Producer Charles H. Joffe died of lung disease 9 July 2008. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 16 July 1929, he was the co-producer of Woody Allen’s movies and the business mind in a talent agency, Rollins Joffe, that managed high-profile comedians including Billy Crystal, David Letterman, and Robin Williams. Joffe accepted Allen’s Academy Award for Best Picture for Annie Hall in 1978.
Eric Lax, author of Woody Allen: A Biography, said that Joffe was responsible for Allen’s “total artistic control over his films, something almost unheard of in Hollywood,” starting with Take the Money and Run in 1969. “Woody got casting approval, script approval, and final cut, and he’s kept it ever since.”
Joffe’s genre productions were all Woody Allen films: Scoop (2006), Alice (1990), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Sleeper (1973), and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972).
Joffe graduated from Syracuse University in 1950, and then was hired by the MCA talent agency. In 1953, he started working for Jack Rollins, and was his partner by the early 1960s.
He is survived by his stepmother, Esther Joffe; his wife, Carol Holofcener; his son, Cory; two stepdaughter, film director Nicole Holofcener and Suzanne Joffe; and three grandchildren.