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As good of a compliment I know not how to pay to legendary producer Jerome Hellman who passed away last Wednesday at the age of 92: The man behind one of the film touchstones of an entire generation – director John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy – made me cry copiously during my inaugural viewing of the story about a naïve Texas hustler and his friendship with a New York grifter. Viewing the film for the first time in my early 20s, I was struck by the sense of affinity I felt for these two down on their luck lost souls that society had all but discarded. The magic that Hellman and company captured with that 1969 film is timeless: Who among us hasn’t endured a period of time when we’ve felt isolated and unable to communicate with the rest of the world? We’ve all felt out of lockstep with the proceedings of life at one point or another, and Midnight Cowboy – and Hellman’s own unerring sense of taste – captured that aching loneliness beautifully and in a heartrending way.
Born on September 4, 1928 in the very heart of the city that Schlesinger waxed sadly poetic about in Midnight Cowboy, Hellman kicked his career off as a sharp-eyed talent agent, becoming one of the key representatives of some of the major movers and shakers in the entertainment industry (specifically the talented directors, producers and writers of the vaunted Golden Age of early television). Eventually moving into producing, Hellman would go on to shepherd some of the finest examples of celluloid into existence during his long and storied career: the aforementioned Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home and The Day of the Locust. Hellman hit a zenith in this scribe’s humble opinion with his final credited producing credit, director Peter Weir’s beautiful 1986 film The Mosquito Coast.
Jerome Hellman is survived by his wife and his daughter and son and, in a very small manner, by everyone who has ever loved the artistry and the craft of the motion picture business. Rest easy Mr. Hellman; we’ll never see your like again.
