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| Sweeney Todd in Concert: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Producer Ellen M. Krass |
Emmy Award-winning producer Ellen M. Krass and EMK Productions' 15-year history of packaging and producing for film and television has had many highlights. Krass' most recent film, A Lesson Before Dying (HBO/NYC), starring Don Cheadle, Cicely Tyson and Mekhi Phifer, premiered in May 1999, for which she won the Emmy Award, the Peabody Award and the National Board of Review Award for Best Motion Picture for Television. Based on the best-selling novel by Ernest J. Gaines, it also won an Emmy for Writing and was nominated for five others—in addition to being an Oprah Winfrey Book Club selection.
Krass served as executive producer on the hit Warner Bros. feature film, Other People's Money, starring Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck. Her star-studded Lincoln Center production of "Sondheim's Follies in Concert" for PBS's Great Performances and Showtime, was nominated for a British Academy Award. In 1986, Krass produced the spectacular HBO special, Barbra Streisand: One Voice. She has won Cable Ace Awards in 1992, 1993 and 1994.
Prior to the formation of EMK Productions, Krass was executive producer for RKO/NEDERLANDER. Utilizing her strong theatrical background, she brought many of Broadway's greatest shows to television. The productions of Hughie, with Jason Robards, Sweeney Todd, starring Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, and Cold Storage each earned Ace Awards from the National Cable Association. On stage, Krass produced the off-broadway hits Mambo Mouth, The Kathy and Mo Show, and Reno: In Rage and Rehab; the last two of which she also produced for HBO.
Ellen M. Krass also produced the television adaptations of the stage plays You Can't Take It With You, starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst; "Breakfast with Les and Bess," with Dick Van Dyke and Cloris Leachman for PBS's American Playhouse, and Time Flies When You're Alive for HBO. For CBS, Krass produced a two-hour special, Jackie Gleason, The Great One. This followed a filmed retrospective, again for HBO/PBS—Starring Natalie Wood. Ellen executive produced the four-part series, Screen Legends, for Cinemax/HBO, featuring the films and life stories of James Stewart, Gary Cooper, James Cagney and Henry Fonda; for Devillier Donegan Enterprises, she helmed films on Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart and Burt Lancaster; and for American Masters, it was "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice."
Krass also produced the HBO special Mo' Funny: Black Comedy in America, as well as the retrospectives Here He Is...the One, the Only…Groucho and Jack Benny: Comedy in Bloom. For LIFETIME, she started the Intimate Portrait series with her production of "Jackie Onassis." For TNT, Krass produced the film portrait Greta Garbo, hosted by Glenn Close; All About Bette Davis, hosted by Jodie Foster, which earned her the 1994 Cable Ace Award; and Tall, Dark & Handsome: Clark Gable, hosted by Liam Neesen.
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