Jerry Weintraub, a Force in Film and Music, Dies at 77 - NYTimes.com

One of the great Hollywood producers. They just don't make them like that anymore. 

George Clooney in a statement said, in part: “To those who didn’t know him, we send our deepest sympathy. You would have loved him.”

Jerry Weintraub, a Force in Film and Music, Dies at 77

LOS ANGELES — Jerry Weintraub, a consummate showman whose up-and-down career touched musical entertainers as grandly diverse as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Led Zeppelin and screen artists who included Steven Soderbergh, Robert Altman and Michael Douglas, died on Monday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 77.

The cause was cardiac arrest, his publicist said.

Once best known as a concert promoter and a music manager, Mr. Weintraub became a force in the film business with Mr. Altman’s “Nashville,” Barry Levinson’s “Diner” and Carl Reiner’s “Oh, God!” He joined in producing those movies in the 1970s and ’80s, before a crippling business failure temporarily halted his Hollywood career.

A longtime intimate of former President George H. W. Bush — initially a friend of Mr. Weintraub’s second wife, the torch singer Jane Morgan — Mr. Weintraub made himself into a myth by combining his three hallmarks: political access, Hollywood success and relentless charm. That persona was cemented both in a 2010 memoir, written with Rich Cohen, called “When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man,” and “His Way,” a 2011 HBO documentary about his career.



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