In Memory: Friends Board Member Jack Valenti

In Memory: Friends Board Member Jack Valenti

With the passing of one of America’s great media and political figures, Jack Valenti, the country has also lost one of the cancer community’s biggest supporters.

On April 26, 2007 at the age of 85, former president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and ex-White House aide Jack Valenti died of complications from an earlier stroke in March is is survived by his wife Mary Margaret, three children, and two grandchildren.

While Jack Valenti is remembered for a number of valuable contributions – from his role as presidential advisor to Lyndon Johnson to his leadership of the Motion Picture Industry Association (MPAA) where he instituted our modern-day ratings system, Jack Valenti was also a pioneer in bringing together the two worlds of Hollywood and The Hill to collaborate on ways to fight cancer: Under Valenti’s leadership at MPAA, Hollywood began implementing a number of different efforts to avoid and deglamorize the use of tobacco in movies and TV programs. As an active member of Friends of Cancer Research’s Board of Directors, and later an honorary advisory board member, Jack Valenti was a great supporter of our efforts. Perhaps one of the greatest highlights of his involvement in Friends was a February 1997 meeting he chaired with Friends Chair Ellen Sigal and Friends Board Member and Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing, in which he brought together all the major heads of the studios to meet with then Vice President Al Gore. Under Valenti and Lansing’s leadership, the meeting garnered participation from almost every head of every major studio: included Bob Iger, CEO of ABC; Frank Mancuso, Chairman and CEO of MGM Pictures; Lew Wasserman, Chairman Emeritus, Universal Studios; and Peter Chermin, Chairman, Twentieth Century Fox. The executives discussed ways that the entertainment industry could come together to fight cancer, including identifying celebrity advocates who could capture the attention of the public and of Congress and speak from personal experience to the need for federally funded cancer research; encouraging the creators of TV programs and films to tell the many-sided stories of cancer today, including the extraordinary stories of scientific discovery that could remove cancer as a threat to our lives; and identifying new ways the entertainment industry can help to reduce tobacco use. This meeting set the stage for the industry’s future involvement and success in raising awareness about cancer issues. Additionally, Jack Valenti was a supporter of a variety of non-profit organizations, foundations, and cancer centers dedicated to cancer and medical research including The Lasker Foundation and Johns Hopkins.