BIO

Charles K. Feldman was born Charles Kenneth Gould in New York City, in 1904.   One of six children of a diamond merchant, he became an orphan at age six after both parent died of cancer.   He was adopted a year later by Samuel Feldman, a New Jersey furniture store owner, who subsequently moved the family to California.

Feldman graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles and began his career as an entertainment lawyer, but subsequently re-focused his efforts and co-founded his own talent agency by the age of 27.

By the 1940s, Feldman had refined the concept of the “package deal” where he would shop both scripts and actors to major studios, thus giving his clients an alternative to the inflexible studio contract system prevalent at the time.

His stable of actors grew to the hundreds and included such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, John Wayne, and Marilyn Monroe.   He was producing his own films by 1945.

Feldman married the actress Jean Howard (1910-1989) in 1934.   The couple divorced in 1948.

He married Clotilde Barot in 1968 before passing away just a few weeks later, in Los Angeles, from pancreatic cancer at the age of 64.

Additional biographical information is available at:

NOTED FILMS

Complete filmography at: