Videoage International April 2018

28 April 2018 V I D E O A G E Alice Donenfeld’s challenges began well before she ever entered the entertainment business. In 1956 — when she was just 18 years old and still known as Alice Ray Greenbaum — her mother pushed her to get married. By the time she met Irwin Donenfeld in 1960 — when she was just 22 — she was already on her second divorce, and working her way through law school as a coat checker at Gatsby’s restaurant and nightclub in New York City. He would become her third husband. While it sounds exhausting, working at night and going to school during the daywas considered the perfect arrangement for a superwoman who ended up dealing with superheroes on both sides of the spectrum: Superman and Batman on the DC Comics side, and Spiderman and Captain America on the Marvel side. Irwin Donenfeld (who passed away in 2004 at age 78) was the son of Romania-born Harry Donenfeld, who printed and distributed New York City’s Detective Comics, where a number of superhero characters originated, including Superman in 1938. It later became the DC Comics we know today. (In 1961, DC Comics became part of a publicly traded group, which in 1967 was taken over by Kinney National. In 1972, it was incorporated into Warner Bros.) Despite her personal connection to DC, in 1977, Alice—who’d worked as an entertainment lawyer for 14 years and was by then divorced from Irwin, as well — started working for competitor Marvel Comics. She followed this up with a seven-year stint as a top-level international sales executive withFilmation, whichbegan in 1982, and finally, in 1989, with her own company, Alice Entertainment. She also consulted for Seagull Entertainment from 1996 to 1997, Faith &Values Media from2000 to 2001, and DIC Animation from 2004 to 2005, only retiring from the distribution business in 2005, when she moved permanently to Mexico. Donenfeld’s transition from legal to content sales occurred gradually. “After becoming a lawyer and being admitted to the New York Bar in 1965,” she explained, “I had a few choices — go into wills or estates (both of which deal with dead people), or go into entertainment. I chose the latter, and eventually represented stars such as Mel Brooks.” Entertainment also contributed to paying for her law schooling. According to a report in the New York weekly newspaper, Sunday News, from January 1961, “[The New York City-born Alice’s] book, And a Ring for Every Finger , is now making the rounds of publishing houses. Alice had attended Vassar, New York University and Columbia before landing her current job [at Gatsby’s] four years ago. She completed courses at Boston University and Harvard.” Her first love, however, was writing, and, after retiring from her last job, she published three novels, and also worked on an autobiography. But let’s slow down. In 1963, before graduating from law school (with two law degrees: An LLB, now called Juris Doctor, and an LLM, or Masters of Law), Alice started working for a law firm founded by her father, Lawrence Greenbaum, with her uncle and grandfather. After graduation she moved to another law firm, and then to Time Inc.’s legal department before becoming Marvel Comics’ in-house attorney, and later, VP of Business Affairs, which included International TV. She started at Marvel in 1977 by answering a recruiting ad. This was six years after divorcing Irwin, who had left DC Comics — and the comics industry entirely — in 1968. Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 in New York City by Martin Goodman. It was first called Timely, then Atlas, and in 1961, it finally became Marvel. Goodman sold Marvel in 1968 and left the company in 1973. Since 2009, Marvel has been owned by Walt Disney. In 1965, Alice and Irwin had a son, Harry. They later had a daughter, Mimi. “Because of the children, after the divorce I preferred to keep the Donenfeld name,” she explained. While serving as Marvel’s VP and head of Business Affairs in 1979, she attended her first TV market, NATPE, at theHiltonHotel inManhattan. “At about the same time I attended my first MIP- TV at the old Palais, and also the Cannes Film Festival the following year. Marvel Comics wanted to get into international TV sales and had hired Claude Hill [of New York-based ARP Films] as its international television distributor. I was to go along with Claude as Marvel’s representative to figure out how the whole process worked. “No one had a clue about how to license for international television or how to divvy up the rights at that time. At the same time, I was scoping out the possibility of licensing a Marvel character for a feature film, [but] I was thrown out of every major [studio] in Hollywood. Each production executive assured me in no uncertain terms there was no market for superheroes in the feature film business since they were just for kids and the theaters who carried themwould be dark after 6 p.m.,” she said. “For many years I took our products to anywhere from 12 to 16 international markets, conventions, festivals and fairs per year.” But not many people seemed to want to be bitten by the superhero bug back then. Another amusing story came from Donenfeld’s yet-to-be published autobiography, Behind The Spandex: Globetrotting With Superheroes , which VideoAge got a rough copy of. In it, she talks rather candidly about Marvel’s creative mind, Stan Lee: “To the comic fans, Stan is a god. He and JackKirby created many of the characters, and Stan, so self- aggrandizing, will do anything to make sure his name is always in the limelight. For management, he is a constant pain in the a--,” she wrote. By Dom Serafini Alice Donenfeld: Film, TV Cartoon Buyers Were Her Superheroes Int’ l TV Distribut ion Hal l of Fame (Continued on Page 30) At MIPCOM 1993 with son Harry Donenfeld At a Filmation party during MIP-TV 1987: Marvel’s Barbara d’Arnoux, Alice, and Jean Pierre Vernoux “Each production executive assured me in no uncertain terms there was no market for superheroes in the feature film business since they were just for kids and the theaters who carried them would be dark after 6 p.m.”