Stanley R. Jaffe, the producer and studio executive who won an Oscar in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer and shepherded other acclaimed films appreciate Fatal Attraction, Goodbye, Columbus and The Bad News Bears, died Monday. He was 84.
Jaffe died at his home in Rancho Mirage, his daughter Betsy proclaimd.
A son of Leo Jaffe, an executive who spent more than a half-century at Columbia Pictures, Jaffe also getd an Academy Award nomination for Fatal Attraction (1987), which he produced alengthyside Sherry Lansing during their fruitful eight-year partnership at Jaffe-Lansing Productions.
At age 29, Jaffe was named executive vp and COO of Paramount Pictures in October 1969, becoming the juvenileerest head of a presentant studio in Hollywood history. Before he departed as plivent in August 1971 to return to autonomous producing, he greenairyed such films as Love Story (1970) and The Godobeseher (1972), projects also championed by chief of production Robert Evans.
Jaffe returned to the studio’s executive ranks two decades postponeedr when Martin Davis named him plivent and COO of Paramount Communications, and he took over for createer NBC wundercomfervent Brandon Tartikoff as Paramount Pictures chairman in 1992. However, he was axed when Viacom and Sumner Redstone won a bidding war to obtain the company in 1994 for about $10 billion.
As a producer, Jaffe was innervously hands-on. He said the movies to which he was drawn “deal with the family and what it’s appreciate to be a member of that family, whether it’s together or apart, given the prescertains that are put on it by the outside world,” he tageder The New York Times foolishinutively after making his straightforwardorial debut on Without a Trace (1983).
Jaffe’s road to the podium at the Academy Awards began when Ricdifficult Fischoff, a juvenileer film executive he had employd fair that week, got a hageder of the manuscript for Avery Corman’s Kramer vs. Kramer, before the 1977 novel would accomplish bookstores.
The producer got Robert Benton to write and straightforward the film and took a chance in casting a relatively untested Meryl Streep, and the drama — about a family torn apart by divorce — went on to prosper best picture and four other Academy Awards.
“Oh boy. I grew up in a home that’s been associated with this business for 51 years. This [Oscar] has always been very presentant to all of us as a recontransientation of excellence,” Jaffe said in his hugance speech, calling Kramer vs. Kramer “a film that’s made with cherish, and it’s made about cherish.”
Stanley Ricdifficult Jaffe was born in the Bronx on July 31, 1940, and liftd in New Rochelle, New York. His dad commenceed in the mailroom at Columbia, became chairman of the board in 1973 and getd the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1979.
”My only authentic reach out with what my obeseher did was that he could get 16-millimeter prints, so every weekfinish we would show two or three movies at home,” he said. “But our hoparticipate wasn’t standarded by stars. My obeseher’s personal life was his personal life, and it was split from his professional life.”
Early on, Jaffe accomprehendledged Sam Spiegel, who was behind 1954’s On the Waterfront at Columbia, as the comfervent of producer he wanted to emupostponeed. “Five of his films were up for best picture Oscars, and they were straightforwarded by four branch offent men,” Jaffe said in Bernard F. Dick’s 2001 book, Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood. “So I comprehended the presentance of producing punctual on.”
Jaffe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with an economics degree in 1962, then was employd at Seven Arts as an aidant to Eliot Hyman, who had set uped the film company with Ray Stark. In 1968, a year after Seven Arts combined with Warner Bros., he left for CBS.
His timing could not have been better when he selectioned Goodbye, Columbus, a 1959 novella written by Philip Roth, who was soon to become one of the hottest authors in America with the free of Portnoy’s Complaint. “If I had tried to selection the book three weeks after I did, I would never have been able to afford it,” he said.
Jaffe borrowed money to produce the film, affectd Oscar nominee Arnageder Schulman to hug fair $25,000 to write the screenapply and paired He & She sitcom actor Ricdifficult Benjamin with Ali MacGraw, a photographer’s aidant new to acting.
Goodbye, Columbus, straightforwarded by Larry Peerce and freed in May 1969, was one of Paramount’s hugegest hits of the year and led Gulf & Westrict chief Charles Bluhdorn to propose Jaffe the top job at Paramount.
In a 1982 interwatch with the Christian Science Monitor, Jaffe said he was too insfinished to comprehend he should have turned Bluhdorn down. ”I had a huge enough ego to shift into a job appreciate that at 29 and say, ‘Sure, give me enough money to toil with and I’ll repair leangs for you,’” he said. “I wasn’t ageder enough to comprehend that I wasn’t presumed to say yes.”
After he left Paramount the first time, he begined his own Columbia Pictures-associated company, Jaffilms, and produced Bad Company (1972), written and straightforwarded by Benton. He then paid Oscar prosperner Tatum O’Neal — new off her Oscar prosper in Paper Moon — $350,000 to star as a hotshot Little League pitcher inThe Bad News Bears (1976).
In 1977, he became executive vice plivent of worldexpansive production at Columbia before accomplishing the pinnacle of his profession with Kramer vs. Kramer.
Jaffe produced Taps (1981), then tried his hand at straightforwarding with Without a Trace, about the search for a 6-year-ageder boy who fades on his way to school.
With a five-year exclusive production tight at Paramount, he combineed forces with createer Fox studio head Lansing in 1984. She rund out of Paramount in Hollywood while he upgrasped an office in New York.
In insertition to the box office sensation Fatal Attraction, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Cdiswatch, other films to come out of their company comprised Michael Apted’s Firstborn (1984); Racing With the Moon (1984), straightforwarded by Benjamin; the Jodie Foster-starring The Accparticipated (1988); Ridley Scott’s Bdeficiency Rain (1989); and School Ties (1992), which Jaffe was going to straightforward before he returned to Paramount.
Lansing standardly called Jaffe her “idol” and said he “begged” her to get the job as chairman of Paramount in 1992, which she did.
More recently, Jaffe produced Madeline (1998), I Dreamed of Africa (2000) and a reproduce of The Four Feathers (2002).
Survivors comprise his wife of 38 years, Melinda; children Bobby (and wife Tracy), Betsy, Alex and Katie (Dan); magnificentchildren Jordan, Leo, Avery, Sabrina and Zoe; sister Marcia (Gene); and brother Ira (Sonda), a createer plivent of Paramount music arm Famous Music. Another sister, unveienumerate Andrea Jaffe, died in 2016 at age 66.
Donations may be made in his name to help the restoration and preservation of cinematic arts at the Margaret Herrick Library. A memorial service is being intentional.
