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Jack Valenti, father of movie ratings, dies at 85

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 27, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday (April 26, 2007). He was 85.

Mr. Valenti had a stroke in March. He died of complications at his Washington, D.C., home, said Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Mr. Valenti was a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson when he was lured to Hollywood in 1966 by movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim. A film lover, he once cited the 1966 A Man for All Seasons as his all-time favorite.

When he took over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, he was caught between Hollywood's outdated self-censorship and the cultural explosion in America.

Mr. Valenti abolished the industry's restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today's letter-based ratings system.

"While I believe that every director, studio has the right to make the movies they want to make, everybody else has a right not to watch it," he said shortly before his retirement in 2004.

Mr. Valenti wrote a handful of books, including one on Johnson, A Very Human President, and a novel, Protect and Defend.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world, because I spent my entire public working career in two of life's classic fascinations, politics and Hollywood," he said in 2004. "You can't beat that."

[Last modified April 27, 2007, 01:38:27]