Andreas "Andy" Albeck was an American movie executive, who was president and chief executive of United Artists, during a time when it released two films by Woody Allen, along with two films in both the James Bond and Rocky film series.
11 Facts About Andy Albeck
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Andy Albeck oversaw production of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, a movie frequently mentioned as one of the films considered the greatest ever, as well as Heaven's Gate, the box office bomb that led to the studio's demise as an independent studio.
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Andy Albeck's father was a Danish executive with a shipping firm, while his mother was a Russian escaping the Bolshevik Revolution.
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Andy Albeck's family was taken aboard an American naval vessel to Yokohama, Japan, where Albeck was raised and educated at St Joseph College.
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Andy Albeck came to United Artists when the company made the 1951 acquisition of Eagle-Lion Films, the British film company he had been working for.
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In 1958 Andy Albeck remarried Lotte Jamel, whom he had met in 1952 when she had been brought to the United States by her cousin Mickey Marcus, a colonel in the United States Army and Israel's first general.
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Andy Albeck worked his way up through the sales department at United Artists, earning promotions to become president of its broadcasting division and senior vice president of operations.
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Author Steven Bach, who served as head of production at United Artists under Albeck, wrote, "Andy Albeck was not show business; that much was clear," in his book Final Cut.
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Andy Albeck oversaw two films in the Rocky series, both of which were box office successes.
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Andy Albeck's undoing was the film Heaven's Gate, which went several times over its original budget and earned little in box office revenue in the wake of overwhelmingly negative reviews, such as by Vincent Canby of The New York Times, who called the film "an unqualified disaster" when it was released in November 1980.
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Andy Albeck was survived by his second wife, Lotte, as well as by his son and daughter from his first marriage, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.