Cinema: Hollywood legend Jerry Weintraub is dead – Times Online

The producer of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Karate Kid” was considered a loud, immoderate and always entertaining. Now he has died at the age of 77 after a cardiac arrest.

Updated July 7, 2015 03:57 clock

Producer Jerry Weintraub at an awards ceremony last year | © Kevork Djansezian / Reurers

The legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub, the blockbuster movies like The Karate Kid and Ocean’s Eleven brought to the big screen, is dead. According to his spokesman, the producer died on Monday in the Californian city of Santa Barbara, as the Los Angeles Times reported. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. Weintraub was 77 years old.

“Today died our friend,” actor George Clooney said in a release that was published by Hollywood Reporter. “In the coming days there will be tributes. We will laugh at his great stories and his achievements applaud” the US actor told. Weintraubs star plaque on the “Walk of Fame” in Hollywood is to be decorated with flowers after notification of the operator.

Even the former US President George Bush paid tribute to his friend Weintraub. “Jerry was an American original, the success was thanks to the sheer power of his instinct, drive and his outstanding personality,” Bush declared. The producer had “a passion for life”.

“If Weintraub makes something, he does it excessively,” wrote the magazine Time in a portrait in 2011 on the producers. “If he runs ski, then exit, the most dangerous routes. When he drives the car, then race, and if he rides, then horses that almost kill him. If he drinks, then until it falls.” He was the last of a dying species big Hollywood producers, it said in the text. “Loud, charismatic, immoderate in his ego. And always entertaining.” He recall bygone days, “where huge cinemas, the films unique and the Stars were irresistible”.

Weintraub recently worked on a new Tarzan film version, the 2016 the cinemas should come. In his long career, he produced dozens of films, from Diner (1982) to Liberace – Too much of a good thing is wonderful (2013). Before his success in the movie business Weintraub had initially worked as a talent manager, and took, among others, the entertainer Frank Sinatra and the US singer Neil Diamond under his wing. Later he founded the production company Weintraub Entertainment Group. Most recently, he worked for the film studio Warner Bros.