David Korda obit

David Korda, British Producer and Influential Film Financier, Dies at 87

A nephew of Alexander Korda and son of ‘Four Feathers’ director Zoltan Korda, he helped Francis Ford Coppola and Terry Gilliam get pictures made through his work as a completion guarantor.  

He was not on the list.

David Korda, a prominent member of the Korda family movie dynasty who served as a producer and important film financier in a show business career that spanned more than 60 years, has died. He was 87.

Korda, chairman of the British company Film Finances Ltd., died Sept. 18 at Cromwell Hospital in London, author, editor and film historian Charles Drazin told The Hollywood Reporter. He had been in poor health after a battle with cancer. 

Korda’s parents were Zoltan Korda, director of the Ralph Richardson-starring epic The Four Feathers (1939), and actress Joan Gardner (Dark Journey, The Scarlet Pimpernel).

One of his uncles was Alexander Korda, the founder of London Films, the owner of British Lion Films, a producer of such classics as The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Third Man (1949) and the first filmmaker to receive a knighthood. Another uncle, Vincent Korda, was a painter and Oscar-winning art director.

With his behind-the-scenes contribution to independent filmmaking as a completion guarantor, Korda helped Francis Ford Coppola rebound after his colossal overspending on Apocalypse Now (1979) and One From the Heart (1981) by helping his 1983 features, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, get made.

When Terry Gilliam’s epic fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) threatened to cost more than twice its original budget — and risked ruining Film Finances — it was Korda who spent nearly a year “imposing some sanity and order.”

And as an executive producer who was head of production for RKO Pictures and then Capella Films in the 1980s and ’90s, Korda ushered into production such features as Hamburger Hill (1987); Shattered (1991), Wolfgang Petersen’s first Hollywood film; and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).

“Having experienced the flamboyance of the film industry at close quarters, he grew up to be wary of its excess,” Drazin wrote in a tribute that was read at Korda’s celebration of life ceremony last month in London.

“Modest and reticent, he preferred, in his own film career, to avoid the limelight. He saw himself as a pragmatic rather than entrepreneurial producer, whose skill was to make things work and to provide a stable platform on which others might achieve success.”

David Alexander Korda was born on May 26, 1937, in Hampstead, London. At the start of World War II, he and his parents moved from London to Beverly Hills when he was 3, and they lived in a house on Rexford Drive.

His first memory of Los Angeles was Uncle Alex turning up in a limousine to take him on a tour of the town, then sending him home with a bag of silver dollars. He got to play with props from The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and The Jungle Book (1942).

Sabu, the young star of those films, would arrive with wild animals as gifts. They included three ravens that lived in the garage, a monkey that was kept in the garden and a baby jaguar that had to be given to L.A. Zoo after it clawed at the curtains and the furniture.

After the war, Korda returned to England to study at the Lycée in South Kensington, then attended the International School in Geneva, Pomona College in California and Oxford, where he acted in plays for the drama society.

(While on holiday from Oxford, he worked at the Cinecittà studio in Rome as an assistant on the famed chariot race for 1959’s Ben-Hur.)

In 1960 after leaving Oxford, David set up a theater company with Wladek Sheybal, the Polish actor-director known for his turn as the villain Kronsteen in From Russia With Love (1963). The venture was funded by Zoltàn Korda through the sale of his stamp collection. Based in Bromley, the 101 Company featured performances from the likes of Eileen Atkins, Prunella Scales and Jeremy Brett.

After his dad died in 1961, Korda worked as an assistant on Peter Brook’s Lord of the Flies (1963), and for Ray Harryhausen producer Charles H. Schneer, he was tasked to find old footage to be redeployed for such films as Siege of the Saxons (1963), East of Sudan (1964) and Land Raiders (1969).

He even used sequences from The Four Feathers. “I always thought my father must have turned in his grave,” he said.

Korda was a unit manager on Schneer’s big-budget musical Half a Sixpence (1967) for Paramount, then graduated to producer roles on The Ruling Class (1972) and Man Friday (1975) for Peter O’Toole’s production company.

In the late ’70s, he served as a production supervisor on independently financed films, then was an associate producer on Sunburn (1979) and Annie and Little Britches (1981), both shot in Mexico for the British company Hemdale.

Korda accepted an offer in 1980 to work as the London-based production executive for Film Finances, and after helping Coppola on The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, the company would provide bonds for The Terminator, Romancing the Stone and Nightmare on Elm Street a year later.

He was hired in 1985 as head of production of RKO, where he shepherded about 10 films before parent company General Tire Inc. sold the studio in 1987. He returned to Film Finances and got to work on cleaning up Baron Munchausen.

Korda moved back to L.A. in 1990 to join Capella but headed back to London in 2002 to spend most of the rest of his life at Film Finances.

Survivors include his son, Nik, and his daughter, Lerryn.

Drazin noted that Korda had just four movie posters in his office: those for The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Baron Munchausen and Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching (2007), which Film Finances guaranteed soon after Korda returned from Hollywood.

“A small, independent film that told the story of the famous Rembrandt picture The Night Watch, it would not have been obvious to visitors why it was on his wall,” Drazin wrote. “It offered a characteristically quiet nod to the first picture that his Uncle Alex had directed at Denham, the great studio he had built for London Films in the mid-1930s — Rembrandt, starring Charles Laughton, a film about the compromises between art and commerce that David had negotiated with such grace in his own life.”

Producer

Gary Oldman and Olga Kurylenko in The Courier (2019)

The Courier

4.8

production executive: Film Finances

2019

 

Marcin Dorocinski, Iwan Rheon, and Milo Gibson in Mission of Honor (2018)

Mission of Honor

5.9

production executive: Bond Company

2018

 

Patrick Bruel, JJ Feild, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Maria Papas in O Jerusalem (2006)

O Jerusalem

6.0

executive producer

2006

 

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005)

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God

4.6

TV Movie

executive producer

2005

 

The Boys & Girl from County Clare (2003)

The Boys & Girl from County Clare

6.5

executive producer

2003

 

Paul Bettany and Louise Lombard in After the Rain (1999)

After the Rain

5.8

executive producer

1999

 

Mike Myers, Alfred Molina, and Brenda Fricker in Pete's Meteor (1998)

Pete's Meteor

4.6

executive producer

1998

 

The Island on Bird Street (1997)

The Island on Bird Street

7.1

executive producer

1997

 

Mia Sara in Black Day Blue Night (1995)

Black Day Blue Night

5.8

executive producer

1995

 

Two Bits (1995)

Two Bits

6.1

executive producer

1995

 

The Surgeon (1995)

The Surgeon

4.8

executive producer

1995

 

Tony Goldwyn, Rod Steiger, and Robert Loggia in The Last Tattoo (1994)

The Last Tattoo

5.9

executive producer

1994

 

Robert Patrick in Body Shot (1994)

Body Shot

4.6

executive producer

1994

 

The Nutt House (1992)

The Nutt House

3.7

executive producer

1992

 

Tom Berenger, Greta Scacchi, and Bob Hoskins in Shattered (1991)

Shattered

6.5

producer

1991

 

Hamburger Hill (1987)

Hamburger Hill

6.7

executive producer

1987

 

Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine in Half Moon Street (1986)

Half Moon Street

5.4

executive producer

1986

 

Loophole (1981)

Loophole

6.0

producer

1981

 

Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980)

Cattle Annie and Little Britches

6.1

associate producer

1980

 

Sunburn (1979)

Sunburn

5.0

associate producer

1979

 

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976)

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday

6.1

producer

1976

 

Man Friday (1975)

Man Friday

6.2

producer

1975

 

Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class (1972)

The Ruling Class

7.2

associate producer

1972

 

Additional Crew

Peterloo (2018)

Peterloo

6.5

completion guarantor

2018

 

Forest Whitaker, Eric Bana, and Jeff Gum in The Forgiven (2017)

The Forgiven

6.0

film finances: UK

2017

 

Mark Frost, Rienus Krul, Sophie van Winden, and Julian Looman in Prey (2016)

Prey

5.3

completion bond

2016

 

Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn (2015)

Brooklyn

7.5

completion guarantor services

2015

 

Gena Rowlands and Cheyenne Jackson in Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (2014)

Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks

6.6

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2014

 

Gillian Anderson, Ben Kingsley, Callan McAuliffe, and Ella Hunt in Robot Overlords (2014)

Robot Overlords

4.6

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2014

 

Soof (2013)

Soof

6.6

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2013

 

Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Jeremy Irvine in The Railway Man (2013)

The Railway Man

7.1

completion guarantee: United Kingdom, Film Finances

2013

 

Lindsay Duncan, Dougray Scott, and Kara Tointon in Last Passenger (2013)

Last Passenger

5.7

production executive: Film Finances

2013

 

Great Expectations US Poster (2013)

Great Expectations

6.3

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2012

 

Saskia Rosendahl in Lore (2012)

Lore

7.1

financing

2012

 

Minnie Driver in Hunky Dory (2011)

Hunky Dory

6.2

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2011

 

Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston in The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

The Deep Blue Sea

6.2

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2011

 

Glenn Close, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Mia Wasikowska in Albert Nobbs (2011)

Albert Nobbs

6.7

production executive: Film Finances

2011

 

Saint (2010)

Saint

5.6

completion bond

2010

 

Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, Rosamund Pike, Sally Hawkins, Jaime Winstone, and Andrea Riseborough in Made in Dagenham (2010)

Made in Dagenham

7.1

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2010

 

James Corden and Mathew Horne in Vampire Killers (2009)

Vampire Killers

5.1

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2009

 

Hadewych Minis, Sanne Wallis de Vries, and Bracha van Doesburgh in Moordwijven (2007)

Moordwijven

5.7

completion guarantor: Film Finances

2007

 

Lord of the Flies (1963)

Lord of the Flies

6.9

general assistant

1963

 

Production Manager

The Disco (2023)

The Disco

production manager

2023

 

Richard E. Grant, Anjelica Huston, Noel Fielding, Rebecca Front, Helen Lederer, Theo Stevenson, Ross Marron, and Scarlett Stitt in Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011)

Horrid Henry: The Movie

3.6

production: Film Finances

2011

 

Hot Pursuit (1987)

Hot Pursuit

5.7

executive in charge of production

1987

 

Joan Collins and Oliver Tobias in The Stud (1978)

The Stud

4.3

production supervisor

1978

 

Alan Bates and Janet Suzman in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972)

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

6.7

production manager

1972

 

The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1970)

The Man Who Had Power Over Women

5.2

production manager

1970

 

The Chairman (1969)

The Chairman

5.6

production manager

1969

 

Diane Cilento, Glenda Jackson, and Peter McEnery in Negatives (1968)

Negatives

5.8

production supervisor

1968

 

Half a Sixpence (1967)

Half a Sixpence

6.4

unit manager

1967