Jack Valenti

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Jack Joseph Valenti (September 5, 1921 to April 26, 2007) was a Special Assistant to US President Lyndon B. Johnson and the long-serving president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

He created the MPAA film rating system during his 38-year tenure as a member of the MPAA, and he was widely regarded as one of the world's most influential pro-copyright lobbyists.

Early life and education

Valenti, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in Houston on September 5, 1921. He was a first lieutenant in the US Army Air Force during World War II. Valenti completed 51 missions as the pilot-commander of a B-25 medium bomber and was given four awards, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.

Valenti earned a BBA degree from the University of Houston in 1946. He served on the staff of The Daily Cougar and was president of the university's student government during his time there. Valenti will later serve on the university's board of regents.

Personal life

Valenti married Mary Margaret Wiley, a former President Lyndon Johnson employee, in 1962, at the age 41. They had three children: John, Alexandra, and Courtenay Valenti, who became a Warner Bros. studio executive. He died just before their forty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Nancy Clark Reynolds had been a love interest in Valenti.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an inquiry into whether Valenti had a sexual association with a male photographer in 1964, a time when homosexual acts were still unlawful in certain areas of the United States. Valenti was not identified as homosexual, according to the probe, there were no signs of it.

Valenti appeared in the two-part Freakazoid in 1995. He assisted in the creation of the titular hero, he also spoke about movie ratings using stickers of a family, and made frequent mentions of his cheeks.

Valenti is played by Max Casella in the 2016 film Jackie, about First Lady Jacqueline Onassis' life after Kennedy's assassination.

Valenti died of complications as a result of a stroke at his Washington home on April 26, 2007, at the age of 85. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery under a veteran's gravestone, which includes both his war decorations and his time as president of the MPAA. This Time, This Place: My life in war, the White House, and Hollywood were released on May 15, 2007, just weeks after his death.

Following his death, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) established the NIAF Jack Valenti Institute, which offers assistance to Italian-American film students in honor of his memory. After receiving an award from Mary Margaret Valenti, director Martin Scorsese unveiled the institute at the Foundation's 32nd Anniversary Gala.

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Career

Valenti, a bachelor of Harvard University, served in Humble Oil's public relations department, where he helped the Texas gas stations climb from fifth to first in sales through a "cleanest toilets" campaign.

In 1952, he and a partner named Weldon Weekley formed Weekley & Valenti, an advertising company, with oil firm Conoco as its first client. Valenti met then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson in 1956. Weekley & Valenti branched out into political research, with the inclusion of Representative Albert Thomas, a Johnson ally, as a client. Valenti's firm assisted in the Kennedy-Johnson presidential campaign in 1960.

Valenti was in the presidential motorcade during President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's visit to Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and she was in contact with the news media. Valenti was present at Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One and flew with him to Washington after the assassination of President Kennedy. He became Johnson's first "unique assistant" and spent the first two months of Johnson's presidency. Johnson assigned Valenti the responsibility to handle relationships with the Republican legislative leadership, including Gerald Ford and Charles Halleck from the House of Representatives and Senate President Everett Dirksen in 1964.

Johnson later called him "the most single dominating human being I've ever encountered" and "the single most intelligent human being I've ever encountered." Valenti said in a speech to the American Advertising Federation in 1965: "I sleep a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president."

Valenti later chastised film producer Oliver Stone for the 1991 film JFK. "I owe where I am today to Lyndon Johnson," he said, calling the film a "monstrous charade." I could not live with myself and let some filmmaker soil his memory."

Valenti resigned his White House position in 1966 after being president of the Motion Picture Association of America, at the request of Universal Studios chief Lew Wasserman and with Johnson's permission. Valenti and Valenti's arrival in Hollywood, the two were lifelong allies, and they planned and controlled how Hollywood would function for the next several decades.

William Patry, a copyright prosecutor for the Clinton administration who watched Valenti firsthand, says:

Valenti invented the MPAA film rating system in 1968, which initially had four separate ratings: G, M. R, and X. In 1972, the M rating was back to GP and then changed to PG. Since the X rating was not brand-new and hence freely used by the pornography industry, with which it was first identified, it became problematic. Since they carried the X rating, films such as Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange were deemed pornographic. The NC-17 rating was introduced in 1990 as a branded "adults only" substitute for the non-trademarked X-rating. The PG-13 rating was first introduced by Steven Spielberg in 1984 to give a greater degree of distinction for audiences.

Valenti became well-known in the late 1970s and early 1980s for his flamboyant attacks on the Sony Betamax Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), which the MPAA feared would devastation the movie business. "I say to you and the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone," he told a congressional panel in 1982. Despite Valenti's prediction, the home video market eventually became the mainstay of movie studio profits throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Valenti lobbied for the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, claiming that copyright violation through the Internet could irreversibly damage the reputation and movie industries.

Valenti, a filmmaker from delivering screener copies of their films to journalists and voters in various awards shows, found himself in 2003. Antidote Int'l Films Inc. et al. et al., a company under growing market pressure and a court injunction. Valenti vs. MPAA (November 2003) vs. MPAA (November 2003). Valenti resigned in 2004, barely avoiding a big and costly antitrust case against the MPAA.

"By winning a court order to force the MPAA to lift the screener ban last December, independent filmmakers' Jeff Levy-Hinte, IFP/Los Angeles executive director Dawn Hudson and IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd said in a joint statement: "By winning a court order to force the MPAA to lift the screener ban last December, the Alliance of Independent Filmmakers" enabled individual distributors to determine when and in what way to distribute promotional screeners It was considered Valenti's biggest career loss.

Valenti received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for his service with the Army Air Force during the Second World War. Jack Valenti received the Bronze Medallion in 1969, the highest civilian award in New York City. Jack Valenti was awarded the French Légion d'honneur in 1985.

The University of Houston bestowed Valenti an honorary doctorate in 2002.

Valenti received the "Legend in Leadership Award" from the Yale School of Management's Chief Executive Leadership Institute in December 2003.

The Motion Picture Association of America's Washington, D.C. headquarters, which had been renamed in June 2005, was renamed the Jack Valenti Building. It is located in 888 16th St. NW, Washington, DC, very close to the White House. Jack Valenti died while his office was on the 8th floor, outside the MPAA's space.

The University of Houston renamed its School of Communication to the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication in his honor in April 2008. Valenti was one of the school's most popular alumni.

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