Jack Valenti, 85, a onetime confidant of President Lyndon B. Johnson who
spent nearly four decades as Hollywood's chief Washington lobbyist and
helped devise the "G" to "X" movie-rating system, died today at his home in
Washington of complications from a stroke in March.

As president of the Motion Picture Association of America from 1966 to 2004,
Valenti represented such powerful studios as Disney, Sony, Warner Bros.,
Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox and Universal as well as several leading
independent producers. Earlier, he established political connections as a
Texas advertising and public relations executive that led to his strong ties
to Johnson.

With an instinctive showman's flair -- notably his grandiloquent speaking
style and access to movie stars -- Valenti became the dominant powerbroker
connecting Capitol Hill and the film colony. Besides his work on the ratings
system in the late 1960s, he helped open up world markets for American-made
films and secured passage of copyright legislation to protect movies into
the digital age, which led to the proliferation of DVDs.

He also was a major gateway to Hollywood's financial largesse during the
campaign season. On any given week, Valenti met with actors, world leaders
and newspaper editors and was regarded as a brilliant and aggressive wielder
of his glamorous pulpit.

Harry C. McPherson Jr., also a Johnson intimate who became a Washington
lobbyist, called Valenti "an extremely successful advocate of the movie
industry. You'd be hard pressed to find any lobbyist for any industry who
did a more successful job than Valenti. I can't think of many times when
Jack Valenti lost.

"He had a lot to work with," added McPherson, an occasional lobbying
adversary of Valenti's. "When Senator X would want to go to Hollywood and
would want some people to attend his fundraiser at the home of [former Walt
Disney CEO] Michael Eisner or some producer or studio chief, he'd talk to
Jack. Jack would set it up and very often go out there."

Lawrence Levinson, a former Washington representative for Paramount, told
the New Yorker magazine in 2001: "Jack was able to use the power and glamour
and mystique of Hollywood. A new president came in, and [Valenti would] put
himself in the center of the process of getting movies to the president.
He'd get so excited. He'd call Sid Sheinberg" -- the president of
MCA/Universal -- "and say, 'Sid! The president is going to Camp David! We've
got to get him "Jaws"!' "

Valenti became known to a wider audience through his work as a presenter on
Academy Award telecasts. A diminutive, sprightly man, he was easily
identifiable by a well-tanned and protruding forehead covered by snow-white
hair. There was also his immaculate executive attire and what one reporter
long ago called a "riverboat gambler's drawl."

The Texas-born, Harvard-educated lobbyist had a strikingly baroque writing
and speaking style heavily influenced by 19th-century British historian Lord
Macaulay and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. For instance, a movie
audience was not comprised of ticket buyers but "unknown but enthusiastic
companions of a single night."

He was widely considered an effective promoter for Hollywood on matters
including censorship, videotape technology, copyright infringement and, in
recent years, video and online "piracy" of trademarked films.

When Hollywood filmmakers attracted controversy, he routinely defended the
studios by citing the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment as
well as the cause of artistic liberty.

This was the case when Valenti, along with MPAA general counsel Louis Nizer,
helped create a voluntary rating system in 1968 that changed the way the
studios classified a film's suitability for general audiences. This new
arrangement was important because it kept government intrusion and citizen
censors at bay, while allowing the artists' maximum freedom and the consumer
to influence the marketplace by voting with his wallet.

By implementing this voluntary system, the MPAA eliminated a movie code
dating from the early 1930s with a long list of onscreen taboos ranging from
"excessive and lustful kissing" to showing mixed-race sexual relations. The
films had further been subject to city and state censorship boards trying to
rid offending material.

The 1968 system -- with its long-familiar ratings ranging from "G" for
admittance of general audiences to "X" prohibiting those under 17 -- was
credited with helping keep the American film market competitive with
European companies. In Europe, filmmakers had long ventured into fare laden
with adult language, nudity and other forms of explicitness that proved
increasingly popular with changing tastes.

What helped smooth the way for Valenti's changes was that many of these
bolder American films were quality productions with top stars, including
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) starring Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor. By 1969, "Midnight Cowboy" starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon
Voight became the only X-rated picture ever to win an Academy Award for best
picture.

Valenti had a role in later changes and additions to the voluntary system,
including PG-13 and NC-17 ratings. Nevertheless, the ratings system
continued to be criticized for how it was applied toward films that accented
sex or violence.

One of the strongest critics of the MPAA's system was Nell Minow, a
corporate governance expert who was writing family oriented movie reviews
for Common Sense Media. Citing examples, she told one congressional hearing
a few years ago that the MPAA's system did a poor job of providing families
with helpful information.

Minow said recently: "He waited for me to finish, he stood up, learned over,
kissed me on the top of my head and said, 'Nell, that's why we all need your
Web site, because you can give parents what we can't.' There was really no
way to respond to that. I thought that's why he's the most effective
lobbyist in Washington."

The grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Jack Joseph Valenti was born Sept. 5,
1921, in Houston. His father was a clerk in the Harris County Courthouse,
where young Valenti often saw office-seekers shaking the hands of
well-connected bureaucrats. He began political campaigning at 10 and
excelled in high school debate.

At 15, he became an office boy for Houston's Humble Oil and Refining Co.,
which later became Exxon Mobil. He returned from World War II a decorated
Army Air Forces bomber pilot and a veteran of 51 missions over Europe.

