Sidney Glazier

[2] Glazier left the home at the age of 15, working as an usher at the Bijou burlesque theater that showed films between acts.

[2][3] Glazier was managing the Mayfair Theater in Dayton, Ohio, when shortly before the United States entered the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

[2] The newly married Glazier served in Australia and New Guinea as a second lieutenant, commanding 100 black troops as a support unit of the 380th Bombardment Group.

[2][4] After his discharge and divorce, Glazier moved to Manhattan, where he was appointed the night manager of the Apollo Bar and worked with jazz artists such as Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday.

He found a day job under the GI Bill as an apprentice jeweller, but left the position seeking to become a bonds salesman for the new state of Israel.

The film, The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, which Glazier produced, was groundbreaking in style and won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Many critics gave it poor reviews, but the actor and comedian Peter Sellers was so enthralled that he took out ads in various trade papers praising the film as "the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture.

"[2][7] In his 2001 Tony Award acceptance speech for the Broadway adaptation of the film, Brooks credited Glazier as the "man who made it happen.

"[1] Glazier formed a distribution company, Universal Marion Corporation Pictures, and acted as executive producer on films, such as Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969), Waris Hussein's Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), Mel Brooks's Twelve Chairs (1970), and Glen and Randa (1971).

[4] Brooks asked Glazier to go to Hollywood to work on further films, but with his marriage breaking up he demurred, preferring to remain in New York to be close to his daughter.

"[2] The writer and critic Michael Coveney knew Glazier as “demanding [...], irascible, impatient but full of charm", someone who "epitomised [New York]'s spirit of tolerance, intellectual curiosity, fast living and taste for the high life".