The producer legendary Eric Pleskow died at the age of 95 years. An immense sadness for the world of cinema owes him a lot. “His death is a great loss for all of us”, said in a press release the organizers of the Viennale, the main motion picture event of the austrian capital, including Eric Pleskow was president since 1998. “The cinema it was my destiny,” said this veteran Oscars whose life was worthy of a film.
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Born Erich Pleskoff in a jewish family in Vienna on April 2, 1924, he fled the rise of nazism before the war to get to Paris, then to win the United States. Engineering degree in pocket, he had found himself “almost by accident” working in the seventh art, amount a to a the levels. He had built the studio United Artists in 1951, becoming the second european after Charlie Chaplin to preside over this institution.
In 1978, he founded the production company Orion Pictures, which he had taken the lead. A shower of Oscars has praised over the decades its many successes at box office: the film Amadeus , Platoon , Dances with wolves , the silence of The lambs , Rocky are part of its prestigious catalog.
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He saw the beginnings of Sylvester Stallone, worked with Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, Federico Fellini and Martin Scorsese. At the end of his life, he had returned to his city of birth that had made citizen of honour in 2007.
The immigrants or the sons of jewish immigrants who left central Europe in search of a better life have played a central role in the invention of Hollywood and the launch of the major american studios, from Paramount to Universal through MGM, Fox or Columbia. “I started by making the coffee and I finished by giving the final cut”, was amused to tell Eric Pleskow, claiming to have had “much luck”.