After the war, he finished his undergraduate degree in business at the
University of Houston in 1946 and received a master's degree in business
administration from Harvard University in 1948.

He returned to Humble and described his most notable work as the "clean
bathroom" publicity campaign for the company.

In 1952 he and an old friend, Weldon Weekley, formed their own advertising
agency. While Weekley oversaw the office work, Valenti lured a series of oil
and business executives as clients. He also began handling advertising work
for congressional and gubernatorial campaigns and met Johnson, the Senate
majority leader, in 1956.

At the time, Valenti had a weekly column in the Houston Post and wrote a
deeply flattering account of the future president that described him as
"unbending as a mountain crag, tough as a jungle fighter" and called him the
"Great Persuader."

Valenti further cemented their relationship in 1962 by marrying Johnson's
personal secretary, Mary Margaret Wiley. She survives him, along with three
children, Courtenay Valenti and John Valenti, both of Los Angeles, and
Alexandra Valenti of Austin; a sister; and two grandchildren.

In November 1963, then-Vice President Johnson asked Jack Valenti to handle
press relations during President John F. Kennedy's swing through Texas.

Valenti was in the presidential motorcade in downtown Dallas when Kennedy
was fatally shot Nov. 22 and accompanied the newly sworn-in Johnson back to
Washington that night on Air Force One. He appeared in the famous photograph
showing Johnson taking the oath of office aboard the plane.

As president, Johnson brought Valenti to Washington in 1963 as his special
assistant -- a vague position Valenti likened to a "roving line-backer." He
was a presidential trouble-shooter, speech editor and trusted deputy for
confidential assignments. He was often the first non-family member to greet
Johnson in the morning and the last to see him late at night.

McPherson, who became Johnson's special counsel, said Valenti was
"enormously valuable as an aide because he could do so much. He could talk
to members of Congress, he could take a piece of leaden speechwriting by
someone and turn it, maybe not into Churchillian prose, but something that
had some zip to it. There was no one he felt too shy to talk to on behalf of
Johnson."

Tom Johnson, a White House fellow during the Johnson administration who
later held executive positions at the Los Angeles Times and CNN, said,
"Lyndon Johnson had no chief of staff but Jack was closest to it."

He said Valenti was "the primary notetaker in virtually all of the most
confidential meetings LBJ had with heads of state, members of Congress,
governors and [National Security Council] meetings." He also was Lyndon
Johnson's liaison to the Catholic Church and arranged with utmost secrecy a
meeting between the president and Pope Paul VI at the Vatican during a
presidential world tour.

Yet Valenti was often described as Johnson's chief whipping post or
"glorified valet" who loyally absorbed Johnson's foul-mouthed tantrums and
such seemingly humiliating acts as Johnson using Valenti's lap as a
footrest.

Despite such treatment, Valenti continued to describe Johnson in worshipful,
often purple prose as when he told a group of advertising industry leaders
in 1965, "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently
because Lyndon Johnson is my president."

Afterward, Washington Post political cartoonist Herblock drew Valenti as a
slave being whipped into submission. All this brought Valenti the enduring
image of a sycophant, political journalist Richard Rovere once wrote.

Valenti's closeness to Johnson was a top reason Lew Wasserman, president of
MCA/Universal Studios and often called the most powerful man in Hollywood,
pursued Valenti in 1966 to become MPAA president. Wasserman's empire had
been the frequent target of Justice Department actions, and Valenti proved a
valuable contact.

The polished Valenti remained the discreet Wasserman's front man in
Washington for decades. For his work, Valenti was among the best paid trade
group chief executives in Washington.

On the job, he was tireless yet always appeared impeccably tanned and suave.
He logged hundreds of thousands of miles for his causes and at various times
had to confront treatment toward Hollywood from foreign cultural ministries
who used trade talks to limit or lambaste American film imports. In the
early 1990s, he encouraged the MPAA to donate money to European film schools
as a way of improving relations.

Videos are now among the top income sources for his client companies, but
Valenti was paid for years to denounce what was then new technology. He
memorably told a congressional panel in 1982, "I say to you that the VCR is
to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston
strangler is to the woman home alone."

In the early 1980s, he successfully lobbied the Federal Communications
Commission to prevent the repeal of long-standing financial-syndication
rules. His actions allowed the movie industry to keep reaping billions of
dollars from reruns. Until the rule changed in the mid-1990s, television
continued to be shut out of owning and syndicating the entertainment
programs they aired.

Wasserman had also played an important role, having spoken directly to
President Ronald Reagan, whose political rise he helped orchestrate in the
1950s.

When he resigned from the MPAA in 2004, Valenti was reportedly earning $1.35
million, and National Journal magazine ranked him the seventh-highest paid
trade group chief executive in Washington. His MPAA successor was Dan
Glickman, a former U.S. congressman and President Bill Clinton's agriculture
secretary.Valenti contributed opinion pieces to newspapers and magazines
such as Reader's Digest and the Atlantic Monthly. Among his books were "A
Very Human President" (1975) about Johnson's White House years; "Speak Up
With Confidence," a guide to public speaking (1982); and "Protect and
Defend" (1992), a Washington-based political novel edited by former first
lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In 2006, he wrote a memoir, "This Time,
This Place: My Life in War, the White House and Hollywood."