Gary Martin, Longtime Sony Photos Exec and MPTF Benefactor, Dies at 79

Gary Martin, the longtime Sony Photos govt and main supporter of the Movement Image & Tv Fund who has a historic Wizard of Oz soundstage named for him, has died. He was 79.

Martin died Thursday of pure causes at his dwelling in Sherwood Forest, California, a household spokesperson introduced.

When he retired as president of studio operations and manufacturing at Sony in 2013, the studio renamed its storied Stage 15 — one of many largest on the earth — the Gary Martin Stage. In-built 1927, it was used for 1939’s The Wizard of Oz — the yellow brick highway is below the present stage ground — and extra lately for Spider-Man and Males in Black movies.

On the dedication, then-Sony Photos Leisure co-chair Amy Pascal stated of Martin: “His management, grace and ability are unparalleled in our enterprise. There is no such thing as a one who comes shut.”

He oversaw manufacturing of greater than 600 movies on the studio.

Martin spent his childhood on soundstages as his father, Ivan, served because the director of studio operations at twentieth Century Fox for a few years.

He began his profession as a laborer, and in the course of the subsequent 20 years, he labored in a number of capacities at a number of studios earlier than arriving at Sony — then Columbia Photos — as a manufacturing supervisor in 1981. He oversaw bodily manufacturing and postproduction beginning in 1988 and added studio operations in 2003.

Martin was identified for being a straight shooter, an exec dedicated to creating positive that Sony Photos received the most effective consequence for its funding.

“As a colleague at Sony after which because the manufacturing head after I made a couple of movies there, Gary was tough, robust, nice at his work, and one of many sweetest, most lovely folks on the lot,” former Academy president Sid Ganis stated in an announcement.

Martin and his spouse, Susan, additionally have been fairly beneficiant to the MPTF, a corporation launched to him by his dad in his early days within the trade. His mom was cared for on the MPTF hospital, and he remained a lead donor till his loss of life.

In 2014, the Martins paid for a intestine renovation of a screening room within the Louis B. Mayer theater complicated on the MPTF campus in Woodland Hills to deliver it as much as trade requirements each in expertise and aesthetics. It’s now often called The Susan and Gary Martin Screening Room.

Moreover, Martin and Clint Eastwood have supported MPTF’s advantages help program for navy veterans within the leisure trade for years.

“We by no means needed to ask Gary and Susan for something. They have been at all times one step forward of us,” pal and MPTF CEO Bob Beitcher stated in an announcement. “Gary would ask, ‘What can we do that will make a optimistic impression for the residents?’ We’d give him the record of issues we have been contemplating, and he’d select probably the most bold merchandise and say, ‘Susie and I need to provide the cash for that.’

“He was the most effective type of donor, one who at all times gave from his coronary heart.”

Along with his spouse of 56 years, survivors embody his son, Sean; daughter-in-law Aisha; grandchildren Camille, Norah and Natalie; sister-in-law Nancy; nephews Larry, Steve, Jason and Matthew and their households; and nieces Colleen, Linda, Nicole and their households.

Donations in his reminiscence could also be made to the MPTF. A funeral service will likely be held at 9 a.m. on Nov. 17 on the Previous North Church at Forest Garden in Los Angeles.