Lawrence Turman, Oscar-Nominated Producer of ‘The Graduate,’ Dies at 96

Lawrence Turman, the principled Oscar-nominated producer of The Graduate who was behind other films including The Great White Hope, Pretty Poison, American History X and the last movie Judy Garland ever made, has died. He was 96.

Turman died Saturday at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his family announced.

A former agent, he and producer David Foster began a 20-year partnership in 1974, and the first film to come out of the Turman Foster Co. was Stuart Rosenberg’s The Drowning Pool (1975), starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

They went their separate ways in 1991 when Turman left to begin an association heading the esteemed Peter Stark Producing Program at USC that lasted until his retirement in 2021.

However, Turman wasn’t done producing, and in 1996 he and John Morrissey launched the Turman-Morrissey Co., which made the Jamie Foxx-starring Booty Call (1997); Tony Kaye’s American History X (1998), starring Edward Norton in an Oscar-nominated turn as a neo-Nazi; and the LL Cool J comedy Kingdom Come (2001).

Turman also directed two features, both of which he produced as well: The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971), starring Richard Benjamin, and Second Thoughts (1983), starring Lucie Arnaz.

Turman produced more than 30 movies and nearly a dozen teleflms during his career. “I initiate every single film project upon which I work; most of them would not have seen the light of day had I not decided to make them,” he wrote in his 2005 book, So You Want to Be a Producer. “I’m the starter and also the finisher.”

A member of the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame, Turman knew that someone in his profession should never spend his own money to make a picture, but that’s exactly what he did in 1963, forking over $1,000 to option The Graduate after reading a review of Charles Webb’s first novel in The New York Times.

He needed a director next and zeroed in on Mike Nichols; Elaine May’s former comedy partner had never helmed a movie, but he was coming off a lengthy run on Broadway with Neil Simon‘s Barefoot in the Park, starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley.

“Mike Nichols was an intuitive hunch,” Turman told Vanity Fair in 2008. “Webb’s book is funny but mordant. Nichols and May’s humor seemed like a hand-in-glove fit to me.” 

He told Nichols: “I have the book, but I don’t have any money. I don’t have any studio. I have nothing, so let’s do this. We’ll make this movie together, and whatever money comes in, we’ll split 50-50.” The director signed on right away.

After being turned down by every major studio for two years — Nichols had directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and received an Oscar nomination in the interim — Turman got Joseph E. Levine at Embassy Pictures to bankroll The Graduate after he promised he could make it for $1 million.

When Turman and Nichols were unhappy with Calder Willingham’s too-dark script, they gave the untested Buck Henry a crack at it. 

Nichols then cast the unknown Dustin Hoffman as a recent college graduate who has an affair with the wife of his father’s business partner, and The Graduate, which cost $3 million in the end, raked in $35 million in its first six months en route to becoming the highest-grossing film of 1967.

It was nominated for seven Oscars, but only Nichols won. (It lost the best picture race to In the Heat of the Night.)

“I was famous after The Graduate for about 20 minutes,” Turman said in a 2017 interview. “It’s nice to get a better table at the restaurant, but basically, that doesn’t motivate me. 

“I never even thought about fame. I was inundated with telephone calls and letters and scripts after the film’s success. That’s Hollywood. Fame is ephemeral and gives us life. I was asked to run a few studios, be head of production. But that lasted for nearly a year, then the next flavor-of-the-month producer would come through.”

Born at Cedars of Lebanon hospital in Los Angeles on Nov. 28, 1926, Turman graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he was all-city in basketball and sports editor of the paper, and UCLA. He spent two years in the U.S. Navy as an enlisted man, then went to work for his father in the textile business, even though he always wanted to be a Hollywood producer.

“Everyone always says how tough showbiz is,” Turman told Vanity Fair, “and, of course, they’re right, but it’s kid stuff compared to the garment business, where someone will cut your heart out for a quarter-cent a yard. I’d carry bolts of cloth five blocks after making a sale, only to learn that the customer bought it cheaper, and I had to schlep the bolts of cloth back to my dad’s office.”

After interviews with producers Jerry Wald and David Lewis and agent Sam Jaffe went nowhere, Turman answered a blind ad in Variety and was hired at the Kurt Frings Agency for $50 a week. He eventually became an agent, representing Joan Fontaine and Alan J. Pakula, among others. (He once got four clients into Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.)

During his four-year stint as an agent, “I was a sponge; I soaked up everything,” he wrote in his book. “I learned who’s who and how Hollywood works. I met everybody I could, which ended up being helpful in ways I didn’t imagine at the time.”

He left the agency after getting an offer to produce with Stuart Millar the Fredric March-Ben Gazzara melodrama The Young Doctors (1961).

They also worked together on I Could Go on Singing (1963), starring the troubled Garland in her final film — Turman called her a “gray-hair giver” — Susan Hayward’s Stolen Hours (1963) and Gore Vidal’s political drama The Best Man (1964), starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson, before Turman dissolved the partnership.

While trying to get The Graduate together, he produced Irvin Kershner’s The Flim-Flam Man (1967), starring George C. Scott, followed by the Lorenzo Semple-penned Pretty Poison (1968), starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, and the film version of The Great White Hope (1970), featuring the stars of the Broadway production, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander.

Turman first met Foster when he hired him as a publicist on The Graduate, and the two enjoyed a fruitful partnership, with films including Heroes (1977), Caveman (1981), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Running Scared (1986), Short Circuit (1986), Gleaming the Cube (1989) and The River Wild (1994).

“Larry is the opera and the symphony,” Foster told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “I like to go to the football game and scream and carry on.”

Wrote Turman in his book: “We were complementary, not supplementary. He gravitated toward action and size — Running Scared and the [1994] remake of The Getaway — while I’ve always been attracted to more intimate, emotional stories like [1984’s] Mass Appeal or [1980’s] Tribute. I felt that my strength was in script and editing, whereas his was in marketing and relationships.”

He and Morrissey worked together at Rastar Pictures before setting up their own shop.

Survivors include his sons, John, a co-screenwriter on Hulk (2003) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007); Andrew, a camera operator and cinematographer; and Peter; daughters-in-law Analuisa, Nancy and Sheri; grandchildren Audrey, Carter, Georgia and Olivia; and nieces Katherine (a journalist) and Suzanna.  

A service will be held at the Motion Picture home at a date to be determined. A donation in his name can be made to The Larry Turman Endowed Fund for the Peter Stark Program — USC School of Cinematic Arts.

As a producer, Turman “strongly believed in writers and enjoyed working with them, respecting their foundational value,” his family noted.

“He maintained many friendships with some of the greats. His correspondences show a back and forth with friend William Goldman as Turman was trying to get The Graduate made and Goldman was writing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, each in their own way trying to capture the voice of their generation. Initially planning to produce Butch Cassidy, Turman stepped back so that Goldman could get the attachments to get the film made with Newman and Redford.

“His passing notes a truly golden era of Hollywood filmmaking.”