After earning an M.B.A. from
Harvard University in 1948, Valenti worked for
Humble Oil in its advertising department, where he helped the company's Texas gas stations jump from fifth to first in sales through a "cleanest restrooms" campaign. In 1952, he and a partner named Weldon Weekley founded the advertising agency Weekley & Valenti, with oil company
Conoco as its first client. In 1956, Valenti met then Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon B. Johnson. Weekley & Valenti branched out into political consulting and added Representative
Albert Thomas, a Johnson ally, as a client. In 1960, Valenti's firm assisted in the
Kennedy-Johnson presidential campaign.
Politics . Valenti served as liaison with the news media during President
John F. Kennedy and Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson's November 22, 1963, visit to
Dallas, Texas, and Valenti was in the presidential motorcade. Following the
assassination of President Kennedy, Valenti was present at Johnson's swearing-in aboard
Air Force One, and flew with him to Washington. He then became the first "special assistant" to Johnson's
White House and lived there for the first two months of Johnson's presidency. In 1964, Johnson gave Valenti the responsibility to handle relations with the Republican Congressional leadership, particularly
Gerald Ford and
Charles A. Halleck from the
House of Representatives, and the
Senate's
Everett Dirksen. Valenti later called Johnson "the most single dominating human being that I've ever been in contact with" and "the single most intelligent man I've ever known". In a speech before the
American Advertising Federation in 1965, Valenti said: "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president." Valenti later criticized film director
Oliver Stone for the 1991 film
JFK. He called the film a "monstrous charade" and said, "I owe where I am today to Lyndon Johnson. I could not live with myself if I stood by mutely and let some filmmaker soil his memory."
MPAA In 1966, Valenti, at the insistence of
Universal Studios chief
Lew Wasserman and with Johnson's consent, resigned his White House commission and became president of the
Motion Picture Association of America. With Valenti's arrival in Hollywood, the pair were lifelong allies, and together orchestrated and controlled how Hollywood would conduct business for the next several decades.
William F. Patry, a copyright attorney for the
Bill Clinton administration, who observed Valenti firsthand says: His personal passion and extreme comfort around politicians gave him credibility that others ... would lack. Mr Valenti was a consummate salesman, who like all great salesmen ... worked himself up into believing the truth of his clients' message. Those privileged to see Mr Valenti offstage – talking openly with his clients about what could or could not be achieved, and what artifice would or would not work – are aware that Mr Valenti's clients frequently disagreed with his advice and directed him to deliver a different message through a different artifice. [He] was a great actor working on the stage of Washington DC (and sometimes globally) on behalf of an industry that appreciated his craft, but that never let him forget that the message was theirs and not his.
Movie rating system In 1968, Valenti developed the
MPAA film rating system, which initially comprised four distinct ratings: G, M,
R and
X. The M rating was soon replaced by GP, and changed to PG in 1972. The X rating immediately proved troublesome, since it was not trademarked and therefore used freely by the pornographic film industry, with which it became most associated. Mainstream films such as
Midnight Cowboy and
A Clockwork Orange were assumed by the public to be pornographic because they carried the X rating. In 1990, the trademarked "adults only"
NC-17 rating was introduced as a replacement for the non-trademarked X-rating. The PG-13 rating was added in 1984 to provide a greater range of distinction for audiences and was first proposed by
Steven Spielberg.
Valenti on new technologies During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Valenti became notorious for his flamboyant attacks on the
Sony Betamax Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), which the MPAA feared would devastate the film industry. He famously told a
congressional panel in 1982, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the
Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." Despite Valenti's prediction, the
home video market became a mainstay of film studio revenues throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act In 1998, Valenti lobbied for the controversial
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, arguing that
copyright infringement via the Internet would severely damage the record and film industries.
2003 screener ban injunction In 2003, Valenti found himself at the center of the so-called
screener debate, as the MPAA barred studios and many independent producers from sending screener copies of their films to critics and voters in various awards shows. Under mounting industry pressure and a court
injunction ''
Antidote Int'l Films Inc. et al. v MPAA'' (November 2003), Valenti backed down in 2004, narrowly avoiding a massive and embarrassing
antitrust lawsuit against the MPAA. The Coalition of Independent Filmmakers'
Jeff Levy-Hinte, IFP/Los Angeles executive director Dawn Hudson and IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd said in a joint statement, "By obtaining a court order to force the MPAA to lift the screener ban last December, the Coalition enabled individual distributors to determine when and in what manner to distribute promotional screeners." It was viewed as Valenti's greatest professional loss.
Honors Valenti received the
Distinguished Flying Cross and
Air Medal for his service with the
Army Air Force during the
Second World War. In 1969, Jack Valenti received the
Bronze Medallion, New York City's highest civilian honor. In 1985, Jack Valenti received the French
Légion d'Honneur. In 2002, the University of Houston bestowed Valenti an honorary doctorate. In December 2003, Valenti received the "Legend in Leadership Award" from the Chief Executive Leadership Institute of the
Yale School of Management. In June 2005, the Washington DC headquarters of the Motion Picture Association of America, was renamed the Jack Valenti Building. It is located at 888 16th St. NW, Washington DC, very close to the White House. Jack Valenti maintained an office on the 8th floor, outside the MPAA's space, until his death. In April 2008, the University of Houston renamed its School of Communication to the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication in his honor. Valenti was one of the school's notable alumni. ==Retirement==