Mort Engelberg, who was a producer on movies together with Smokey and the Bandit and The Huge Simple earlier than transitioning into politics as an “advance man” for Invoice Clinton and different presidential candidates, died Saturday in Los Angeles of pure causes. He was 86.
“He was a beautiful particular person, a beautiful husband. He cherished the film enterprise, and he cherished his work with President Clinton,” his spouse, Helaine Blatt, advised The Hollywood Reporter. “He advised the perfect tales of anybody I ever met, the perfect jokes.”
Born and raised in Memphis, Engelberg graduated from the College of Illinois after which spent a yr engaged on a grasp’s diploma in journalism on the College of Missouri. He left faculty earlier than finishing that diploma and labored as a journalist for a couple of years earlier than shifting to Washington in 1961 to work for Sargent Shriver, the director of the then-newly fashioned Peace Corps, and later adopted Shriver to the Workplace of Financial Alternative, the headquarters of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Conflict on Poverty.
However when the Vietnam Conflict started pulling funding away from Johnson’s applications, Engelberg left politics, relocated to New York and landed a job at MGM in 1967. He moved on to United Artists, the place he assisted on a number of James Bond movies. The studio later transferred him its Los Angeles workplace, the place he labored as assistant to the president of manufacturing.
Engelberg ultimately moved right into a producing function, the place he labored on the Smokey movies, starring Burt Reynolds, 1986’s The Huge Simple, starring Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin, together with Steve McQueen starrer The Hunter (1980).
His different credit embrace 1985’s The Heavenly Child; the 1979 Dom DeLuise comedy ‘Scorching Stuff’; 1987’s Maid to Order and Three for the Street; and 1988’s Fright Evening Half 2. He was an exec producer on 1988’s Distant Management and There Goes the Neighborhood, which was his final movie.
In 1984, he turned to politics in a giant means, volunteering because the advance man — somebody who handles publicity for political candidates, scouting places for marketing campaign stops, producing massive crowds and ensuring occasions go off with no hitch — for Walter Mondale’s presidential run in 1984 and once more for Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid in 1988.
Whereas neither gained their campaigns, in 1991, Engelberg once more volunteered as an advance man, this time for then-Arkansas Gov. Invoice Clinton’s presidential marketing campaign, which he would go on to win. He continued working with Clinton on his second presidential marketing campaign in addition to post-presidency.
“He traveled rather a lot with Clinton; he cherished that man,” Blatt mentioned, declaring that he by no means took any cash for his work on the campaigns. “He all the time volunteered. He all the time mentioned, ‘They’ll’t fireplace me.’”
In 1992, he was requested why he made the change from filmmaking to commit himself to the grueling schedule of a political marketing campaign. He advised The Los Angeles Instances that he discovered the work “therapeutic” and a “great reduction” from the leisure {industry}.
“For one factor, it’s not totally altruistic,” he mentioned. “L.A. is a one-industry city, and every part right here is ‘how did your image do’ or ‘how did your buddy’s image do’ or ‘are you gonna make this deal or that deal?’ You’ve got one constituent within the film enterprise and that’s your self. Whereas in politics — and I do know this sounds pretentious — however politics is about one thing. Choosing the subsequent president, that’s a reasonably necessary factor.”
Years later, he was requested once more about his function in politics, noting how a lot he loved his work.
“It’s a giant accountability, however it’s an terrible lot of enjoyable,” Engelberg advised The New York Instances in 2016. “It’s one thing I’ve actually come to like through the years.”
Till his dying, Engelberg advised anybody who requested about retirement that he wasn’t retired: “He would say he was a producer,” Blatt mentioned, noting his love for Hollywood.
In 2016, he married Blatt, his longtime love, after 26 years of courting, when he was 79. “On my seventy fifth birthday, I satisfied him to marry me. He mentioned, ‘OK, we’ll get married, however no marriage ceremony.’ It was a tiny little factor, a celebration with all my girlfriends,” she reminisced fondly.
The couple had no kids. Along with Blatt, Engelberg is survived by his brother and “greatest buddy,” Steve Engelberg; a niece, Liza Pahlberg; and a nephew, Danny Engelberg.
Borys Package contributed to this report.
