Michael Schlesinger, Repertory Executive and Champion of Films, Dies at 74
Michael Schlesinger, who for more than 25 years worked as a studio repertory executive for divisions at United Artists, Paramount and Sony as a champion of film classics and forgotten B-movies alike, has died. He was 74.
Schlesinger died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a bout with cancer.
The popular Schlesinger was a fixture at screenings, lectures and events like the TCM Classic Film Festival and Cinecon in Los Angeles, where he conducted interviews. He also offered commentary for DVD releases of movies like Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), perhaps his favorite film, and for the website Trailers From Hell.
“People think I live in the past. No, I live in the present. I just vacation in the past,” he often said.
The Ohio native came to L.A., found a job with United Artists Classics and was involved in the 1988 theatrical reissue of John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
At Paramount Pictures Distribution, Schlesinger worked on the 50th anniversary release of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), Welles’ unfinished documentary “It’s All True” — which was to have been the director’s third film for RKO after Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) — and Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982), a controversial feature about racism.
For Sony Repertory — studio executive Jeff Blake, who had hired him at Paramount, brought him there — Schlesinger was a vp who oversaw a 70mm restoration of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the release of the B-movie spoof The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (1981). He also wrote and produced a U.S. version of Godzilla 2000.
“One of the reasons American audiences laugh at Godzilla movies is that the Japanese culture is very serious. So you have this very serious movie, then this guy in a rubber suit comes along stomping cardboard buildings and the tendency is to laugh,” he told Scott Michael Bosco in a 2001 interview.
“In redoing some of the dialogue, I felt that maybe if I put some intentional funny things and kept the human stuff on a lighter level, maybe, it wouldn’t seem so laughable when the monsters show up. I think I succeeded to some extent.”
Born in September 1950 in Dayton, Ohio, Schlesinger graduated from Ohio University in 1972, worked in Cincinnati for the independent distributor Tri-State Theaters, partnered in a local repertory theater and hosted classic movies on a TV station.
After leaving the studio business in 2012, Schlesinger directed comedy shorts featuring the faux-1930s comedy team Biffle and Shooster and helmed the Marilu Henner-starring Rock and Doris (Try to) Write a Movie,” a retro feature that premiered at the Palm Springs International Comedy Festival last year.
Another one of his favorite films was Sh! The Octopus (1937), a 56-minute comedy from Warner Bros. that starred Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins as bumbling detectives.
“Mike was a true mensch. Every cinephile had a friend in Mike Schlesinger,” friend and film historian Joseph McBride said. “He was passionate about preserving and distributing classic films. He stuck his neck out for film history while working for major studios that didn’t always appreciate what he did, but he was a driving force in getting Hollywood to better value its legacy.”
