R.I.P. Martin Poll

Veteran movie and TV producer Martin Poll died between Friday night and early Saturday morning of natural causes at a care facility on the Upper Westside in New York City. He was 89. Poll was nominated for an Academy Award as producer for Best Picture of 1968 for The Lion In Winter, which won three Oscars ' Best Actress Katharine Hepburn (tied with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl), Best Original Score for John Barry and Best Adapted Screenplay for James Goldman ' out of seven nominations. He began his career in Europe where he served as a co-producer on feature films and produced more than three dozen half-hour episodes of the classic Flash Gordon TV series in Germany and France for international release. After moving to New York City, Poll bought and reopened the famed Biograph Studio and rechristened it Gold Medal Studios. Productions during his time at Gold Medal included Elia Kazan's A Face In The Crowd, Paddy Chayefsky's The Middle Of The Night starring Kim Novak and Frederic March. Other films under auspices of Gold Medal included Butterfield 8 with Elizabeth Taylor (Best Actress Oscar) and Laurence Harvey and The Fugitive Kind starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Poll is credited with helping bring about a renaissance of filmmaking in New York during a time location shooting was much more bureaucratically complicated than it is today. He also served as producer on films including Sylvia, The Appointment, The Possession Of Joel Delaney, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, Love And Death and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, as well as several others. His last feature film as producer was My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. In addition, Poll had multiple TV movie production credits including for a 2003 version of The Lion In Winter (Emmy-nominated for Oustanding TV Movie), Diana: Her True Story, Arthur the King and The Fantastic Seven, among others. Survived by his son, film editor and director Jon Poll.