Joseph Feury

Last updated

Joseph Feury (born Joseph Fioretti) [1] is an American film and television producer, documentary filmmaker, painter, actor, stage dancer, and Academy Award winner. [1] He is the husband of Academy Award winning actor/director Lee Grant and step-father to Tony Award winner Dinah Manoff. He and Grant are the parents of Belinda Fioretti. [2]

Contents

Life and Work

Joseph Fioretti grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware. [1] He contracted polio at the age of 16, and after graduating from High School (1957), became a plumber like his father. Fioretti preferred to start a ballet education and found a love of the theater. He auditioned for My Fair Lady , and went on tour with a musical version of Ninotchka in the early 1960s. There, Fioretti met the actress and future Academy Award winner Lee Grant, whom he married in 1962. [1] He earned his living at this time with an advertising agency.

Fioretti, who wanted to sound less Italian, started to use the name Feury, and began to be artistic in many ways. Although dyslexic, he authored several screenplays, began painting for the first time in 1966, and began producing tightly budgeted B-movies in the early 1970s. From the 1980s, he was the producer of the films of his wife Lee Grant. [3] For Grant's 1986 documentary on homelessness in the US under President Ronald Reagan, Down and Out in America , Feury and with his co-producer Milton Justice received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature the following year. [4] He went on to produce a number of documentary films and TV movies. [5] [6] The documentary film Baghdad ER took a look at the activities of US military surgeons in the Iraq war zone. Produced in conjunction with DCTV, HBO, and his longtime collaborators Roberta Morris Purdee and wife Lee Grant, the film went on to win four Emmys, a Peabody, and the Dupont-Columbia. [7] [8]

In 2012, Joseph Feury began to professionally paint and also worked as draftsman. His works have been exhibited in galleries in Manhattan and across the United States. Grant colleagues such as Alan Alda, Joy Behar and Michael Douglas, a close friend of Feury's for decades, own works by Feury. His complete oeuvre was published in a book entitled Artworks of Joseph Fioretti.

In October 2019 Feury received a retrospective of his artwork at the National Arts Club in New York City. [9] [10]

Filmography

As producer unless otherwise stated:

Related Research Articles

<i>Dead Poets Society</i> 1989 American film by Peter Weir

Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman. The film, starring Robin Williams, is set in 1959 at the fictional elite boarding school Welton Academy, and tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Harris</span> American actor and director (born 1950)

Edward Allen Harris is an American actor and filmmaker. His performances in Apollo 13 (1995), The Truman Show (1998), Pollock (2000), and The Hours (2002) earned him critical acclaim and Academy Award nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Levinson</span> American filmmaker, and actor

Barry Lee Levinson is an American filmmaker, comedian and actor. Levinson's best-known works are mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982); The Natural (1984); Good Morning, Vietnam (1987); Bugsy (1991); and Wag the Dog (1997). He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fisher Stevens</span> American actor, director, producer and writer (born 1963)

Fisher Stevens is an American actor, director, producer and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Ben in Short Circuit (1986) and Short Circuit 2 (1988). He is a documentary filmmaker winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The Cove (2010). He also directed the documentaries Crazy Love (2007), and Before the Flood (2016).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee Grant</span> American actress and director

Lee Grant is an American actress, documentarian, and director. For her film debut in 1951 as a young shoplifter in William Wyler's Detective Story, Grant earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and won the Best Actress Award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. Grant won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Warren Beatty's older lover in Shampoo (1975).

<i>Down and Out in America</i> 1986 American film

Down and Out in America is a 1986 American Oscar-winning documentary film directed by Academy Award winner Lee Grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Alpert</span> American journalist and documentary filmmaker

Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew O'Neill (filmmaker)</span>

Matthew O'Neill is a documentary filmmaker best known for his work on the HBO film Baghdad ER, for which he and co-creator Jon Alpert won three Emmy Awards.

<i>Cinema Verite</i> (2011 film) 2011 television film

Cinema Verite is a 2011 HBO drama film directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The film's main ensemble cast starred Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, James Gandolfini and Patrick Fugit. The film follows a fictionalized account of the production of An American Family, a 1973 PBS documentary television series that is said to be one of the earliest examples of the reality television genre. Principal photography was completed in Southern California. The film premiered on April 23, 2011.

