Background
Yablans was born to a Jewish family in New York City to Annette and Morris Yablans. His father was a Brooklyn cab driver.
film company executive motion picture producer
Yablans was born to a Jewish family in New York City to Annette and Morris Yablans. His father was a Brooklyn cab driver.
Student, City College of New York. Student, University Wisconsin.
Yablans" first employers in the film business included Warner Brothers, The Walt Disney Company and Filmways. He became Executive Vice President of Sales for Paramount Pictures in the late 1960s. In that position, his expert marketing of the film Love Story (1970) led to his appointment as Paramount Studios" President in 1971.
As head of Paramount, he oversaw the release of such classic movies as The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Participant II (1974), and Chinatown (1974).
Following his presidency at Paramount in 1975, he became an independent producer, working primarily through Paramount and 20th Century Fox. He was executive producer of such films as Silver Streak (1976), The Other Side of Midnight (1977), Congo (1995), and the popular Home Box Office series "Rome." He also wrote and produced "North Dallas Forty" (1979) and Mommie Dearest (1981).
Yablans was then recruited by Kirk Kerkorian to head his troubled and debt-laden film company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). While Yablans" reorganization of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists (UA) into a single entity as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA served to reduce costs and overhead, the company continued to lose value and in 1986 was purchased by Ted Turner Productions for a reported $1.25 billion.
In 2003, Yablans founded Promenade Pictures, a production company committed to the production of "family-friendly" entertainment, with their most ambitious project the "Epic Stories of the Bible" series of Consultants to Government and Industry-animated features, inaugurated with The Ten Commandments (2007) and Noah"s Ark: The New Beginning.(release date unknown)
Yablans died on Thanksgiving, November 27, 2014, from natural causes at the age of 79.
Chairman entertainment division Federation Jewish Philanthropies. Board directors Boys' Clubs American, Will Rogers Hospital. Trustee American Film Institute Served with Army of the United States, 1954-1956.
Member Variety Club International (chairman), Motion Picture Association (director) Clubs: Fairview Country.
Married Ruth Edelstein, December 21. Children: Robert, Sharon, Edward.