[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 110 (Wednesday, July 11, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1483-E1484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 RECOGNIZING AND HONORING JACK VALENTI

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 11, 2007

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I stand today to recognize and honor Jack 
Valenti: a man from humble beginnings who achieved widespread 
recognition and respect in a career of remarkable and memorable 
accomplishments. I would also like to introduce an article from the New 
York Times entitled, ``Walking with Presidents and (Hollywood's) 
Kings.'' His recent passing is a great loss to his family and many 
friends.
  Jack Valenti, the son of a tax clerk and grandchild of Sicilian 
immigrants, was born September, 1921 in Houston, Texas. He admirably 
served the United States during World War II as a member of the Army 
Air Corps, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross; and later received 
his Master of Business Administration from Harvard University. After 
graduating from Harvard, Valenti returned home to Texas where he co-
founded an advertising and political consulting agency, ``Weekley & 
Valenti,'' in 1952.
  Fellow Texan and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson called on Valenti 
to organize President Kennedy's trip to Houston; and was subsequently 
invited to Fort Worth and Dallas the next day where Valenti found 
himself an eyewitness to President Kennedy's assassination. After 
President Kennedy's death in 1963, Valenti accompanied Vice President 
Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One as Johnson took the oath of the 
office of the President. Valenti had the honor of writing Johnson's 
first address to the American public as President and the privilege of 
serving as President Johnson's special assistant.
  Following his work in the White House, Valenti worked for the Motion 
Picture Association of America (MPAA) where he served as President for 
38 years. In 1968 he created the MPAA film rating system. Although some 
changes have occurred along the way, this voluntary movie rating system 
is still used to date. Even as Valenti worked in Hollywood, he 
continued to play a hand in government as a pro-copyright lobbyist.
  As a husband, father of three, lobbyist and MPAA President, Valenti 
will be greatly missed. He served his nation through both the private 
and public sector. While we are all saddened by his passing, we are 
grateful for his contributions and achievements concerning our federal 
government and motion picture industry. He will never be forgotten.

            Walking With Presidents and (Hollywood's) Kings

                         (By Jeanine Basinger)

       The first time I heard Jack Valenti speak, I noted that he 
     was dapper, unexpectedly handsome and short. He had arrived 
     at a meeting of the trustees of the American Film Institute 
     to nominate his friend Kirk Douglas for the annual Life 
     Achievement Award. When he had finished and whirled out, he 
     was still dapper and unexpectedly handsome, but he had grown 
     very big in stature.
       I had witnessed Mr. Valenti in action, an in-the-flesh 
     version of his autobiography, ``This Time, This Place: My 
     Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood.'' He had exuded 
     charm, established himself as everyone's pal with a few 
     harmless anecdotes, taken the room by surprise with a 
     passionate (and well-prepared) speech and rapidly moved on to 
     his next battle, confident he'd get what he came for. (He 
     did; Mr. Douglas got the award.)
       Mr. Valenti, who died on April 26, was a warrior, and he 
     knew how to win. He just looked harmless.

[[Page E1484]]

