JOSEPH MCCARTHY - PRODUCER PREMINGER DIES

Hungarian film producer and literary agent INGO PREMINGER has died in Los Angeles. He was 95. He died last Wednesday (07JUN06) at his Pacific Palisades home, his son JIM confirmed. Preminger began his career as a lawyer in Vienna, Austria, but fled from the Nazis with his family during the war in 1938 and moved to New York. He switched to the entertainment business when his family moved to Los Angeles in 1947, opening a talent agency a year later and representing leading writers including RING LARDNER who was blacklisted during the JOSEPH MCCARTHY era. However Lardner was responsible for supplying Preminger with the book MASH, which was turned into the 1970 critically acclaimed movie of the same name and became Preminger's best known work. He also produced 1972's THE SALZBURG CONNECTION. He retired from the film business in the late 1970s. Preminger is survived by his wife of 70 years KATE, daughters EVE and KATHY and his son Jim, as well as eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His brother, actor and film director OTTO PREMINGER, died in 1986 aged 80.