OSCAR-WINNING JEWISH REFUGEE DIES AT 95.
Eric Pleskow, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe who became a risk-taking, artistically inclined movie mogul presiding over seven best-picture Oscars, died Oct. 1 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 95.
Eva Rotter of the Vienna International Film Festival, which Pleskow had led as president since 1998, said he had had respiratory problems.
As a studio head, Pleskow was responsible for two of the only three films to win all five major Academy Awards: 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. He granted creative latitude to filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Jonathan Demme.
His family’s elegant home in Vienna was seized by the SS, but a streak of good fortune followed. In 1939, his family left by train to Paris and went on to New York City, where his mother got a job sewing for a documentary film production.
Pleskow, a teenager, was hired as a secretary. He rose to assistant editor and, after being drafted into the Army, was assigned to Gen. Robert Mcclure, who noted that Pleskow had worked in the movie business.
“We’re going to be taking this studio in Munich,” Pleskow recalled his saying. “Can you run a studio?” Pleskow, then 21, signed on and helped rebuild the storied Bavaria Film studio, later used by Elia Kazan and Stanley Kubrick. After United Artists was acquired in 1951, Pleskow was hired as an executive and in 1973 was named president.
The Cuckoo’s Nest best-picture win kicked off a three-year streak — a first in Hollywood history — in which the studio won the top Oscar, for Rocky and for Annie Hall.
In 1978, Pleskow resigned and with four others founded a new studio, Orion.
A joint venture with Warner Bros., the studio released best-picture winners Amadeus, Platoon, Dances With Wolves and Silence of the Lambs.
But in 1991, months after Wolves won seven Academy Awards, Orion filed for bankruptcy. Pleskow resigned as chairman in 1992.
Pleskow was born Erich Pleskoff in Vienna on Apr. 24, 1924. His wife, Barbara Black, died in 2009. Survivors include two children and four grandchildren.
In an earlier interview, Pleskow reflected on growing older in a home full of awards. “I have a few Oscars in my apartment, and that’s dangerous,” he said. “I was short of breath a few weeks ago, and called the ambulance. They came in and saw the Oscars and forgot why they came.”