My Dear Friend Rod Sargent had a famous Father.. Bill Sargent!! Hes Mike Todd and P.T. Barnum rolled into one, Permut said of Sargent in 1986, when he was considering a film about his mentor. I have never met a more flamboyant or brilliant promoter. A self-described concept man, Sargent held about 400 patents on tape heads, distribution amplifiers, electronic camera components and other assorted gadgetry. It never hurt that he also had what another associate called audacity the size of an elephant. Sargent, who burned down the family home trying to repair a radio for his father at age 6, had become a licensed ham radio operator by 9 and taught high school math at 11. He started his career as an electronics expert, making his first six-figure income installing public address systems for schools and hotels. He brought his varied talents to Los Angeles in 1959 and embarked on a charmed two decades of earning millions one month and spending or losing them the next. In the field of electronics, theres nothing mans mind can conceive that technology cant make work, Sargent, a pioneer in using the now-ubiquitous videotape, told The Times in 1979. Among Sargents grandiose, Barnum-like schemes that failed to materialize were a 1976 Beatles reunion paying the group $50 million, a play starring Elvis Presley as Rudolph Valentino at Radio City Music Hall and -- in the aftermath of the film Jaws -- a closed-circuit televised Death Match between a man and a great white shark. Sargent also tried unsuccessfully to block free network televising of the 1978 Super Bowl in favor of profitable pay-per-view showings in movie theaters. But other entertainment ventures he conjured up sizzled with success. In 1962, he introduced pay-per-view television with his Los Angeles-based Home Entertainment Co., predecessor of Subscription Television Inc., and presented a closed-circuit boxing match of Cassius Clay (now Muhammad Ali) versus George Logan in movie theaters around the country. In 1964, Sargent founded Electronovision, using it to videotape Burtons Hamlet on Broadway and transfer the production to film for limited showing in 1,000 theaters. The movie grossed $3 million, nearly a third of that in profit, despite its limited technical quality. The same year, Sargent pioneered the filming of rock concerts with The Teenage Music International Show, or The TAMI Show, featuring such acts as the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, James Brown, the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry and Marvin Gaye. The film is still shown occasionally by such cable companies as MTV.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 08:36:54 +0000