Martin Starger, the first president of ABC Entertainment who helped with the creation of hit shows like Happy Days and Roots, has died. Starger died of natural causes Saturday in his Los Angeles home, his niece, casting director Ilene Starger, confirmed, per Deadline. He was 92.
“He was a brilliant, elegant, remarkable man,” Ilene said. “He had wonderful taste in projects, and, on a highly personal level, he was like a father to me, given that his older brother, my father, died very suddenly when I was a teenager.”
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Born in the Bronx, New York on May 8, 1932, Starger was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953 and assigned to the Signal Corps Motion Picture Location. He worked as a motion picture photographer at the Signal Corps Pictorial Center, the Army’s film production studio, and after being transferred to Honolulu, wrote, directed, photographed, and edited documentaries and features for television, for the U.S. Department of Defense, and for newsreels.
It was after leaving the Army that Starger worked in New York at the advertising agency BBDO before later moving to ABC as vice president of programs in 1969. Three years later, he became the first president of ABC Entertainment, a position he held from 1972 until 1975. Under his stewardship, the alphabet network not only developed its Movie of the Week franchise but also hit miniseries (Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man) and popular series (Marcus Welby, M.D. and Happy Days).
While still at ABC, Starger expanded his career into films and theater, with Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville jump-starting his career as a producer. Starger executive produced the movie alongside Jerry Weintraub. He later founded his own production company, Marstar Productions, and produced or executive produced the TV movies Friendly Fire, Escape From Sobibor, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Merchant of Venice, and The Elephant Man. His film credits, both as producer or executive producer, include Movie Movie, On Golden Pond, The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, Autumn Sonata, Sophie’s Choice, and Mask, the 1985 movie for which Cher won the female acting prize at Cannes.
Starger is survived by his niece.
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