Jerry Tokofsky, ‘Where’s Poppa?’ and ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ Producer, Dies at 91

Jerry Tokofsky, the onetime William Morris agent and Columbia Pictures executive who didn’t think much of a young actor named Harrison Ford but went on to produce the acclaimed films Where’s Poppa? and Glengarry Glen Ross, has died. He was 91.

Tokofsky died Oct. 5 of natural causes at his home in New York City, his family announced.

Tokofsky also was a co-producer on the sci-fi thriller Dreamscape (1983), starring Dennis Quaid; the Abel Ferrara-directed crime thriller Fear City (1984), starring Tom Berenger and Billy Dee Williams; and the Charles Matthau-helmed, Stirling Silliphant-written The Grass Harp (1995), featuring Jack Lemmon and Piper Laurie in the adaptation of Truman Capote’s coming-of-age novel.

For United Artists, Tokofsky produced the classic Carl Reiner-directed dark comedy Where’s Poppa? (1970), starring George Segal, Ruth Gordon, Ron Leibman and Trish Van Devere.

And for New Line Cinema, he produced Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), the taut drama adapted by David Mamet from his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play. With a tip from director Irvin Kershner, it was Tokofsky who bought the film rights to the property and rounded up the outstanding cast that included Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alex Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey.

As a young executive at Columbia in the 1960s, Tokofsky was in charge of the studio’s creative affairs department, which evaluated scripts and oversaw actors, directors and producers, and he would hire future Sony Pictures co-studio chief Peter Guber as his assistant.

After seeing rushes that had Ford playing the bit part of a bellman in a scene with James Coburn in Ford’s screen debut, Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), Tokofsky called the actor into his office.

As Ford related during a 2013 appearance on Conan — he got a lot of mileage with this story over the years — Tokofsky said to him: “You’re never going to make it in this business, just forget about it. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries, [and] you took one look at that guy and said, ‘That’s a movie star.’

Countered Ford: “And I leaned across his desk and said, ‘I thought you were supposed to believe that he was a grocery delivery boy.’”

Tokofsky ordered him to leave his office, Ford said, and his seven-year contract — for $150 a week — was soon terminated. (The executive also wanted him to change his name and get a haircut, Ford recalled.)

Sometime in the early 1980s and now a big star, Ford was in the commissary at 20th Century Fox when a waiter presented him with a business card with handwriting on it that said, “I missed my bet.” He flipped it over and saw Tokofsky’s name on the other side.

“Much to my great immediate pleasure — it still gives me a little bit of pleasure now — I looked around and couldn’t figure out which one [in the room] he was,” Ford said.

Jerome Herbert Tokofsky was born in Brooklyn on April 14, 1934. Down the street from his home was the Biltmore Theatre, which provided him with an “escape from street life, introducing him to another way to live far from [his] grim and gritty [neighborhood of] East New York,” his family noted.

After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, Tokofsky landed a football scholarship at the University of Alabama but after his freshman year transferred to NYU, where he continued to play football. He would graduate with a degree in journalism and go on to study at NYU Law School. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserves.

Tokofsky started in the film business working part-time in the WMA mailroom while still at NYU. Norman Brokaw, a former mailroom employee, had risen to become the agency’s chairman, and he took Tokofsky under his wing.

He eventually moved to the Beverly Hills branch at WMA and represented such clients as Segal, Steve McQueen, Peter Falk, Robert Blake, Natalie Wood, Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde. He also enlarged his British contingent with the signings of Tony Richardson, Richard Harris, Albert Finney and Bryan Forbes.

Among his memorabilia from those years is a silver box from Tiffany’s, engraved as follows: “To Jerry Tokofsky, who got King Rat and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for George Segal as if he were getting them for himself. And, baby, that’s agenting!”

After 12 years with WMA, Tokofsky became second-in-command to Mike Frankovich, head of production at Columbia. As the youngest studio executive in the industry back then, he packaged films and was involved in the production of such acclaimed features as A Man for All Seasons (1966), Georgy Girl (1966), The Professionals (1966), To Sir With Love (1967), Funny Girl (1968) and Oliver! (1968).

Tokofsky exited Columbia in 1970 and was vice president of European production at Paramount and MGM before entering independent production and producing Where’s Poppa?

He left the U.S. and the film industry for seven years, living in Paris and Barcelona and establishing the Holiday Inn hotel chain in Spain with the Wexler family of Chicago.

Returning to Hollywood, Tokofsky got into the TV business, and two of his pilots were Second Time Around, starring Mariette Hartley, and a version of Where’s Poppa?, both for ABC. And he produced the David Steinberg-directed comedy Paternity (1981), starring Burt Reynolds and Beverly D’Angelo.

According to a 1992 story about Glengarry Glen Ross in The New York Times, Tokofsky read Mamet’s play on a trip to New York in 1985 at the suggestion of Kershner, who wanted to direct it. After seeing it on Broadway, he paid Mamet $500,000 for the play and another $500,000 to write the movie adaptation. After many fits and starts, production finally began in August 1991 with James Foley directing.

He also played a role in the production of Easy Rider (1969) and ABC’s landmark 1977 miniseries Roots and taught graduate classes in producing and managing a studio at USC.

Survivors include his wife, Karen, whom he married in 1980 (she was a co-producer on Glengarry Glen Ross); sons David and Peter; daughter Tatiana; and grandchildren Rebecca, Rachel and Joie.

And if Ford is reading this obituary, his family noted, “Jerry Tokofsky still humbly acknowledges that he ‘lost the bet.’”