Dawn Steel (August 19, 1946 – December 20, 1997) was one of the first women to run a major Hollywood film studio. She was born as Dawn Spielberg (no relation to Steven Spielberg) in New York City and raised in the suburb Great Neck, Long Island. Her father changed the family name.
Dawn Steel attended New York University but did not graduate. She became merchandising director for Penthouse Magazine. In 1975 she founded her own company that produce...
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Dawn Steel (August 19, 1946 – December 20, 1997) was one of the first women to run a major Hollywood film studio. She was born as Dawn Spielberg (no relation to Steven Spielberg) in New York City and raised in the suburb Great Neck, Long Island. Her father changed the family name.
Dawn Steel attended New York University but did not graduate. She became merchandising director for Penthouse Magazine. In 1975 she founded her own company that produced novelty items such as designer logo toilet paper. In 1978 she went to work for Paramount Pictures where she planned marketing tie-ins for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and was responsible for the making of Fatal Attraction and Flashdance, amongst others. She became vice president of production in 1980 and production chief in 1985. Steel was the second woman to head a major film production department (the first being Sherry Lansing at Twentieth-Century Fox and the third being Nina Jacobson at Buena Vista).
Her production credits from that era...
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