Waleed F. Zuaiter is an Arab-American actor and producer who has performed in on-stage productions in Washington, D.C.; Berkeley, California; and New York City, as well as several film and television productions. He lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the producer and co-star of Omar (2013), which was nominated for an Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheila Nevins</span> American television producer

Sheila Nevins is an American television producer and head of MTV Documentary Films division of MTV Studios. Previously, Nevins was the President of HBO Documentary Films. She has produced over 1,000 documentary films for HBO and is one of the most influential people in documentary filmmaking. She has worked on productions that have been recognized with 35 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, 42 Peabody Awards, and 26 Academy Awards. Nevins has won 31 individual Primetime Emmy Awards, more than any other person. She is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerrod Carmichael</span> American comedian, actor, and writer (born 1987)

Rothaniel Jerrod Carmichael is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker. He has released three stand-up comedy specials on HBO: Love at the Store (2014), 8 (2017), and Rothaniel (2022). He also co-created, co-wrote, produced, and starred in the semi autobiographical NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show (2015–2017). Carmichael directed, produced, and starred in On the Count of Three (2021). In 2022, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for writing Rothaniel and was nominated for guest hosting Saturday Night Live that same year.

Roberta Morris Purdee is an American film producer and documentarian.

What Sex Am I? is a 1985 documentary film directed by Academy Award winner Lee Grant. The film follows a group of transgender individuals in mid-1980's America. Originally aired on HBO, the film is notable for its educated and sympathetic treatment of its subject, more in line with 21st century sentiment than those of the 1980s.

When Women Kill is a 1983 documentary film directed by Academy Award winner Lee Grant. The film explores life inside several women's prisons across the United States and the circumstances that led to the incarceration of a variety of inmates. Originally aired on HBO, the film is notable for its sympathetic, if level headed treatment of its characters. The film features women incarcerated for crimes ranging from drug use to first degree murder. A portion of the film follows Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten. Grant has spoken at length about the Manson family and the murder of her Valley of the Dolls co-star Sharon Tate.

Battered is a 1989 documentary film directed by Academy Award winner Lee Grant. The film is an investigation of domestic violence in American homes. Originally aired on HBO, the film is notable for its level headed look at abusers as well as victims.

Women on Trial is a 1992 documentary film directed by Academy Award winner Lee Grant. The film follows a group of women navigating the family court system in Texas. Originally scheduled to aired on HBO, the film played only a single night before being pulled from the public after inciting a million dollar lawsuit initiated Texas family court judge Charles Dean Huckabee. The story unfolds as woman after woman loses custody of her children to fathers who have either a documented history of abuse, or admittedly do not want custody of the children.

Hope Runs High is an American film distribution company. They began preserving and distributing out-of-print documentary films digitally before expanding to narrative and first-run theatrical films. A unique element of their library is that much of it focuses on films by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ filmmakers and subjects. The company also houses a small record label that releases movie soundtracks and film scores.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Sirola</span> American commercial, film, television, theatre actor and theatre producer

Joseph Anthony Sirola was an American commercial, film, television, theatre actor and theatre producer.

Broadway Brawler is an unfinished romantic comedy film that was to star Bruce Willis and Maura Tierney and be directed by Lee Grant. It was produced by Willis and Joseph Feury for Cinergi Pictures, and was to have been distributed by The Walt Disney Company in 1997.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 White, Dana (23 June 2014). "Wilmington's Oscar-Winner Shines in Act Three". Delaware Today. Archived from the original on 12 February 2020.
  2. ↑ "AP".
  3. ↑ Corry, John (18 April 1985). "HBO's 'What Sex Am I?'". The New York Times .
  4. ↑ Corry, John (4 December 1985). "HBO's 'Down and Out'". The New York Times.
  5. ↑ Kogan, Rick (December 1989). "A Family's Fall From The Heights To The Streets". Chicago Tribune .
  6. ↑ "Lee Grant's new documentary about battered women". Fresh Air Archive: Interviews with Terry Gross. September 1989.
  7. ↑ Bellafante, Ginia (20 May 2006). "In 'Baghdad ER,' the War Is Brought In, Stretcher by Stretcher". The New York Times.
  8. ↑ Willman, Chris (10 April 2017). "TCM Festival: Lee Grant on Surviving Both the Blacklist and Aging". The Hollywood Reporter.
  9. ↑ "Photo Flash: Stars Align For Oscar Winner Joseph Feury's New Exhibit At The National Arts Club". Broadway World. 16 October 2019.
  10. ↑ Anderson, Elissa (21 October 2019). "Hottest Celebrity Pics This Week Of Oct. 21-27". Hollywood Life.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.