Tributes have been paid to former United International Pictures (UIP) marketing director Ken Green, who died in Liverton, Devon on September 9 aged 84.
“Ken had movies in his blood,” said Hy Smith, a former executive VP in international marketing at UIP. “This wasn’t just a job for him. He was a film lover, a talented professional in his approach. He had good taste, was a real team player and a tremendously nice man.”
Green worked at UIP – the powerhouse distribution organisation formed by Universal, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists to release their films abroad – from its inception in 1981 to 2002, a two-decade period when the company was handling blockbuster after blockbuster in the UK and international markets and regenerating UK and international cinemagoing in the process.
As well as working on every James Bond movie from Octopussy (1983) to Die Another Day (2002), Green’s resourcefulness on campaigns for films “that were a little more difficult” was also praised by his former colleague.
“It was easy to work on Indiana Jones, Rocky 3, 4 or 5 and the Bond films because you had a big budget and once the series was launched, people expected something out of the films – you could reach them,” said Smith.
Green was prepared to think “out of the box” for harder-sell titles, for example coming up with a pioneering scheme to give out DVDs of trailers and outtakes to the tabloid press to support the release of a Star Trek movie. “We gifted over 250,000 DVDs to readers of The Sun and the film was a big, big hit,” Smith recalled.
“We innovated and we had the freedom to do so,” Green told Screen in a 2007 interview, talking about how UIP had used commercial radio to promote movies and had devised ever more ingenious promotional tie-ins with brands.
Early career
Green was born on July 25, 1942, in Leytonstone, and started his career in advertising. He came to UIP having worked in marketing at CIC, the joint-venture distribution outfit that Paramount and Universal originally established to handle their films outside the US. The first film he worked on was Love Story in 1970.
“Ken was an incredibly important person in the marketing sense,” said Duncan Clark, former president of distribution at Universal International who worked alongside Green in the 1980s and early ’90s as the company was releasing movies such as ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones adventures, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop and Jurassic Park.
“I had enormous affection and respect for him because he gave me my first job,” Clark added. “He was very kind, very diligent and very creative, someone who always tried to think laterally about what the challenges were in designing a campaign. He was a very admired figure amongst his colleagues, amongst the teams of people we dealt with in all the international offices around the world. He was also funny and had a quick wit.”
In the early 1980s, Green had been UIP’s head of international advertising and promotions. When Clark moved to the US to work as VP of international marketing at Columbia Pictures for David Puttnam, Green took over as UIP’s UK director of marketing, working under UIP managing directors James Higgins and Chris Hedges.
Thanks to Green’s and Higgins’ strong ties with Buckingham Palace, UIP organised several royal premieres in support of The Prince’s Trust, among them the 1985 Bond film A View To A Kill. Green also regularly dealt with top talent. “I can remember the first time Steven Spielberg came into the office and met Ken and I,” said his close colleague and friend Anne Bennett, who was at CIC and UIP and later went on to become senior vice president of marketing at Eon Productions.
Mark Batey, former chief executive of the UK’s Film Distributors’ Association, described Green as “very astute, very aware of not overspending and yet he would never leave a penny of unearned box office”.
International marketing consultant Paul Lewis, who was part of UIP’s UK operations in the 1980s, said of Green: “Everybody liked him. He was very dedicated and hard-working.”
When the premiere of Rocky IV was held at the recently opened new multiplex The Point in Milton Keynes, Lewis recalled that Green and the UIP marketing team arranged for US band Survivor, associated to the franchise through their anthemic track ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, to attend. “I remember this rather surreal evening with this American rock band standing round the concessions stand and bar at the UCI in Milton Keynes,” Lewis laughed.
“Ken was a huge influence on my early career and the dominant figure in the publicising and marketing of Hollywood films in the UK in the latter part of the 20th century,” commented Paul Brett, partner at the Studio Group. “Not only did Ken supervise the UK release of half a dozen James Bond films, but he also oversaw more royal premieres than anyone else. Ken was a true gentleman who enjoyed a long and happy retirement in Devon with his wife Shirley, his adult children and grandchildren. Sincere condolences to them all.”
No comments yet