| Interment Location | Visited | |
|---|---|---|
| Glendale, CA | April 2, 2023 |
E. Maurice “Buddy” Adler took home Oscar gold in March 1954 when the wartime tale he produced, From Here to Eternity, won Best Picture at the 26th Academy Awards. In just over six years’ time, Adler would go from being handed a coveted statuette from Cecil B. DeMille to being laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, having succumbed to cancer. From Here to Eternity is one of my father’s favorite films, so it felt fitting to include his picture on this page. Here he appears sitting at the grave of Adler and his wife, actress Anita Louise.
Adler, who was originally an employee of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1930s and 1940s, worked for Columbia Pictures after he returned from service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps following World War II. Adler switched studios again in 1954, migrating from Columbia to Twentieth Century-Fox. Two years later, he succeeded longtime studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. The New York Times writes, “Mr. Adler’s four years as studio boss were difficult. With the continuing growth of television, rising production costs, the increasing importance of the foreign market, [and] the decline of Hollywood as a film-making center, Mr. Adler found that an ever-larger share of his time had to be spent on matters not immediately concerned with the production of movies.” A few short months before his death, Adler commented, “If I had my way right now, I would give up my job as head of the studio and become an independent producer. I would not have to worry about a huge studio with its monstrous overhead. I would just take a little office somewhere and make pictures.”
The inscription below Anita Louise’s name reads, “Love surrounds her beauty,” while Buddy’s epitaph is, “From Here to Eternity.” Another film Adler worked on that received Oscar recognition was the 1940 short documentary film, Quicker’n a Wink. Adler wrote the film, the subject of which was stroboscopic photography.
Although From Here to Eternity is a superb piece of cinema, Adler’s alleged additional activities should not win him any accolades. In 2017 and 2018, during the height of the Me Too movement which increased public awareness of sexual harassment and abuse, the late movie mogul was accused of predatory behavior by veteran actresses Joan Collins and Rita Moreno. Moreno said that long before she was an EGOT winner — when she was a teenager trying to break into show business — Adler harassed and stalked her. Collins conveyed in an article published in the Daily Mail that Adler had repeatedly attempted to coerce her into a sexual arrangement with promises of “the pick of the scripts” and the titular role in the epic Cleopatra. Collins rebuffed Adler’s “casting couch” advances and noted that, “In due course, Elizabeth Taylor got the role.” Taylor signed blank, ceremonial papers in Adler’s office in October 1959 and then her actual Cleopatra contract on July 28, 1960, two weeks after Adler’s death. That month, with Moreno’s and Collins’s accounts more than half a century from becoming public, the New York Times printed that the recently-departed studio head “was unusual among top Hollywood executives. […] In a business sometimes marked by rudeness he seemed to prefer courtesy.”
Fast Facts
Born: June 22, 1906 in New York, New York
Spouse: Anita Louise Fremault Adler Berger (m. 1940-1960)
Military Rank: Colonel – U.S. Army Signal Corps
Academy Award: Best Motion Picture (1954)
Died: July 12, 1960 in Los Angeles, California
Cause of Death: Lung Cancer
Age: 54
Interment: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
"It was a challenge. I had to try it. Ego had something to do with it. I don't think you can find many in this business without some ego."
- Buddy Adler
1956, on why he accepted the position of studio boss at Twentieth Century-Fox
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
Boone, John. “Rita Moreno Recounts #MeToo Experience Being Stalked by Former Studio Head (Exclusive).” ET. January 7, 2018. https://www.etonline.com/rita-moreno-recounts-metoo-experience-being-stalked-by-former-studio-head-exclusive-93719.
Massarella, Linda and Laura Italiano. “Hollywood’s horror stories of sex predators long before Weinstein.” New York Post. October 16, 2017. https://nypost.com/2017/10/16/hollywoods-horror-stories-of-sex-predators-long-before-weinstein/.
Oscars. “From Here to Eternity Wins Best Picture: 1954 Oscars.” YouTube Video, 2:40. February 12, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX3bf6-cEko.
Schumach, Murray. “HOLLYWOOD LOSS: Death of Fox’s Talented Studio Boss, Buddy Adler, Is Blow to Industry.” New York Times. July 17, 1960. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/07/17/99755204.html?pageNumber=69.
Turner Classic Movies. “Buddy Adler: Biography.” Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/933%7C24829/Buddy-Adler/#biography.
