Julian Schlossberg
Julian Schlossberg is one of America’s most prolific show business producers and distributors…
and he lives in Katonah!
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREA CERASO
Julian was born in the Bronx in 1942. He attended public schools, and then graduated from N.Y.U. with honors. He joined the Army in 1962 and did six months of active duty at Fort Dix, before serving in the Reserves for 5 more years to complete his service.
Notwithstanding his enormous accomplishments, he’s unpretentious, warm, and engaging. He’s a bank of cultural knowledge and remains intellectually curious, and he’s more interested in finding out about you than talking about himself.
“I grew up with radio and during the advent of television, and I was hooked on show biz from an early age,” Julian recalls. “The New York Times used to publish ‘TV Highlights of the Week’ in their Arts & Leisure section, and I kept a spreadsheet - on a yellow legal pad - documenting which TV channel had the most highlights. I would go into Manhattan to watch TV dress rehearsals and return home in time to watch the show on TV that evening - studying the changes which were made from dress rehearsal to production.”
“In 1964, I got a job as one of about forty college graduates at the ABC network. I made $90 dollars a week and all my friends were getting paid more in their various jobs in other industries, but I realized that worrying about how much I was going to make was not the key to finding success in show business,” Julian continues. “In 1970 I tracked down Max Liebman, who had produced the groundbreaking TV program Your Show Of Shows with Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and other comic luminaries, and found he had the collection of’ and all 156 90-minute kinescopes. I visited Max in his office in the back of Town Hall on West 56th Street and convinced him to let me produce a motion picture based on a selection of ten of those fabulous sketches. It was released as Ten From Your Show Of Shows and I was off and running.”
“I worked for the Walter Reade Organization, which owned a group of movie theaters, including the 1,200 seat Ziegfeld on 54th Street. My job was to get movies for them to exhibit, and in just one year I was able to acquire the rights to That’s Entertainment, Earthquake, and Tommy, resulting in over Three Million Dollars of ticket sales,” Julian chronicles. “It became the second highest grossing theater in the United States, behind only Radio City Music Hall.”
In 1974, while working as an executive, Schlossberg began hosting Movie Talk, a four-hour nationally syndicated radio program aired in New York– first on WMCA and subsequently on WOR. Over the next nine years, he interviewed hundreds of stars - many of whom rarely did interviews - such as Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Warren Beatty. He also hosted Movie Talk on television in New York and Philadelphia .“Then, in 1976, Barry Diller, who was running Paramount, hired me to work in their production department as the Vice President of Film Acquisition - three weeks in New York and one week in Los Angeles each month,” Julian recounts. “I was charged with bigger responsibilities and represented Paramount on films shot in New York City. One of the highlights of that period was shooting Saturday Night Fever on the streets of Brooklyn…when John Travolta, who was at that time a TV star but not a moviestar, drew throngs of fans on the street that were so big we had to call in crowd control.”
“After Paramount, I started consulting for a guy named Allen Klein, who’d managed The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. And I’d made friends at Paramount with two wonderful writers, Elaine May and Herb Gardner, and they both gave me the confidence to start my own company, which later became known as Castle Hill Productions.”
“Some of the films I’ve produced or co-produced include Widows Peak starring Mia Farrow and Natasha Richardson, In The Spirit starring Peter Falk, Melanie Griffith, and Elaine May, and No Nukes, starring Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon, and other music giants,” Julian chronicles. “The TV I’ve produced or co-produced includes Mike Nichols: An American Master with Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, Nichols and May with Steve Martin, Jules Feiffer, and Robin Williams, Going Hollywood: The War Years with Van Johnson, Tony Randall, and Roddy McDowell, and Going Hollywood: The 30’s hosted by Robert Preston. …And the theater I’ve produced or co-produced includes Bullets Over Broadway written by Woody Allen and directed by Susan Stroman, Fortune’s Fool starring Alan Bates and Frank Langella and directed by Arthur Penn, Vita and Virginia starring Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins, Death Defying Acts, written by Woody Allen, Elaine May, and David Mamet and starring Linda Lavin, Sly Fox starring Richard Dreyfuss and Eric Stoltz, and Taller Than A Dwarf starring Matthew Broderick and Parker Posey. My plays have won 6 Tony Awards, 2 Obie Awards, 7 Drama Desk Awards, and 5 Outer Circle Awards!”
