Jerry Wald (September 16, 1911 – July 13, 1962) was an American producer and screenwriter for motion pictures and radio shows.
Born Jerome Irving Wald in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were active in show business. Jerry began writing a radio column for the New York Evening Graphic while a student at New York University. This led to him to produce several Rambling 'Round Radio Row featurettes for Vitaphone, Warner Brothers' short subject division, in 1932-'33.
Wald produced and wrote many films between the 1930s and 1960s including Stars Over Broadway (1935), The Roaring Twenties (1939), On Your Toes (1939, in collaboration with playwright Lawrence Riley), They Drive by Night (1940), Navy Blues (1941), Across the Pacific (1942), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Destination Tokyo (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), Johnny Belinda (1948), Key Largo (1948), Always Leave Them Laughing (1949), The Glass Menagerie (1950), Perfect Strangers (1950), Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), The Blue Veil (1951), Peyton Place (1957), An Affair to Remember (1957), In Love and War (1958), The Sound and the Fury (1959), Sons and Lovers (1960), Return to Peyton Place (1961) and Wild in the Country (1961).
He also produced the Academy Awards telecast twice, the ceremonies for 1957 and 1958.
He received four Academy Award nominations as producer of the nominees for Best Picture Mildred Pierce, Johnny Belinda, Peyton Place and Sons and Lovers. Although he never won a competitive Academy Award, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1949.
He died, aged 50, at home in Beverly Hills, California from a heart attack.
Wald was the real-life inspiration for the character of Sammy Glick in the 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg.
Famous quotes containing the words jerry and/or wald:
“Then word goes forth in Formic:
“Death’s come to Jerry McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jerry.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.”
—George Wald (b. 1906)