Zev Braun was an American motion picture producer. Though much of his work is in television he was a successful filmmaker from the early 1960s onwards.
Early life
Braun was born in Chicago, Illinois. His interest in filmmaking led him fresh from studying Humanities and Classic Arts at the University of Chicago to enter movies while still serving as President of Braun International, his family's packaging firm.
Career
1960s In 1964, his production of Goldstein won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the Cannes Film Festival. 1970s In 1974, his co-production of Maximilian Schell's The Pedestrian won the Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Film, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. His production of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, starring Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen, was voted Best Horror Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Some of Braun's other productions in the 1970s include: Angela, starring Sophia Loren and John Huston; Freedom Road, starring Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson; and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, starring Peter Sellers and Helen Mirren. 1980s In 1984, Braun again teamed up with director Schell to co-produce Marlene, which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature along with winning the New York Film Critics Award, The National Society of Film Critics Award and the National Board of Review Award. The 1987–88 television season saw Braun's company bring to the screen the two-hour television movie, Stillwatch, starring Lynda Carter and Angie Dickinson; a four-hour miniseries, Murder Ordained, starring JoBeth Williams, Keith Carradine and Terry Kinney; and a two-hour NBC movie, The Father Clements Story, starring Louis Gossett Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O'Connor. Tour of Duty, the highly acclaimed weekly prime-time series about the Vietnam War, also premiered in 1987, and ran for three successful seasons on CBS. Other television series from Braun include Murphy's Law, starring George Segal, which ran on ABC and Bagdad Cafe, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton for CBS. Another of Braun's productions in the 1980s is Where Are The Children?, starring Jill Clayburgh and Frederick Forrest. 1990s In 1991, Braun executive produced A Seduction in Travis County, a two-hour movie for CBS, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Coyote and Jean Smart. Expanding into the cable marketplace, he executive produced Split Images, a two-hour movie based upon the best selling novel by Elmore Leonard and starring Gregory Harrison. In 1994, Braun executive produced the critically praised four-hour mini-series Menendez: A Killing In Beverly Hills for CBS starring Edward James Olmos and Beverly D'Angelo. Also that year at CBS was Dominick Dunne's 919 Fifth Avenue, a two-hour pilot movie that starred James Marsden and Denise Richards. In 1996, Abducted: A Father's Love, a two-hour NBC movie starring Chris Noth, Peter MacNicol and Stepfanie Kramer, turned out to be one of the highest rated television movies for the year and was highly acclaimed, as well. Lethal Vows, starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger, aired on CBS in 1999, and proved to be the network's highest rated prime time program for the first 10 months of the year. Braun then produced Edges of the Lord, a feature film shot in Poland and starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe, distributed by Miramax Films. 2000s Braun executive produced the CBS 2005 May Sweeps entry, Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution starring Janel Moloney and Terry Kinney. Braun won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Movie for Television for the highly rated movie he produced for Lifetime Television, , directed by Agnieszka Holland starring Mercedes Ruehl. Most recently, Braun executive produced the Lifetime hit film The Gabby Douglas Story, which starred Regina King and Imani Hakim.
