Producers Frank Marshall (The Other Side of the Wind, A Final Cut For Orson) and wife Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, were honored on November 18 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with its prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
The Thalberg award is presented to creative producers “whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production” and is infrequently given out. The last Thalberg award recipient was Francis Ford Coppola in 2010.
The couple are just the 40th and 41st recipients in the award’s 80-year history. Darryl F. Zanuck, David O’Selznick and Walt Disney were among the first luminaries honored with a Thalberg award.
Seated at the couple’s table at the Governors Award gala were frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg and attorney Anita Hill. (Hill chairs the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, an effort spearheaded by Kennedy.)
The award introduction was handled by Bourne franchise star Matt Damon and the awards were presented to Kennedy and Marshall by Spielberg.
Kennedy is the first woman to receive the Thalberg award. “I’m not the first to deserve it and I’m 100 percent sure I’m not the last,” Kennedy told the crowd.
In his acceptance speech, Marshall chronicled his start in the movie business and lavished praise on director Peter Bogdanovich, who gave him his start in Targets and The Last Picture Show. He noted their most recent collaboration was the completion of Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind.
The Kennedy/Marshall producing partnership, formed in 1991, has generated Best Picture nominations for The Sixth Sense (1999), Seabiscuit (2003), Munich (2005) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Prior to forming Kennedy/Marshall, the duo co-founded Amblin Productions with Spielberg, sharing a Best Picture nomination for The Color Purple (1985). Additionally, Marshall received a Best Picture nomination for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), while Kennedy was nominated in the same category for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), War Horse (2011) and Lincoln (2012).
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