Martin Ransohoff, the co-founder of Filmways Television who went on to produce such acclaimed features as The Cincinnati Kid — on which he fired director Sam Peckinpah — Save the Tiger and Jagged Edge, has died. He was 90.
Ransohoff, whose credits also include Arthur Hiller’s The Americanization of Emily (1964) and Silver Streak (1976) and John Sturges’ Ice Station Zebra (1968), died Wednesday morning at his home in Bel-Air, his stepson, Steve Botthof, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The son of a prominent coffee broker, Ransohoff founded Filmways in 1952 with Ed Kasper to make industrial films and TV commercials. Still in his early 30s, he became one of the youngest men to take an entertainment company public when Filmways boarded the American Stock Exchange in 1958.
Filmways became known as the home of such 1960s TV shows as Mister Ed, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and The Addams Family and, through the 1966 acquisition of Heatter-Quigley Productions, the game show The Hollywood Squares.
