Ted Hartley

Last updated
Ted Hartley
Ted Hartley Chopper One cast 1974 (cropped).JPG
Ted Hartley in Chopper One , 1974.
Born
Theodore Ringwalt Hartley

(1924-11-06) November 6, 1924 (age 100)
Alma mater U.S. Naval Academy
Harvard Business School
Occupation(s)Fighter pilot, actor, businessman, film and stage producer
Years active1945–2015
Spouse
(m. 1989;died 2017)

Theodore Ringwalt Hartley (born November 6, 1924) [1] [2] is an American retired U.S. Navy fighter pilot, investment banker, actor, film producer, and CEO of RKO Pictures. He was married to heiress, actress and philanthropist Dina Merrill [3] until her death in 2017. His last acting credit was 2012 and his last producing credit was in 2015.

Contents

Early life

Hartley was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the elder of two children born to Eugene and Dorothy Hartley and raised on a farm in Iowa. He had a younger sister, Mary. When he was five years old, Ted's father died, causing financial hardships for the family. At the age of 14, he entered a contest sponsored by Warner Bros., wrote a 50-word essay on “Why I like to fly”, and won some flying lessons. Hartley attended Shattuck Military School in Minnesota, and, by the age of 16, he had won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, entering the Navy in 1942. After flight training, among other tours, he served as a carrier-based fighter pilot, flying F-11s following their introduction in 1956.

Career

As a Navy officer, Hartley had tours as a congressional liaison for the Pentagon, as a Presidential aide, as well as a carrier-based fighter pilot. In May 1964, his F9F8 fighter crashed during a carrier landing accident. He was thrown from the jet, suffered a broken back, and was medically retired from the Navy. After Hartley's military career prematurely ended, he attended Harvard Business School and pursued a career in investment banking, becoming Vice President for First Western Financial Corporation. [4] His next career was in Hollywood, as an actor, where he took on the role of Reverend Jerry Bedford on the 1960s television series Peyton Place . Hartley had featured roles in films with Cary Grant, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood, and then in the late 1970s was cast in his own series, Chopper One (on ABC), about helicopter flying police officers. The series was short lived, and thereafter Hartley moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he volunteered as the Managing Artistic Director of the local theater, and then turned to commodity trading full-time.[ citation needed ]

In 1987, Hartley became involved with Pavilion Communications Inc., a company designed to acquire smaller entertainment companies. Through this, Hartley learned of an opportunity to take over RKO Pictures. He and wife Dina Merrill purchased 51% of the company and merged Pavilion Communications with RKO Pictures Corporation in 1991, forming RKO Pictures, LLC. Their first major project was the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young . As chairman and chief executive officer of RKO Pictures, Hartley has led RKO's worldwide development and production activities in movies and television as well as the expansion of the RKO brand to stage and other entertainment and distribution venues. He produced a remake of Mighty Joe Young (1998) with Disney, Ritual (2000) with Miramax, a remake of The Magnificent Ambersons (2002), and Shade (2003). For RKO Stage, he produced the musicals Never Gonna Dance (2003), Curtains (2007), Gypsy (2008), 13 (2008), all on Broadway, and Top Hat (2012) in the West End, winner of the 2013 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. [5]

Producer credits

Film

Stage productions

Actor credits

Film

Affiliations

In 2013, Hartley was elected chairman of the board of Orbis International, a nonprofit eye-healthcare organization dedicated to saving sight worldwide that he has been involved with since 2010. [6]

Hartley belongs to a number of motion picture and television guilds and associations, is a board member of the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (formerly, Steadman-Hawkins Sports Medicine Foundation), and serves as director of the Harvard Business School Association of Southern California. He and Merrill founded the Story Project to promote literacy among inner-city youth, beginning in the Santa Monica Boys and Girls Club. Hartley is a frequent lecturer and is published periodically in business journals. He is a published poet as well as a creator of stories for the screen. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fleet Air Arm</span> Aviation arm of the Royal Navy

The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is the naval aviation component of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy (RN). The FAA is one of five RN fighting arms. As of 2023 it is a primarily helicopter force, though also operating the F-35 Lightning II carrier-based stealth fighter jointly with the Royal Air Force.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cliff Robertson</span> American actor (1923–2011)

Clifford Parker Robertson III was an American actor whose career in film and television spanned over six decades. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Charly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dina Merrill</span> American actress (1923–2017)

Dina Merrill was an American actress. She had more than a hundred film and television credits from the late 1950s until 2000s. Throughout her life, she married three times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merian C. Cooper</span> American filmmaker

Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American filmmaker, actor, and producer, as well as a former aviator who served as an officer in the United States Army Air Service and Polish Air Force. In film, his most famous work was the 1933 movie King Kong, and he is credited as co-inventor of the Cinerama film projection process. He was awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1952 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Before entering the movie business, Cooper had a distinguished career as the founder of the Kościuszko Squadron during the Polish–Soviet War and was a Soviet prisoner of war for a time. He got his start in film as part of the Explorers Club, traveling the world and documenting adventures. He was a member of the board of directors of Pan American Airways, but his love of film took priority. During his film career, he worked for companies such as Pioneer Pictures, RKO Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1925, he and Ernest B. Schoedsack went to Iran and made Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, a documentary about the Bakhtiari people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominic L. Pudwill Gorie</span> American astronaut (born 1957)

