Lew Grade

Lew Grade (1906–1998), British entertainment mogul and impresario. Born Louis Winogradsky on December 25, 1906, in the small Ukrainian town of Tokmak, near Odesa, he was six when his family escaped from the Jewish pogroms to start a new life in London's East End.

Lew Grade and his brother, Boris (later Bernard, Baron Delfont of Stepney), became semi-professional dancers, and Grade found fame as the world charleston champion during the 1920s. The brothers gave up dancing to become theatrical agents with their youngest brother, Leslie, booking variety acts. Lew and Leslie formed and were managing directors of Britain's most successful theatrical agencies, whose clients included Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson. As an impresario, Lew Grade helped to establish such stars as Sir Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise. Bernard Delfont entered theatrical management in 1941, and went on to manage theatre, film, television, music, and property interests and together the three brothers dominated British show business for over 40 years.

The decline of variety saw Lew Grade move into films and television. In 1955 he relinquished his position in the theatrical agency, and in 1956 he launched Associated Television (ATV), which he controlled for 20 years and which established him as an important figure in independent television. ATV dominated television from the 1950s into the 1970s, providing the public with hit programmes like Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Emergency Ward 10, The Saint, Thunderbirds, The Muppet Show, Coronation Street, and Crossroads (see Soap Opera).

He lost control of ATV on reaching the directors' age limit of 70, only to re-establish himself as the biggest film-maker in the world, building up the Associated Communications Corporation, and other entertainment and communications companies. His film credits include the Pink Panther series, On Golden Pond, The Exorcist, Sophie's Choice, and the failed Raise The Titanic.

Grade received the Queen's Award to Industry in 1967—the first such award to Britain's entertainment business—and in 1969 was knighted for his services to export. In 1976 he was made a life peer in Prime Minister Harold Wilson's resignation honours list with the title Baron Grade of Elstree. The Lew Grade Chair was established at the National Film and Television School in his honour. He died on December 13, 1998, in London.