Paula Weinstein, a movie producer, studio executive and political activist who became a staunch supporter of women in her industry, died Monday at her Manhattan home. She was 78 years old.
Her sister Lisa Weinstein announced her death. She said the cause just isn’t yet known.
In the Hollywood boys’ club, Ms. Weinstein was a rare woman in a top executive position: Over the course of her long profession, she was president of United Artists, vice chairman of Warner Bros. and executive vice chairman of twentieth Century Fox. She was just 33 when she was hired at Fox in 1978, and a 12 months later she was promoted to vice chairman and the Los Angeles Times called her “the highest-ranking woman in the film industry.”
“A man can be mediocre at almost everything, but a woman has to be perfect,” she told Life magazine this 12 months when she was featured in a story about Hollywood’s “Young Tycoons.”
But Ms. Weinstein, who colleagues said had a wicked sense of humor – her sister described her laugh as a contagious giggle – and an unwavering commitment to social justice, was something of an outlier in Hollywood because of her gender. As Ken Sunshine, a veteran public relations consultant and longtime Democratic Party activist, put it in a telephone interview: “Unlike many others, she does not play in politics. For her, social and political changes were the most important. She was the opposite of the fake Hollywood activist looking for good PR or career advancement. She was unique in a sea of pretenders.
Activism was a family affair: Her mother, Hannah Weinstein, was a journalist and speechwriter who took her three young daughters to Paris and then London in 1950, escaping the grim and punitive politics of the McCarthy era. In the UK, where the family lived for over a decade, Hannah Weinstein produced films and television series featuring blacklisted actors and writers such as Ring Lardner Jr. and Ian McLellan Hunter. She repeatedly told her daughters, Lisa recalls, “If you believe in something, you have to be willing to get off your ass and do something, and if you don’t get up, then you haven’t really believed in it.”
“She was a discouraging role model,” Lisa Weinstein added.
It was Hannah who introduced Paula to the film industry, through Jane Fonda.
“Hannah was the first person I asked for money as an activist,” Ms. Fonda wrote in an email. “It was to open an IG office in D.C. in 1970, where soldiers’ concerns could be brought to Congress. She gave me $2,000 – which was a surprise in 1970. A few years later, Hannah called me and asked if I could help her daughter Paula, who had just graduated from Columbia University, find a job in Hollywood. She said “I owe it to her.”
The two women then met for lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet in Los Angeles and immediately fell in love with each other. They were of a similar mind, both were involved in anti-war protests in the 1960s, and both had arrest records – Ms. Weinstein for participating in the Columbia protests. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Weinstein became Ms. Fonda’s agent, helping her land the role of Lillian Hellman in “Julia” (1977), based on Ms. Hellman’s book “Pentimento.”
“It helped that Lillian was Paula’s godmother,” Ms. Fonda said.
Her next job was at Fox, where she oversaw the production of “9 to 5” (1980), successful comedy starring Ms. Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as office staff rebelling against their sexist employer. She recently reunited with Ms. Fonda and Ms. Tomlin as executive producer of the long-running Netflix series “Grace & Frankie.”
Ms. Weinstein has produced greater than 30 movies, including “The Perfect Storm” (2000), starring George Clooney as a Massachusetts fishing boat captain, and the epic “Nor’Easter,” and the comedy “Analyze It” (1999 ). ) and its sequel, “Analyze That” (2002) with Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal. She was also a founder, together with Mrs. Fonda, Barbra Streisand and others, of the association Hollywood Women’s Political Committeea fundraising center for liberal candidates and organizations from 1984 to the late Nineteen Nineties.
With her husband, Mark Rosenberg, whom she met after they were each members of the national activist organization Students for a Democratic Society, Ms. Weinstein made many movies, including “The Fabulous Baker Boys” (1989) with Jeff and Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer and “Fearless” (1993), also starring Jeff Bridges. They also made “Citizen Cohn” (1992), an HBO movie about Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s lawyer and handyman – a subject near Ms. Weinstein’s heart because of her upbringing. Their last production together was “Flesh and Bone” (1993); Mr. Rosenberg died of heart failure at the age of 44 while working on the set of this film.
Ms. Weinstein continued to make movies for Spring Creek Productions, the company she founded together with her husband – most notably one other HBO film, “Recount” (2008), a political thriller based on the tail end of the 2000 presidential election and the Bush v. U.S. case. Gore, the Supreme Court case that decided the election in George W. Bush’s favor.
“Paula knew how to combine advertising with politics,” said Lucy Fisher, a veteran producer and former executive vice chairman of Sony Pictures, who considered Ms. Weinstein a mentor, “but not in a medicinal sense. She invented a format that became HBO’s imprimatur of high-quality, if gossipy, behind-the-scenes drama.”
Paula Weinstein was born on November 19, 1945 in Manhattan, the youngest of three daughters. Her mother, Hannah (Dorner) Weinstein, met her father, Isidore Weinstein, often known as Pete, after they were hired as speechwriters for Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. At the time, Hannah was a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune and Pete was a reporter for The (*78*) Eagle.
The couple separated in 1950 and Hannah subsequently left the country together with her daughters. They returned to the United States in 1962, and Paula enrolled in Colombia shortly thereafter.
In addition to her sister Lisa, Ms. Weinstein is survived by one other sister, Dina, and her daughter, Hannah Rosenberg.
Since 2013, Ms. Weinstein was chief content officer of Tribeca Enterprises, which incorporates the Tribeca Film Festival and Tribeca Studios, where she created branded content and led mentorship programs for emerging writers and directors. She left Tribeca last fall to concentrate on political work.
“I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and complain about everything. I really want to be fully involved in campaigns. National and nationwide campaigns she told Deadline magazine after she left. “I feel like it’s a moment… between the climate and the book ban and everything else that I don’t have to get into.”
Following Ms. Weinstein’s death, tributes have poured in from her colleagues and friends, including Deborah Cahn, the author and producer.
“Paula was a force of nature,” Ms. Cahn wrote. “She taught me so much about so many things. How to stand up and be yourself. Stand at the front. Speak up. Be outraged and happy.”
