Weinstein, Hannah (1911–1984)

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Weinstein, Hannah (1911–1984)

American film producer and political activist. Born Hannah Dorner on June 23, 1911, in New York City; died of a heart attack on March 9, 1984, in New York; daughter of Israel Dorner and Celia (Kaufman) Dorner; New York University, B.A., 1927; married Peter Weinstein (a journalist), in 1938 (divorced 1955); children: daughters Dina Weinstein; Lisa Weinstein (a producer); Paula Weinstein (a producer).

Early in her career, worked for the New York Herald Tribune; was a political speechwriter for Fiorello H. La Guardia; left the United States after being blacklisted (1950); co-founded Third World Cinema (1972); produced the films Claudine (1974), Greased Lightning (1977), and Stir Crazy (1980).

Born in 1911, Hannah Weinstein was a native of New York who studied journalism at New York University. While still a teenager, she started her career at the foreign desk of the New York Herald Tribune, leaving this job in 1937, after ten years, to work as a speechwriter for New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. Weinstein remained active on several political fronts after her speechwriting days ended; she organized various artists and scientists on behalf of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later worked for the presidential campaigns of Henry Wallace and Eugene McCarthy.

Weinstein's unwavering commitment to her liberal political beliefs did not fall in line with the conservative McCarthy-era "Red Scare," and in 1950, by then a divorced single mother, she moved with her three young daughters to London. There she became interested in filmmaking, producing her first feature, Fait-Divers à Paris, in 1952. In partnership with a British television station, she started a production company to create made-for-TV movies and hired writers blacklisted in the United States, including Ring Lardner, Jr., and Adrian Scott, to work under cover of pseudonyms. Over a ten-year period the company made 435 television films and series, including the highly popular "Robin Hood" series, which ran for five years and was syndicated in the United States.

In 1962, Weinstein returned to the United States. She was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, and in 1970 organized a rally at Madison Square Garden to raise funds for antiwar candidates for the Senate. The previous year, a meeting with an African-American who was qualified as a cinematographer but unemployable because he could not gain union membership had led her to begin researching racial discrimination in film production. She discovered that there were only 10 black and 3 Puerto Rican members in a technical union with a membership of over 6,000, and, in line with her daughter Paula Weinstein 's description of her as "an activist, a doer, not a talker," Hannah became a co-founder of Third World Cinema. The company, whose other founders included James Earl Jones, Ossie Davis and Diana Sands , was established in 1971 to make films about minorities with minority actors and technicians. Third World Cinema was unique in Hollywood both for its intent and because 40% of its stock was owned by the Harlem-East Harlem Community Association. As executive vicepresident, Weinstein furthered her goal of increasing minority presence in filmmaking by acquiring funds for a film-training academy for minorities. She also focused some of her efforts on assisting minorities in finding employment in the film industry, hiring 28 minority crew members for Third World Cinema's first feature film, Claudine (1974), starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll . Although it was praised as "outstanding" by the trade paper Variety, the movie did not do well at the box office. More successful was Weinstein's next film with Third World Cinema, 1977's Greased Lightning, which featured a young Richard Pryor in his first starring role. The comedy about a black stock-car racer won audiences over, setting the stage for Weinstein's next movie with Pryor, the hugely popular prison comedy Stir Crazy in 1980. Both films, noted critic Dale Pollock of the Los Angeles Times, "stood out as intelligent, well-crafted films in an era of violent and sexist black exploitation movies."

Her efforts netted Weinstein significant honors, including the Women in Film Life Achievement Award in 1982 and the Liberty Hill Upton Sinclair Award in 1984. Sadly, she died of a heart attack shortly before the ceremony for the latter award. When it was presented posthumously, a letter from her friend Lillian Hellman was read aloud by Jane Fonda , in which Hellman wrote that Weinstein was "the only person in the world Joe McCarthy was frightened of." Said Fonda, "Hannah taught me something very important: You can be successful and still be true to your values." In addition to the movies she produced and the institutions she founded, Weinstein left a significant legacy to film through her daughters Paula and Lisa Weinstein , both of whom followed her into the industry. The first woman vice president at Warner Bros. (in 1975), Paula Weinstein later produced A Dry White Season (1989), a film notable for its strong political content.