       Mr. Valenti was born in Houston, the grandchild of Sicilian 
     immigrants, and his parents taught him loyalty, love of the 
     United States and the importance of education, values he 
     never surrendered or compromised.
       Still, ``a fierce ambition burned in me,'' he wrote. ``I 
     wanted to see more, know more and feel more than what seemed 
     to be my lot.'' He found three major combat zones in which to 
     achieve his dreams--war, politics and movie-making--and he 
     writes about each in a different manner.
       Mr. Valenti's earliest chance to make something of himself 
     came in World War II. He entered the Army Air Corps and flew 
     a B-25 on 51 combat missions over Europe, earning the 
     Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor. His descriptions of 
     that time, that place, are among the most vivid in his book. 
     His prose throbs with memories of an experience that was 
     simultaneously exhilarating, terrifying and ``brutal, callous 
     and cruel.''
       After the war Mr. Valenti completed his education at 
     Harvard Business School and returned to Texas, joining with a 
     friend to form a highly successful advertising agency. When 
     Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a fellow Texan, asked Mr. 
     Valenti to organize President John F. Kennedy's visit to 
     Houston, scheduled for Nov. 21, 1963, Mr. Valenti managed on 
     short notice to mastermind a flawless event. Pleased and 
     impressed, Johnson impulsively invited him to go along on the 
     next leg of Kennedy's journey: a brief hop to Fort Worth and 
     Dallas, set for the next day.
       Mr. Valenti went, and found himself eyewitness to the 
     assassination of one American president and the emergency 
     swearing in of another aboard Air Force One. Mr. Valenti 
     would never again return to his life as an adman in Houston. 
     That fateful Nov. 22 and its aftermath became the defining 
     event of his life, a frame to hold his story, a shadow over 
     it but also a foundation under it.
       Mr. Valenti served three years in the Johnson White House 
     as a top presidential aide. In this section of the book he is 
     circumspect. He's a shrewd observer but careful with what he 
     shares. Since he supervised Johnson's speeches, decided whom 
     the president would see (or not see) and where he would go 
     (or not go) to speak (or not speak), a reader wishes for 
     more. If Jack Valenti were a great writer (he's not), a 
     tattletale or even a Judas (he's not), his book could have 
     been one of the most important historical pictures of the 
     tormented decade of the 1960s in the United States.
       Mr. Valenti left Washington in 1966 when Lew Wasserman, the 
     chief executive of MCA Universal Studios, offered him the 
     opportunity to become the head of the Motion Picture 
     Association of America. To accept, Mr. Valenti had to face 
     Johnson's wrath, and it says a lot about him that he did face 
     it, carried the day and ended up still friends with that 
     mercurial politician.
       Writing about Hollywood, Mr. Valenti is looser, more 
     willing to tell tales. His good-old-boy Texas storytelling 
     skills are brought into irreverent play. He wryly describes 
     his first meeting with the combined studio moguls (``the most 
     skeptical audience in the Western world''). Full of Oval 
     Office confidence, Mr. Valenti gave a rousing speech defining 
     his job problems, only to hear Jack Warner, the tough-guy 
     head of Warner Brothers, calmly tell him, ``Your biggest 
     problem will be the people sitting around this table.''
       Ultimately, Mr. Valenti learned how to operate in 
     Hollywood: ``In any meeting, I had to know who could carry 
     the room at a particularly sensitive moment.'' He does not 
     state the obvious: it was usually he.
       His most enduring legacy from those years was his 
     establishment in 1968 of the motion picture rating system, 
     for which he fought ferociously and which he defended without 
     apology. In the preface to his book Mr. Valenti warns the 
     reader that he is writing for his grandchildren. In other 
     words, he's going to censor himself. Just as he kept a lid on 
     fear under combat stress, a lid on President Johnson (no 
     doubt a lid the size of Kansas) and a lid on the leaders of 
     Hollywood, Mr. Valenti keeps his memoir firmly under control. 
     He tells only what he wants to tell, disappearing behind 
     platitudes or quotations from Emerson, Faulkner and others 
     when camouflage is needed.
       To compensate, he never apologizes for being a Democrat and 
     gives opinions on literature (``I never fathomed James 
     Joyce''), Cary Grant (``getting Cary to pick up the 
     restaurant check was a miracle few had ever witnessed''), 
     Oscar night (``a ghastly piece of business'') and more.
       Mr. Valenti is only indirectly the hero of his own story, 
     but he's still a clever adman who knows how to sell his 
     product. What emerges is a portrait of a man who was not, as 
     some might think, merely a political toady. In his own way he 
     was strong and relentless, with a tough definition for 
     leadership: ``I have my own formula, which is quite simple. 
     It is rooted in the ability to engage in courtship, to cosset 
     talent, to understand the human condition and to make 
     decisions fast.''
       When Mr. Valenti died at 85 of complications from a stroke, 
     he had already unknowingly written his own most honest 
     epitaph: ``The professional does his job right every time, 
     without regard for anything else.'' He had lived his life as 
     a gentleman and a patriot, always the smooth operator (with 
     scruples), but a man of steel whenever that became necessary. 
     He might have been the last of the breed.

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