Hollywood Lobbyist Passes Away

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 27: Jack
Valenti, a former presidential aide who developed the U.S. movie ratings
system and spent decades running the Motion Picture Association of America,
passed away yesterday at the age of 85.

Valenti was an aide to President Lyndon Johnson before
joining the MPAA, which he ran for almost four decades. He retired in August
2004.

According to spokesman Warren Cowan, Valenti died at his
home yesterday surrounded by his family, after suffering a stroke last month.

Prominent Hollywood and political figures have issued
statements paying tribute to Valenti. President George W. Bush remembered him
as "a great American and a great Texan" who "leaves a powerful
legacy in Washington, in Hollywood, and across our Nation."

The director Steven Spielberg said: "In a sometimes
unreasonable business, Jack Valenti was a giant voice of reason. He was the
greatest ambassador Hollywood has ever known and I will value his wisdom and
friendship for all time."

Valenti is perhaps best known for ushering in the Hollywood
ratings system, and for being a staunch proponent for copyright enforcement,
sometimes coming out against new technologies; in 1982, Valenti famously told
Congress: "The VCR is to the American film producer and the American
public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”

Valenti was born in Houston, Texas, in 1921. He worked as
theater usher before joining the army, flying 51 missions during World War Two.
Following the war, he earned a B.A. from the University of Houston and an MBA
from Harvard. In 1952, he co-founded the advertising agency Weekley and
Valenti, and soon after that he met Lyndon B. Johnson, who was the U.S. VP
under President John F. Kennedy. Valenti handled the Kennedy-Johnson ad
campaign during their race for the White House in 1960 as well as the press
coverage of the fateful trip Kennedy and Johnson took to Dallas on November 22,
1963. Valenti was in the motorcade when President Kennedy was assassinated and
on the plane back to Washington with the new president, Johnson, who offered
him a job as his special assistant. In 1966, Valenti was offered the job of
president of the MPAA. After leaving the MPAA in 2004, Valenti began lobbying
for tougher decency regulations on TV, and writing his memoir.