Who was Mark Damon? Film producer and spaghetti Western actor dies aged 91

On May 12, actor, film producer, and independent sales executive Mark Damon died in Los Angeles at the age of 91. The news was confirmed by his wife and later by his representative to Variety and Deadline, respectively.

Mark Damon is survived by his wife, retired actress Maggie Markov Damon, and their two children, son Jonathan and daughter Alexis, alongside his son-in-law Mathieu Ribaut. Alexis told The Hollywood Reporter that her father died of natural causes.

Mark Damon’s demise comes three days after his House of Usher director Roger Corman’s death at the age of 98, at his home in Santa Monica, California.

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Mark Damon founded the Producers Sales Organization in the 1970s

Mark Damon was born Alan Harris in Chicago, Illinois, in April 1933 to a Jewish grocer and his wife. Later, he grew up in Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School and was recognized as an actor by veteran comedian-actor Groucho Max.

However, he joined a dental school at UCLA only to later switch to the Anderson School of Management, from where he graduated with a B.A. in English and later an MBA. Around this time, he began taking theater classes alongside Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner and soon realized his flair for acting.

He ventured into Hollywood in 1956 by signing with 20th Century Fox, but his breakthrough role came with Roger Corman’s 1960 gothic horror movie House of Ushers, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor.

Following this, he moved to Rome, where he emerged as a spaghetti Western actor and starred in films like Johnny Yuma, The Reluctant Saint, The Young Racers, The Shortest Day, 100 Horseman, Secret Agent 777, Johnny Oro, and Black Sabbath.

For the uninitiated, spaghetti Western refers to the sub-genre of films set in the American Old West but produced by Italy-based studios and shot across Europe, primarily in Italy.

Later, he moved back to the USA, where he founded the Producers Sales Organization in 1977, intending to reach Hollywood independent films to global distributors. It was this organization that sold Never Say Never Again, the only James Bond movie ever licensed by independent-to-independent international distributors.

Mark Damon was also influential in the establishment of the American Film Market, now known as the Independent Film & Television Alliance. In this regard, he told Variety in 2013,

“Back in 1975, it was very tough. At that time, usually the producers found funding from private sources. They couldn’t use foreign contracts as collateral; that’s something our company kind of invented.”

Throughout his career, he produced over 70 movies, including Patty Jenkin’s 2003 biopic Monster. He was also the executive producer for films such as The Neverending Story, Das Boot, Short Circuit, The Lost Boys, 8 Million Ways to Die, 9 ½ Weeks, Wild Orchid, The Upside of Anger, and Clan of the Cave Bear.

Mark Damon was also the lead international sales agent for firms like PSO Vision International. In 1993, he founded MDP Worldwide, which was renamed Media 8 Entertainment in 2003.

In 2005, Damon founded Foresight Unlimited, which executive produced 2 Guns in collaboration with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. It was a film production, financing, and sales company that he sold to Chicken Soup in 2019. Under this banner, Mark Damon last acted as the producer for the 2019 war drama The Last Full Measure, directed by Todd Robinson.

In Luke Ford’s 2004 book The Producers: Profiles in Frustration, Mark Damon said,

“My claim to fame will be the fact that I basically, coming from an acting background, became what they call the godfather of independent films. The one who invented the foreign sales business. The one who invented ways to get films financed.”

In 2008, he co-authored the book From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster alongside Linda Schreyer. In the book, he narrated the story of his acting career in Rome and later as an independent film executive. He was also a regular at film festivals, primarily the Cannes Film Festival.