Ray Stark

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Ray Stark (October 3, 1915 – January 17, 2004) was an American film producer and powerbroker known for his Machiavellian ways.

While putting together the Broadway musical Funny Girl - the highly fictionalized account of the life of his mother-in-law, Fanny Brice - its producer David Merrick took Stark and his wife to see an unknown singer perform at the Bon Soir in Greenwich Village. At first, the Starks balked at using Barbra Streisand, but settled for her when they couldn't get Eydie Gorme or Carol Burnett and their initial choice, Anne Bancroft pulled out.

Stark forced Streisand to sign a four-picture deal with his Rastar Productions in exchange for reprising Brice. They collaborated on The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), The Way We Were (1973) and Funny Lady (1975), but there was obvious bitterness: after Funny Lady wrapped, Streisand gave Stark an antique mirror on which she wrote in lipstick, "Paid in full."

Stark was the power behind the throne at Columbia Pictures in the 1970s and 80s. In 1977, when actor Cliff Robertson started an investigation which revealed that Columbia President David Begelman had forged checks, Stark told Robertson to not press on. Robertson said he would do "what a citizen should do in this situation," and Robertson was blacklisted for two years. The story is detailed in David McClintick's Indecent Exposure: A True Story Of Hollywood And Wall Street.

He received the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1980.

Later in his career, he produced such films Annie and Steel Magnolias, with varying degrees of success.

On his passing in 2004, Ray Stark was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Funny Girl
The Goodbye Girl
The Sunshine Boys
The Way We Were
Steel Magnolias
Murder by Death
Funny Lady
Barbarians at the Gate (film)
The Night of the Iguana
The Electric Horseman
Robin and Marian
Fat City (film)
Reflections in a Golden Eye
This Property is Condemned
The Owl and the Pussycat (film)
California Suite (film)

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