Sidney Glazier

Sidney Glazier (May 29, 1916 – December 14, 2002) was an American film producer best known for his work on the Mel Brooks film The Producers.

Early life Glazier was born in Philadelphia on May 29, 1916, the second of three sons born to Jewish émigré parents Jake Glazier and Sophie Schekid from Minsk. His elder brother, Tom Glazer, became a composer, guitarist, and folk singer.

Glazier was managing the Mayfair Theater in Dayton, Ohio, when shortly before the United States entered the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

New York and film production After his discharge and divorce, Glazier moved to Manhattan, where he was appointed the night manager of the Apollo Bar and worked with jazz artists such as Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. He found a day job under the GI Bill as an apprentice jeweller, but left the position seeking to become a bonds salesman for the new state of Israel. His success in fund-raising led him to be appointed as the executive director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Foundation. He greatly admired Eleanor Roosevelt as a person and activist and the two later became friends. When she died in 1962, he initiated the production of the documentary on her life. The film, The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, which Glazier produced, was groundbreaking in style and won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Glazier struggled at first to interest movie studios in the show business satire, but with perseverance Joseph E. Levine at Avco Embassy accepted the project and agreed to let Brooks direct the movie. "Most movie executives and producers," said Brooks, "are usually boring and dull, and not well-read. They don't care about art or painting, they just care about profits. But Sidney was always an artist. You could talk about anything with him - great literature, life and love." The writer and critic Michael Coveney knew Glazier as “demanding [...], irascible, impatient but full of charm", someone who "epitomised [New York]'s spirit of tolerance, intellectual curiosity, fast living and taste for the high life".