Ingo Preminger, the producer of the film “M*A*S*H” who also was the literary agent for several leading writers blacklisted during the McCarthy era, has died at 95.
Mr. Preminger, the brother of filmmaker Otto Preminger, died June 7 at his Los Angeles home, said his son Jim Preminger.
As a literary agent, Mr. Preminger represented, among others, Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr., who were both blacklisted during the Red Scare days of the 1950s. He worked effectively with blacklisted writers by using fronts–other writers who agreed to claim the work as their own–to help get past studio restrictions.
It was Lardner who helped Mr. Preminger make his biggest career move.
In the late 1960s, Lardner sent Mr. Preminger a copy of the book “M*A*S*H” by New Jersey surgeon Richard Hornberger, writing under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Mr. Preminger took it to Richard Zanuck, then head of production at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., and elicited an agreement from Zanuck that if he liked the book, Mr. Preminger would be given a chance to produce the movie.
Zanuck called Mr. Preminger the next day and said, “You’ve got an office on the third floor. We’re making the picture.”
Directed by Robert Altman, “M*A*S*H” was both a box office and critical hit in 1970, winning numerous awards.
Born in what is now Romania, Mr. Preminger was raised in Vienna and earned a law degree. His career as an attorney was cut short by the rise of Nazism in Europe, and he immigrated to the U.S. with his wife and daughter in 1938.
