Bill Clinton campaign expert dies at 86

The Hollywood producer and longtime Democratic insider who acted as a “forward guy” who “loved his work with President Clinton” has died at 86.

With a career in Tinseltown dating back to the 1960s, he had assisted in the making of several James Bond films for United Artists before becoming a producer on such films as 'Smokey and the Bandit' and “The Big Easy,” Mort Engelberg's film industry. the race was marked by politics.

On Saturday, the man who worked to help then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton get into and stay in the White House was said to have died “in Los Angeles of natural causes. He was 86 years old,” detail The Hollywood Reporter.

Helaine Blatt, whom he married in 2016 after 26 years of marriage, remembered her late husband as she he said outlet, “He was a wonderful person, a wonderful husband. He loved the movie business and he loved his work with President Clinton. He told the best stories of anyone I've ever met, the best jokes.”

Mort Engelberg, producer of the films Smokey And The Bandit and The Big Easy, has died. Engelberg was 85 and died with his wife, Helaine Blatt, a successful high-end jewelry broker herself. pic.twitter.com/5jho93j4lw

— Sumner (@renmusb1) December 11, 2023

“He traveled a lot with Clinton; loved that man,” Blatt said of Engelberg's ongoing work with the president after the White House. “He always volunteered. He always said: 'They can't fire me'”.

According to the Reporter, the producer had gotten into politics through the Peace Corps when he landed a job working for newly minted organizing director Sargent Shriver who went on to work for the president's Office of Economic Opportunity Lyndon B. Johnson.

Budget cuts induced by the Vietnam War pushed Engelberg out of Washington, DC and eventually into Hollywood, but he didn't stay away as he would return in 1984 for his first stint as a front-runner for the presidential campaign by Walter Mondale.

His duties for that unsuccessful effort and that of Michael Dukakis in 1988 included scouting campaign stops in advance and building large crowds, a practice he found successful for both of Clinton's presidential campaigns after organizing a famous bus tour that took him and his running mate. , then Tennessee Senator Al Gore, in numerous states.

“Advanced work is really like plumbing, and I'm just a small cog in this big, big operation,” he said. he said the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “What's important is the candidate and what he's saying.”

When he left Hollywood for politics, Engelberg had said, “For one thing, it's not entirely altruistic. LA is a one-industry town, and here it's all 'how did your picture go' or 'how did go take your friend's picture” or “will you make this deal or that deal?” You have a constituent in the movie business and that's yourself. Whereas in politics—and I know this sounds pretentious—but politics is about something. Choosing the next president is a pretty big deal.”

Although his last film was “There Goes the Neighborhood” in 1992, Blatt explained how he would never call himself retired: “I would say I was a producer.”

Staff writer

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College, where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and seeker of truth, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and dog, and when he's not researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel ·the.

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