Dominic Lee Pudwill Gorie is a retired United States Navy officer and NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of four Space Shuttle missions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Dietz</span> Musical artist

Howard Dietz was an American publicist, lyricist, and librettist, best remembered for his songwriting collaboration with Arthur Schwartz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mercury Theatre</span> Former independent repertory theatre company in New York City

The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VFA-31</span> Military unit

VFA-31 or Strike Fighter Squadron 31 is known as the Tomcatters, callsign "Felix", a United States Navy strike fighter squadron stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana flying the F/A-18E Super Hornet. The Tomcatters are the second oldest Navy Fighter Attack squadron operating today.

Royden Denslow Webb was an American film music composer. One of the charter members of ASCAP, Webb has hundreds of film music credits to his name, mainly with RKO Pictures. He is best known for film noir and horror film scores, in particular for the films of Val Lewton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne Morris</span> American actor and World War II flying ace (1914–1959)

Wayne Morris was an American film and television actor, as well as a decorated World War II fighter ace. He appeared in many films, including Paths of Glory (1957), The Bushwackers (1952), and the title role of Kid Galahad (1937).

Scott Ellis is an American stage director, actor, and television director.

<i>Journey into Fear</i> (1943 film) 1943 film by Norman Foster

Journey into Fear is a 1943 American spy film noir directed by Norman Foster, based on the 1940 novel by Eric Ambler. The film broadly follows the plot of the book, but the protagonist was changed to an American engineer, and the destination of his journey changed from France to the Soviet Union—reflecting the changes in the war situation since the original Ambler book was written. The RKO Pictures release stars Joseph Cotten, who also wrote the screenplay with Orson Welles. The Mercury Production was also produced by Welles, again uncredited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gus Schilling</span> American actor and comedian (1908–1957)

August "Gus" Schilling was an American film actor who started in burlesque comedy and usually played nervous comic roles, often unbilled. A friend of Orson Welles, he appeared in five of the director's films — Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth and Touch of Evil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter E. Carter Jr.</span> US Navy admiral and academic administrator (born 1959)

Walter Edward "Ted" Carter Jr. is an American academic administrator and retired United States Navy vice admiral. He has been serving as the 17th and current president of The Ohio State University since January 2024. Carter previously served as the 8th president of the University of Nebraska system from 2020 to 2023, the 62nd superintendent of the United States Naval Academy from 2014 to 2019, and the 54th president of the United States Naval War College from 2013 to 2014. He has a record number of flights with carrier-arrested landings for his role piloting fighter-bombers and other aircraft in operations in Bosnia, Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

<i>Up in Arms</i> 1944 film directed by Elliott Nugent

Up in Arms is a 1944 musical film directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore. It was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RKO Pictures</span> American film production and distribution company

RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name. Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.

J. Todd Harris is an American film producer. Harris is the founder and president of the production studio Branded Pictures Entertainment. Harris has been a member of the Motion Picture Academy since 1999 and is a founding board member of the Napa Valley Film Festival.

Shinho Lee is a South Korean screenwriter and arts professor in Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

<i>Milk & Money</i> 1996 film by Michael Bergmann

Milk & Money is a 1996 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Michael Bergmann and starring Robert Petkoff and Calista Flockhart. Ted Hartley and Dina Merrill, who also appear in the film, served as producer and executive producer respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brett Crozier</span> United States Navy officer

Brett Elliott Crozier is a retired captain in the United States Navy. A United States Naval Academy graduate, he became a naval aviator, first flying helicopters and then switching to fighters. After completing naval nuclear training, he served as an officer on several aircraft carriers. In spring 2020, he was commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt when COVID-19 broke out among the crew. He was relieved of command by then-acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly after sending a letter to Navy leaders asking that most of the crew be taken ashore which was subsequently leaked to the press. Crozier himself was also later diagnosed with the virus. He was reassigned to a shore position and retired in March 2022.

References

  1. Theodore Ringwalt Hartley in the U.S., Select Military Registers, 1862-1985, ancestry.com. Accessed November 8, 2024.
  2. Theodore Ringwalt Hartley in the Nebraska, U.S., Birth Ledgers, 1904-1911, Birth Index, 1912-1994, ancestry.com. Accessed November 8, 2024.
  3. Miller, Samantha; Morton, Danelle; Sheff-Cahan, Vicki (April 19, 1999). "Encore, Encore: Now behind the camera, Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley make movie magic together" (PDF). People . Retrieved April 19, 2012.
  4. 1 2 Hartley, Ted. "Life Notes, Biography". tedhartley.com. Retrieved July 20, 2016.
  5. "Olivier Award Winners 2013 – Best New Musical". olivierawards. April 28, 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  6. "Ted Hartley appointed chairman of Orbis International board of directors" (Press release). Orbis. August 6, 2013. Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved November 21, 2014.