Godspeed TV Producer and Studio Executive Frank Price

Frank Price, who served as a producer on shows such as Matinee Theatre, The Tall Man, and The Virginian, and later served as the head of Columbia Pictures, died on August 25 2025 at the age of 95.

Frank Price was born on May 17 1930 in Decatur, Illinois. When Frank Price was growing up, his father moved frequently for work so that he lived in eight different cities before he even began attending college. Eventually his family moved to Glendale, California. While he was there, his mother worked as a waitress in the Warner Bros. commissary, so that young Frank Price spent a good deal of time on the back lot. He even got autographs from such stars as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Errol Flynn, which he kept his entire life.

He attended three years of high school in Flint, Michigan. There he was the editor of the Central High School newspaper and worked as a copy boy at The Flint Journal. He was also president of the Central High drama club. He served one year in the United States Navy and then attended Michigan State University. He transferred to Columbia University in New York. It was after he got a job as a reader in the CBS-TV Story department that he dropped out of college.

Frank Price serves as a story editor at CBS-TV in New York City from 1951 to 1953. Among the shows on which he worked were Studio One, Suspense, and The Web. Afterwards he moved to Los Angeles and became a story editor and analyst at Screen Gems from 1953 to 1957. He worked on such shows as Ford Theater, Father Knows Best, Playhouse 90, and Circus Boy. He served as a story editor and a producer for Matinee Theatre for NBC. In 1959 Frank Price moved to Revue Productions, would become Universal TV after MCA took over Universal in 1962. He served as a producer on the TV series Overland Trail and then The Tall Man. In addition to being a story editor and producer, Frank Price was also a writer. It was before he produced Matinee Theatre that he sold a story to the CBS television series, Casey, Crime Photographer. In the Fifties, he wrote three episodes of Matinee Theatre and then episodes of The Rough Riders and Shotgun Slade.

Frank Price continued to produce The Tall Man into the Sixties. In the Fifties, it was Frank Price who proposed to Screen Gems that they make a show based on the classic novel The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. A half-hour pilot was made, but it failed to sell. When NBC lost Revue's hit Western Wagon Train to ABC, it was then The Virginian that wold take its place. Unlike the Screen Gems pilot, wich was only a half-hour, MCA's The Virginian would be television's first ninety minute Western. Frank Price was appointed executive producer of the new show. Frank Price remained with The Virginian until 1967. At Revue/Universal Television, in the Sixties, Frank Price also served as a producer on Convoy, It Takes a Thief, and Ironside, as well as the TV movies The Doomsday Flight, Sullivan's Empire, Split Second to an Epitaph, and Lost Flight. He wrote episodes of Frontier Circus, Tales of Wells Fargo, and The Tall Man.

Frank Price was named the head of Universal Television in 1973. It was while he was in charge at Universal Television that the studio produced such mini-series as Rich Man, Poor Man and Centennial. It was in June 1978 that he moved from Universal to Columbia. In March 1979 he became president of Columbia's motion picture division. He later became the studio's chairman and CEO.

It was on Frank Price's watch at Columbia that the studio made such films as Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), The Blue Lagoon (1980), Gandhi (1982), Tootsie (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), and The Karate Kid (1984). It was in 1983 that Frank Price returned to Universal, where he became the chairman of the MCA Motion Picture Group. While he was there the studio made such films as Back to the Future (1985) and Out of Africa (1985). Unfortunately, the massive critical and box office failure of Howard the Duck (1986) lead to Mr. Price left Universal. It was in 1990 that Sony acquired Columbia Pictures, and Frank Price was asked to return to the studio as its chairman.

In his second time at Columbia, Frank Price greenlit the movies Boyz n the Hood (1991) The Prince of Tides (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and Groundhog Day (1993). In 1991 Frank Price left Columbia and founded his own company, Price Entertainment. He served as a producer on such films as Gladiator (1992), The Walking Dead (1995), Circle of Friends (1995), Getting Away with Murder (1996), and Zeus and Roxanne. He also produced the critically acclaimed TV movie The Tuskegee Airman.

Frank Price later produced Texas Rangers (2001) and Mariette in Ecstasy (2019). Frank Price also served as the chairman of the board of councilors at the USC School of Cinematic Arts from 1992 until 2021.

Frank Price was a remarkable man. While he was not prolific as a television writer, he wrote some of the best episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo and The Tall Man. He produced shows of some quality, including The Tall Man, The Virginian, and Ironside. He certainly knew quality when he saw it. As a studio executive and producer he was responsible for movies from Gandhi to Ghostbusters to Back to the Future to The Tuskegee Airman. He gave both Universal and Columbia considerable success. Both television and movies would certainly be different without him.