Mark Damon, veteran international salesman and actor, has died at the age of 91
Mark Damon, an actor turned independent sales executive who rose to prominence in the world of foreign sales and movie markets for decades, died Sunday in Los Angeles, according to his wife. He was 91.
Damon received a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer for his starring role in the 1960 film "House of Usher", directed by Roger Corman, who died Thursday, and went on to star in numerous spaghetti westerns and other B-movies set in Europe, from "Johnny Yuma" to Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath".
Born Alan Harris in Chicago, he earned an MBA from UCLA, then moved to Rome where he began an active acting career. Returning to the U.S., he founded Producers Sales Organization to supply American independent films to international distributors, helped launch the American Film Market and the Independent Film & Television Alliance.
He described how his business started in 2013: "In 1975, it was very difficult. At that time, producers usually found funding from private sources. They couldn't use foreign contracts as collateral, and that's kind of what our company came up with". (Producers Sales Organization sold Never Say Never, the only James Bond film ever licensed by an independent company, to independent international distributors.) They tried to get advances from domestic distributors, but the idea of using foreign contracts as collateral didn't exist back then. And most of the pictures came from the major studios. At that time, independent studios were only making tiny low-budget pictures. There were no big-budget pictures made by independent studios", says Damon.
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Among the firms Damon led as an international sales agent were PSO, Vision International, MDP Worldwide and Foresight Unlimited.
He has more than 70 films to his credit, including executive producer of "The Neverending Story", "Das Boot", "Short Circuit", "The Lost Boys", "8 Million Ways to Die", "9 1/2 Weeks", "Wild Orchid", "Anger Upside Down" and "Clan of the Cave Bear".
He also produced the 2003 Patty Jenkin biopic Monster, for which Charlize Theron won a Best Actress Oscar.
Damon recently founded Foresight Unlimited and served as executive producer of the movie "2 Guns" starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg.
The 2008 book, "From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster", written by Linda Schreier and Damon, recounted his playboy years in Rome and his years in the independent film business with "juicy behind-the-scenes anecdotes" about the making of many movies, the synopsis said.
In 2015, when he was in his eighties, he traveled to Cannes for the 40th consecutive year. "We have about 17 hours of work a day", he said of his sales job at the festival. When asked if he goes to the festival and market parties, he said, "On average, I go to one or two parties for six nights", Damon said.
He is survived by his wife Maggie Markow Damon, son Jonathan, daughter Alexis Damon Ribaut and son-in-law Mathieu Ribaut.