Brad Grey, Former Paramount Pictures Chairman, Dies At 59
Image by Getty
By Thea Glassman May 16, 2017
Brad Grey, former Paramount Pictures chairman, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59.
The CEO, who produced such hits as “The Sopranos,” “The Wedding Singer,” and “Star Trek,” had cancer, according to a report from his spokesperson.
Born in the Bronx, Grey worked as a belt buckle salesman for his grandfather’s factory in high school, and nabbed a college internship with Harvey Weinstein, who was then a concert promoter.
Later, Grey moved into the comedy arena, producing “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” “The Larry Sanders Show,” and representing comedians Adam Sandler and Bob Saget. He went onto run Paramount for 12 years, before being forced out in February, after a $450 million annual loss for the studio.
“I knew Brad for over 40 years,” Weinstein wrote in a statement. “He started out as me and my brother’s assistant, and within six months, it was clear that we should be working for him and not the other way around. He was destined for great things in this business, but more importantly on a personal level, I knew him as a family man and nothing was more important to him than that. My condolences to his family, and he will be missed.”
Thea Glassman is an Associate Editor at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @theakglassman.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
