Producer Paul Maslansky, who was responsible for the Police Academy movies (and TV show!), died on Dec. 2. He was 91. Maslansky played jazz trumpet and served in the Army (probably not at the same time), and by the early 1960s was producer Charles H. Schneer’s assistant; he was soon producing such films as The Castle of the Living Dead and She Beast. By the 1970s he had worked his way to up Hard Times, the bizarre The Blue Bird (really, all versions of that are bizarre), Damnation Alley, When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?, and The Villain, before hitting on the cheap, silly, and very remunerative Police Academy series. He also produced Russia House and, most recently, 2017’s Death of the Sheik, a Russian film about Rudolph Valentino. Maslansky said that “Police Academy changed my life, in terms of material things. I always knew that I was decent at my job, but I never had a hit in the movie business. I had turned 50 and had made 25, 30 pictures . . . but I hadn’t had a breakout hit. That was the one.”
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