Martin Starger Dies: First ABC Entertainment President, Producer For ‘Nashville’ And ‘Mask’ Was 92
deadline.comMartin Starger, a producer for such films as Robert Altman’s Nashville and Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, died Friday at 92 in his Los Angeles home of natural causes.
His death was confirmed by his niece, casting director Ilene Starger. “He was a brilliant, elegant, remarkable man,” Starger said. “He had wonderful taste in projects, and, on a highly personal level, he was like a father to me, given that his younger brother, my father, died very suddenly when I was a teenager.” As the first president of ABC Entertainment, he helped bring such projects as Roots, Happy Days and Rich Man, Poor Man to television.
As an executive producer, Starger worked on films including Stanley Donen’s Movie Movie (1978), Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond (1981), The Last Unicorn (1982) and Alan J.
Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice (1982). Martin Starger was born on May 8, 1932, to Rose and Isidore Starger of the Bronx, New York.
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