Valenti funeral draws movie, political elite

By Brooks Boliek

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Jack would've wanted it this way.

Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, presidential aide and inventor of the movie and TV ratings systems, always loved playing the Big Room, and for his funeral Tuesday he played in a doozie.

The neo-Byzantine nave of St. Matthew's Cathedral was packed with movie stars and lawmakers, lobbyists and journalists, family friends and relatives -- including his wife of 45 years, Mary Margaret -- who came to pay their last respects to the diminutive Texan who was bigger than life.

Valenti died Thursday after suffering a stroke in late March. He was 85.

In Washington, St. Martin's is a special place. It is the seat of the Catholic archdiocese, and it is where President Kennedy's funeral was conducted. It was the death of JFK that brought Valenti to Washington as an assistant to President Johnson. He ran the MPAA from 1966 to 2004.

Valenti's desire to play the Big Room predated his time as LBJ's White House confidant. It came before all those congressional hearings and the soundstage for the Oscars. Valenti's son, John, told the congregation that his dad first noticed the urge to speak about 75 years ago in his hometown of Houston.

Reading from his father's soon-to-be-published novel, John Valenti said young Jack was hoisted upon a flatbed truck and told to say a few words at a campaign rally for a county sheriff.

"The thrill ran through me like a twanging wire. Something pleasantly addictive was being done," John Valenti read, asking the crowd to imagine his dad was speaking. "I never recovered from that."

"No," recalled John, "he never did."

Kirk Douglas spoke of how Valenti rescued him from an interminable wait for a government factotum. Valenti took him to the White House because he thought it was a better place to wait.

"In a few hours with Jack Valenti, I found myself in the Oval Office chatting with the president of the United States. Jack could do miracles," he said.

Douglas, also a stroke victim, said Valenti would have to pay an old friend another favor when he joined him. "I expect Jack to finally bring me to the big ranch," he said.

The funeral drew a capacity crowd of about 1,000. Among the political heavyweights spotted were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Massachusetts senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

From the entertainment industry came, among others, Martin Scorsese, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steven Bochco, Robert Wagner, Clint Eastwood, News Corp. president Peter Chernin, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves, former Walt Disney Co. chairman Michael Eisner, former Warner Bros. co-chairmen Robert Daly and Terry Semel, and AOL co-founder Steve Case.

Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer was also among the readers from Valenti's memoir, "This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood."