Frank Price (born May 17, 1930)[1] is an American retired television writer and film studio executive.
As studio president, Price oversaw the production of and/or greenlit famous films of the 1980s including Out of Africa which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1985, Tootsie (1982), Gandhi (1982) and The Karate Kid (1984).
[3][4] Price saved from obscurity the script for Back to the Future (1985),[5] and made the decision to film other long-shots that became blockbusters including Boyz n the Hood (1991)[6] and Ghostbusters (1984).
[9] During the Great Depression, his father moved continually in search of work; prior to college Price lived in eight cities around the country.
[9] He still has photographs of Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney inscribed "To Frankie".
[9] Price was a story editor and writer for CBS-TV in New York from 1951 to 1953 where he worked on series such as Westinghouse Studio One, Suspense and The Web.
[11] In 1959, Price joined Universal TV (then Revue Productions) as associate producer and writer where he was mentored by Sidney Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman.
[9] Other shows he developed or supervised included The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, The Rockford Files, Kojak and Columbo.
"[7] During Price's tenure, the studio put Steven Spielberg's proposed follow up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Night Skies, into turnaround.
[4] Of his time at Universal, one industry insider said "Price had full carte blanche to put anything into the works at whatever cost.
[18] During his time at Columbia he greenlit Boyz n the Hood (1991),[6] The Prince of Tides (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Groundhog Day (1993).
[11] Price Entertainment continued making pictures until 2001 including Shadowlands (1993), Circle of Friends (1995) and The Tuskegee Airmen (1995).
He considered this an advantage later when deciding to make a film, saying "Unwilling to base my decisions on other people's perceptions, I spent a lot of my time reading [scripts].
"[10] Price was also a serious reader, after his 1987 departure from Universal he devoured books ranging from Das Kapital to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.
[10] Price worked on a novel of his own (never published), he said it was "my version of The Last Tycoon", an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the life of a Hollywood studio manager.
"[10] Price married Katherine Crawford on May 15, 1965, an actress known for Riding with Death (1976), A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970) and Gemini Man (1976).
Her father was Roy Huggins, who created and produced TV shows like The Fugitive, The Rockford Files and Maverick.