Biography

James C. Katz has built a career equally focused on preserving the old and creating the new in cinema. Along with Bob Harris, he was responsible for the restorations of Rear Window, Vertigo, Spartacus and My Fair Lady. On the new side, he has produced such features as Paul Bartel's Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, written by Bruce Wagner , executive produced Lust in the Dust, starring Divine and Tab Hunter and was producer of Nobody's Fool, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Beth Henley. As of 2013, he is involved in several film and television projects for The Wyle/Katz Company, a production company with actor Noah Wyle, in Los Angeles.

Katz received a B.A. from Ohio State University and began his career in the United Artists publicity department, eventually becoming Director of Worldwide Publicity. He was involved in the campaigns for such films as the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, the James Bond movies, In the Heat of the Night, and two Beatles movies, A Hard Day's Night and HELP! He subsequently lived in Europe where he produced and directed several documentaries, short films and commercials, and co-produced the National Theatre's film production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, starring and directed by Sir Laurence Olivier.

As President and founder of the Universal Pictures Classics Division in the early 1980s, Katz was responsible for the reissue of five Hitchcock films -- Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much -- as well as the reissue of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, the reissue of the Preston Sturges package and the theatrical distribution of Abel Gance's Napoleon, during which he cemented his partnership with Bob Harris.

At the same time, under Katz' aegis, Universal Pictures Classics became the first classics division to be involved in film production, with John Huston's Under the Volcano. Katz was also involved in bringing such films as Jerszy Skolimowski's Moonlighting, Merchant Ivory's Heat and Dust, Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata to U.S. audiences. Katz also served several years as a production VP for Universal Pictures.

Katz served on the 2000 and 2001 AFI Awards selection juries, and has been a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He is also a charter member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Los Angeles.(BAFTA LA)
- IMDb mini biography by: The Wyle/Katz Company