Jerry Tokofsky, the onetime William Morris agent and Columbia Photos government who didn’t assume a lot of a younger actor named Harrison Ford however went on to provide the acclaimed movies The place’s Poppa? and Glengarry Glen Ross, has died. He was 91.
Tokofsky died Oct. 5 of pure causes at his house in New York Metropolis, his household introduced.
Tokofsky additionally was a co-producer on the sci-fi thriller Dreamscape (1983), starring Dennis Quaid; the Abel Ferrara-directed crime thriller Concern Metropolis (1984), starring Tom Berenger and Billy Dee Williams; and the Charles Matthau-helmed, Stirling Silliphant-written The Grass Harp (1995), that includes Jack Lemmon and Piper Laurie within the adaptation of Truman Capote’s coming-of-age novel.
For United Artists, Tokofsky produced the traditional Carl Reiner-directed darkish comedy The place’s Poppa? (1970), starring George Segal, Ruth Gordon, Ron Leibman and Trish Van Devere.
And for New Line Cinema, he produced Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), the taut drama tailored by David Mamet from his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play. With a tip from director Irvin Kershner, it was Tokofsky who purchased the movie rights to the property and rounded up the excellent solid that included Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alex Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey.
As a younger government at Columbia within the Nineteen Sixties, Tokofsky was accountable for the studio’s artistic affairs division, which evaluated scripts and oversaw actors, administrators and producers, and he would rent future Sony Photos co-studio chief Peter Guber as his assistant.
After seeing rushes that had Ford enjoying the bit a part of a bellman in a scene with James Coburn in Ford’s display debut, Useless Warmth on a Merry-Go-Spherical (1966), Tokofsky known as the actor into his workplace.
As Ford associated throughout a 2013 look on Conan — he bought lots of mileage with this story through the years — Tokofsky stated to him: “You’re by no means going to make it on this enterprise, simply overlook about it. The primary time Tony Curtis was ever in a film, he delivered a bag of groceries, [and] you took one have a look at that man and stated, ‘That’s a film star.’
Countered Ford: “And I leaned throughout his desk and stated, ‘I assumed you have been purported to imagine that he was a grocery supply boy.’”
Tokofsky ordered him to depart his workplace, Ford stated, and his seven-year contract — for $150 per week — was quickly terminated. (The chief additionally needed him to vary his title and get a haircut, Ford recalled.)
Someday within the early Nineteen Eighties and now a giant star, Ford was within the commissary at twentieth Century Fox when a waiter offered him with a enterprise card with handwriting on it that stated, “I missed my wager.” He flipped it over and noticed Tokofsky’s title on the opposite aspect.
“A lot to my nice fast pleasure — it nonetheless offers me a bit of bit of delight now — I appeared round and couldn’t work out which one [in the room] he was,” Ford stated.
Jerome Herbert Tokofsky was born in Brooklyn on April 14, 1934. Down the road from his house was the Biltmore Theatre, which supplied him with an “escape from road life, introducing him to a different strategy to dwell removed from [his] grim and gritty [neighborhood of] East New York,” his household famous.
After graduating from Thomas Jefferson Excessive College, Tokofsky landed a soccer scholarship on the College of Alabama however after his freshman yr transferred to NYU, the place he continued to play soccer. He would graduate with a level in journalism and go on to check at NYU Regulation College. He additionally served within the U.S. Military Reserves.
Tokofsky began within the movie enterprise working part-time within the WMA mailroom whereas nonetheless at NYU. Norman Brokaw, a former mailroom worker, had risen to develop into the company’s chairman, and he took Tokofsky underneath his wing.
He ultimately moved to the Beverly Hills department at WMA and represented such shoppers as Segal, Steve McQueen, Peter Falk, Robert Blake, Natalie Wooden, Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde. He additionally enlarged his British contingent with the signings of Tony Richardson, Richard Harris, Albert Finney and Bryan Forbes.
Amongst his memorabilia from these years is a silver field from Tiffany’s, engraved as follows: “To Jerry Tokofsky, who bought King Rat and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for George Segal as if he have been getting them for himself. And, child, that’s agenting!”
After 12 years with WMA, Tokofsky grew to become second-in-command to Mike Frankovich, head of manufacturing at Columbia. Because the youngest studio government within the business again then, he packaged movies and was concerned within the manufacturing of such acclaimed options as A Man for All Seasons (1966), Georgy Woman (1966), The Professionals (1966), To Sir With Love (1967), Humorous Woman (1968) and Oliver! (1968).
Tokofsky exited Columbia in 1970 and was vp of European manufacturing at Paramount and MGM earlier than getting into impartial manufacturing and producing The place’s Poppa?
He left the U.S. and the movie business for seven years, residing in Paris and Barcelona and establishing the Vacation Inn lodge chain in Spain with the Wexler household of Chicago.
Returning to Hollywood, Tokofsky bought into the TV enterprise, and two of his pilots have been Second Time Round, starring Mariette Hartley, and a model of The place’s Poppa?, each for ABC. And he produced the David Steinberg-directed comedy Paternity (1981), starring Burt Reynolds and Beverly D’Angelo.
In accordance with a 1992 story about Glengarry Glen Ross in The New York Occasions, Tokofsky learn Mamet’s play on a visit to New York in 1985 on the suggestion of Kershner, who needed to direct it. After seeing it on Broadway, he paid Mamet $500,000 for the play and one other $500,000 to write down the film adaptation. After many suits and begins, manufacturing lastly started in August 1991 with James Foley directing.
He additionally performed a task within the manufacturing of Simple Rider (1969) and ABC’s landmark 1977 miniseries Roots and taught graduate lessons in producing and managing a studio at USC.
Survivors embody his spouse, Karen, whom he married in 1980 (she was a co-producer on Glengarry Glen Ross); sons David and Peter; daughter Tatiana; and grandchildren Rebecca, Rachel and Joie.
And if Ford is studying this obituary, his household famous, “Jerry Tokofsky nonetheless humbly acknowledges that he ‘misplaced the wager.’”