Studio executive, music executive, and sometime film producer Ned Tanen died 5 January 2009 of natural causes. Born 20 September 1931 in Los Angeles, California, he worked his way up from the mailroom at the MCA talent agency to lead its film subsidiary, Universal. Later, he was in charge of motion pictures at Paramount Pictures.
Tanen led Universal to produce numerous hits, including genre films such as Jaws (1978), Animal House (1980), The Blues Brothers (1980), and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982). In 1980, under Tanen, Universal set a Hollywood record by earning $290 million for a single studio’s box office receipts; he broke the record again in 1982.
In between his studio careers, he left corporate Hollywood to run his own Channel Productions, which produced the brat-pack trilogy Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and St. Elmo’s Fire (1985).
After moving over to Paramount, he oversaw such films as Ghost (1990), 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (the character of Sloane Peterson was named for his daughter, Sloane), and Fatal Attraction (1987). At Paramount, he again broke the single studio box office record in 1986, bringing in $600 million.
He retired from the corporate side again went back to independent productions, including Mary Reilly (1996).
Biff Tannen, in the Back to the Future movies, was named for Tanen. He is survived by his daughters Sloane and Tracy, three grandchildren, and his partner, Donna Dubrow (his three marriages all ended in divorce).