“I’ve been the producer’s representative for Dustin Hoffman, George C. Scott, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Duvall, and John Cassavetes, among numerous others,” Julian says.
“And in the business of distributing films I represented some of the all-time greats, including John Ford’s Stagecoach, the Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca, Orson Welles’ Othello, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, several films by John Cassavetes including Woman Under the Influence and Faces, three of Elia Kazan’s features including Face in the Crowd, Baby Doll, and America America, Fellini’s Intervista, Seize the Day starring Robin Williams, Hell’s Angels on Wheels and Rebel Rousers both starring Jack Nicholson, Glengarry Glen Ross starring Al Pacino, Death of a Salesman starring Dustin Hoffman, the Academy Award winning foreign films Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, and the Academy Award nominated Documentaries A Great Day in Harlem and The Line King.”
“…In 2006, I sold Castle Hill Productions and started Westchester Films Inc., which was sold to Shout! Factory in 2014.”
“In addition, from 1996 to 2001, I had a record company called Gold Castle Records, which I’d formed together with my partner Danny Goldberg, with whom I’d co-produced and co-directed the Warner Bros. motion picture No Nukes, …We released albums by such notable artists as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Don McLean, and Peter, Paul & Mary.”
“I’ve also written two books,” Julian smiles, knowing that his list of accomplishments is getting so long as to be incredible. “I wrote the first book, Try Not To Hold It Against Me– A Producer’s Life, during the co-vid epidemic. It’s a memoir of how my career happened, from the Bronx to Broadway and then Hollywood. And my second book, which I wrote in 2025 and titled My First Book Part Two, continues the stories about my 60 plus years in show business - as the title indicates. I also recorded both books on audio.”
“And I’m currently doing two podcasts,” Julian continues. “One is called Julian Schlossberg’s Movietalk and it’s heard on all the podcast channels and shown on Facebook and Instagram, and I’ve interviewed Woody Allen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alec Baldwin, John Cleese, Roseanne Barr, Alan Alda and many others. The other, with two other producers, is called Tales From Hollywoodland.”
“...And I’m not done yet!” Julian proclaims. “My swan song will be a 14 hour documentary, which I’ve informally titled Witnesses To The 20th Century - with interviews I’ve done of the 140 most influential people on the planet answering the questions of how they affected the 20th Century and how the 20th Century affected them. In a way I’ve been working on this project, or at least thinking about it, since I was a kid, but I’ve been pretty dedicated to this massive project for the last twenty years. I I’m producing the project and did all the interviews, and Elaine May has written and directed all the shows. The amazing people I’ve interviewed include President George H.W. Bush, Walter Mondale, Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Colin Powell and four other Secretaries of State, Elie Wiesel, Willie Mays, Clint Eastwood, Jesse Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Phil Donahue, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, just to name a few! …But producing enticing stories from each interview is long and tedious work! So far, we’ve completed production on 7 of the total projected 14 hours. …It’s a Herculean task, but I always say, it’s only work if you don’t want to do it!”
“I grew up an only child and, probably as a result, have never really spent much time alone as an adult,” Julian says plainly. “I’m married - for the third time - to my wife of 32 years, Merryn Jose. She’s a fourth-generation psychic, was recognized as one of the 100 Top Psychics In America - published by Pocket Books. and recently wrote a book entitled The Clairvoyant’s Daughter : Growing Up In A Mystical World, which will be published this Fall.”
“…We moved to this area in 2001. We love it here!” Julian declares. “…Most days you can find me walking up-and-down Katonah Avenue in Katonah. I stop in to see my friend Tim who owns the Art and Frame shop, and I eat at the Blue Dolphin, where my friend Brian is the manager, at least once a week. It’s like living in Mayberry R.F.D.!”
“Since I read Bedford & New Canaan Magazine religiously, I know you’re going to ask me about my ‘top fives’, so I prepared both a list of my top five films of all time, and a list of the top five people I’d like to interview that I haven’t interviewed already. The films, not necessarily in order, are Casablanca, All The Presidents Men, Chinatown, Singin’ In The Rain, and A Few Good Men. And the interview subjects are Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Freud, Trotsky, and Madame Curie…and then, in showbusiness, Al Jolson, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, and Humphrey Bogart…and then…” Julian looks up from his prepared lists momentarily, seriously ready to supply a ‘top five’ in just about every category one could imagine!
