Mark Hellinger

Mark John Hellinger (March 21, 1903 – December 21, 1947) was an American journalist, theatre columnist, and film producer.

Biography Early life Hellinger was born into the Orthodox Jewish family of Mildred "Millie" (née Fitch) and Pol Hellinger in New York City, but in later life he became a non-practicing Jew. When he was 15, he organized a student strike at Townsend Harris High School and was expelled for his actions. This proved to be the end of his formal education.

In 1921, Hellinger began working as a waiter and cashier at a Greenwich Village nightclub in order to meet theatre people. He later was employed by Lane Bryant to write direct mail advertising for clothing for larger and pregnant women.

Journalist The following year he began his journalistic career as a reporter for Zit's Weekly, a theatrical publication, where he remained for 18 months.

Back at Warners, he produced the all-star musical revue Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and made Between Two Worlds (1944), The Doughgirls (1944), and The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).

Universal Hellinger set up at Universal, where he had his own producing unit. He had a big hit with The Killers (1946) which made stars of both Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. He followed it with Swell Guy (1946) with Sonny Tufts, The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) with Bogart back at Warners, Brute Force, and The Naked City, which he also narrated. The last film was released several weeks after Hellinger's death, and in his review for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther called it "a virtual Hellinger column on film" and "his appropriate valedictory" and observed, "The late Mark Hellinger's personal romance with the City of New York was one of the most ecstatic love affairs of the modern day — at least, to his host of friends and readers who are skeptics regarding l'amour. Before he became a film producer and was still just a newspaper scribe, Mr. Hellinger went for Manhattan in a blissfully uninhibited way — for its sights and sounds and restless movements, its bizarre people and its equally bizarre smells. And he made quite a local reputation framing his fancies in flowery billets doux which stirred the hearts and the humors of readers of the tabloid press."

Hellinger won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture for The Killers.

Personal life and death In 1926, Hellinger was one of the judges for a beauty contest sponsored by the Daily News. The winner was Ziegfeld showgirl Gladys Glad, and on July 11, 1929, the two were wed. She divorced him in 1932, but after a year the two remarried on the same date as their original wedding, and they remained wed until his death at age 44 from a coronary thrombosis in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. He was buried in a private mausoleum at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York on Christmas Eve. In 1989, the venue was converted into the Times Square Church.

The Hellinger Award annually acknowledges the accomplishments of St. Bonaventure University's most promising young journalism student. It was established in 1960 by columnist Jim Bishop in memory of his mentor. Bishop also wrote a biography of Hellinger entitled The Mark Hellinger Story: A Biography of Broadway and Hollywood. The composer Miklós Rózsa, who had scored The Killers, Brute Force, and The Naked City, was particularly devoted to Hellinger and dedicated his suite of music from those films (Mark Hellinger Suite or Background to Violence) to the producer's memory. See Rózsa, Double Life, 2nd ed., 1989, pp. 153–154.