Wolper, David L(loyd) 1928-

views updated

WOLPER, David L(loyd) 1928-

PERSONAL:

Born January 11, 1928, in New York, NY; son of Irving and Anna (Fass) Wolper; married Margaret Dawn Richard, May 11, 1958 (divorced); married Gloria Diane Hill, July 11, 1974; children: (first marriage) Mark, Michael, Leslie. Education: Attended Drake University, 1946; attended University of Southern California, 1948.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Wolper Productions c/o Warner Brothers Inc., 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, CA 91522-0001.

CAREER:

Television and motion picture producer and documentarian. Flamingo Films TV Sales Co., vice president and treasurer, 1948-50; West Coast Productions, vice president, 1954-58; Wolper Productions, chairman and president, 1958—; Fountainhead Int., president, 1960—; Wolper TV Sales, president, 1964—; Wolper Pictures Ltd., chairman and president, 1968—; Metromedia, vice president, 1965-68; Wolper Productions, president, 1970—; Wolper Organization, Inc., chairman and president, 1971—; Warner Brothers, consultant and executive producer, 1976—.

MEMBER:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Producers' Guild of America, Caucus for Producers, Writers, and Directors, American Film Institute (board of trustees), Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles (director), Cedars Sinai Medical Center (board of governors), Southern California Committee for Olympic Games (director).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Golden Mike Award, American Legion, 1963; George Foster Peabody Award (with others), Henry W. Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, 1963, 1977; U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1963; Monte Carlo Film Festival Award, 1964; Academy Award for best short subject, 1971, for The Hellstrom Chronicle; Academy Award nomination for best documentary feature, 1960, for The Race for Space; San Francisco International Film Festival Award for documentaries, 1960; Emmy Award for outstanding documentary, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1964, for The Making of the President, 1960; Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in news and documentaries, 1966, for The Making of the President, 1964; Golden Globe Awards for best documentary film, 1973, for Visions of Eight, and best movie or miniseries made for television, 1983, for The Thorn Birds; Distinguished Service Award, NAACP Image Award for Roots, 1977; Emmy award for outstanding limited series (with others), 1979, for Roots: The Next Generations; Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award, 1984; inducted into Television Academy Hall of Fame, 1988; David Susskind Lifetime Achievement Special Award in Television, and Golden Laurel Awards, Producers' Guild of America, 1990; chevalier, French Legion of Honor, 1990; numerous other awards.

WRITINGS:

(With Quincy Troupe) The Inside Story of TV's "Roots," Warner Books (New York, NY), 1978.

(With David Fisher) Producer: A Memoir, Scribner (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Once nicknamed "Mr. Documentary," David L. Wolper has created highly regarded features on the presidential campaigns of 1960 and 1964, the Nuremberg trials, The Thin Blue Line, and Monsters: Mysteries or Myth?, the last the highest-rated television documentary ever. But he has gone much further as an independent producer, overseeing some 500 films, winning over 125 awards, and forever earning a place in television history for bringing Roots to the small screen.

Born in 1928 in New York City, the only child of a real estate broker and a homemaker, Wolper was drawn to movies at very young age. He also showed an early talent for making money from those movies. With his friend Jim Harris, son of a film financier, he acquired the rights to an Italian movie, renamed it Fear No Evil, and got it booked into a local theater. It was an early lesson in the value of old film footage.

After a year at the University of Southern California's film school, Wolper dropped out to try his hand at distributing foreign films, with limited success. Once again, he decided to team up with Harris, forming Flamingo Films in 1948 to distribute Harris' father's films to television. Wolper's role was to travel around the country, convincing television stations to take his B movies and whatever else he had available—including at one point dubbed Soviet cartoons. The contacts he established in those years would prove vital when he formed his own company, Wolper Productions, in 1958.

Wolper had acquired reams of old, archival footage, and he turned this into such documentaries as The Race for Space, Hollywood: The Golden Years, and The Rise and Fall of American Communism. By 1964 Wolper Productions was a "hot property," and he agreed to sell it to Metromedia, owner of television and radio stations throughout the country in exchange for a position at the company. As a vice president of Metromedia, Wolper had the means to take on more ambitious projects, and in addition to producing many documentaries on such topics as the founding of Israel, he also introduced American viewers to Jacques Cousteau. Having proven so successful with television, Wolper decided to try his hand at movie production, but by and large his features, such as Bridge at Remagen and One Is a Lonely Number, proved disappointing to critics and audiences alike.

Sensing that television was his true calling, Wolper returned to the medium, but this time overseeing series. This time, he hit pay dirt with such hits asChico and the Man and Welcome Back, Kotter. Then, in 1977 Wolper made true television history when ABC aired his miniseries, Roots, a critical and popular success that remains the number-one miniseries of all time. Wolper has continued to produce films, including L.A. Confidential, television series, and documentaries, and in 1984 he was put in charge of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics, for which he earned a special Emmy. His negotiating skills also garnered financial security for the Olympics when ABC paid an unprecedented $225 million for the rights to air the ceremony. Two years later, he oversaw the 100th-anniversary celebration of the Statue of Liberty's dedication, a four-day extravaganza that included thousands of fireworks, 265 tall ships, and over 20,000 performers.

In Producer: A Memoir Wolper tells his remarkable story, and his journey from fledgling documentarian to television legend. "With a refreshing lack of pretension and justifiable pride, Wolper relates how he and television matured together," noted Library Journal reviewer Stephen Rees. The memoir, coauthored by veteran "ghoster" David Fisher, hits all the highlights of Wolper's long and hugely influential career. "As the shows start piling up, Wolper's chronology occasionally blurs, but the overwhelming array of celebrity anecdotes will easily distract readers from the occasional missteps," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. "Fascinating for entertainment industry buffs, and nicely revealing of an entrepreneur with a great heart as well as a golden touch," concluded a Kirkus Reviews contributor of Producer.