The Award will be presented to Valenti at the DGA Awards banquet on Saturday, March 10, 2001, at the Century Plaza Hotel. Valenti will be the 37th recipient of the Award, which was first presented in 1938. Past industry recipients include Barry Diller, Sidney Jay Sheinberg, Charles Champlin, Jack L. Warner and Walt Disney.
"Jack Valenti’s outstanding achievements and service to the motion picture industry make him an ideal recipient of the DGA Honorary Life Member Award," said Shea. "For nearly five decades, Jack Valenti has remained a tireless advocate throughout the world for American films and the American motion picture industry. We are pleased to welcome him as a member of our DGA family."
Valenti's career achievements are varied and impressive: wartime bomber pilot, advertising agency founder, political consultant, White House Special Assistant, and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association.
On June 1, 1966, Valenti resigned his White House post to become the third man in MPA’s history (founded in 1922) to become its leader. As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the MPA, Valenti has presided over and led the American film and television industry as it confronted a sea of change in the United States and abroad.
Valenti has written four books, three of which are non-fiction: The Bitter Taste of Glory, A Very Human President and Speak Up With Confidence. His newest book, Protect and Defend, is a political novel. In addition he has written numerous essays for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Cox newspapers and others.
