Harris Katleman, Former Top Television Executive at MGM and Fox, Dies at 97

Harris Katleman, a onetime protégé of mogul Lew Wasserman who went on to head the television departments at MGM and 20th Century Fox, died Wednesday in Los Angeles of natural causes, his family announced. He was 97.

Born on Aug. 19, 1928, in Omaha, Nebraska, Katleman moved with his family to Beverly Hills when he was 8. He dropped out of UCLA at age 19 to join MCA, where he became an “office boy” and protégé of Wasserman. Four years later, he was named to head the agency’s television department in New York.

At MCA, he represented talent including Jackie Gleason and Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, Peyton Place) and was involved in signing Clark Gable and Howard Keel.

Katleman exited MCA to join Goodson-Todman Productions, which under his watch initiated the network series The Web, The Rebel, Branded and The Richard Boone Show. He also packaged and executive produced the 1966 film Ride Beyond Vengeance, starring Branded lead Chuck Connors, under a joint venture between Goodson-Todman and Columbia Pictures.

Katleman in 1972 was hired as president of MGM Television and senior vp of MGM Inc., where he was instrumental in developing the 1975 CBS telefilm Babe, starring Susan Clark as superstar athlete Babe Didrikson, and the TV shows How the West Was Won and CHiPs.

He resigned in 1977 to launch Bennett Katleman Productions at Columbia and helped shepherd the 1979 NBC miniseries From Here to Eternity and the 1979 ABC series Salvage 1, starring Andy Griffith.

In 1980, Katleman was named president/CEO of Fox Television. In addition to overseeing production on Trapper John, M.D. and the final four years of M*A*S*H, he developed and sold L.A. Law, The Simpsons, Anything But Love, In Living Color, Doogie Howser, M.D., Civil Wars, NYPD Blue, Hooperman, The Tracey Ullman Show and Mr. Belvedere. He resigned in 1992.

Katleman served a two-year term as president of the Hollywood Radio & Television Society, sat on a board of governors for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and served on the board at Brentwood Country Club and The Lakes Country Club in Palm Desert.

His memoir, You Can’t Fall Off the Floor: And Other Lessons From a Life in Hollywood, was published in 2018. (Read excerpts from the book here).

Survivors include his children, Steve (an entertainment lawyer), Michael (a TV producer) and Lisa; seven grandchildren (one, Maddie Katleman, works at WME; another, Nick Katleman, co-wrote his memoir); and 14 great-grandchildren; and his beloved dog, Noel.

His family described him as “a deft businessman who never — no matter how the cards were stacked — gave up.”