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| Actor Charlton Heston feeds Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green, one of seven movies Heston made with producer Walter Seltzer, who died Friday. |
Walter Seltzer, a Hollywood producer who made seven films with Charlton Heston, has died. He was 96.
Seltzer died Friday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund's retirement home in Woodland Hills, said Jennifer Fagen, a spokeswoman for the fund.
Seltzer began his career as a publicity agent for actors such as Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford while working for MGM.
He became a producer with Marlon Brando's independent film company, making films such as the 1959 drama Shake Hands With the Devil with James Cagney and One-Eyed Jacks, a 1961 western starring Brando.
In 1965, he started working with Heston beginning with The War Lord and followed by the western Will Penny in 1968.
Their partnership also produced The Omega Man in 1971 and Soylent Green in 1973, both films touching on overpopulation, a subject that obsessed both Heston and Seltzer.
He was also known for his Oscar campaigns, including the 1955 movie Marty, a low-budget film that spent $400,000 on marketing, more than it cost to make.
"We offered to send a print of the picture, a projector and a projectionist to the home of anyone who would invite 20 academy members to a screening," Seltzer told the Associated Press in 2005.
Marty won four Academy Awards and was considered a sleeper hit.
Seltzer was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 7, 1914, the son of a pioneering film exhibitor. He worked as an usher before going into publicity and serving in the armed forces.
He retired from filmmaking by the late 1970s and became a fundraiser and board member of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which cares for aging actors and runs the home where he died.
