The Most Famous
PRODUCERS from Ukraine
Top 3
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Ukrainian Producers of all time. This list of famous Ukrainian Producers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Louis B. Mayer (1884 - 1957)
With an HPI of 59.07, Louis B. Mayer is the most famous Ukrainian Producer. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.
Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1884 – October 29, 1957) was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industry's most prestigious movie studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors, and stars in Hollywood. Mayer was born in the Russian Empire and grew up poor in Saint John, New Brunswick. He quit school at 12 to support his family and later moved to Boston and purchased and renovated a small vaudeville theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He renovated and expanded several other theatres in the Boston area catering to audiences of higher social classes. After expanding and moving to Los Angeles, he teamed with film producer Irving Thalberg and they developed hundreds of films. Mayer handled the business of running the studio, such as setting budgets and approving new productions, while Thalberg, still in his twenties, supervised all MGM productions. Mayer claimed to believe in "wholesome entertainment" and went to great lengths to discover new actors and develop them into major stars. During his long reign at MGM, Mayer acquired many critics and supporters. Some stars did not appreciate his attempts to control their private lives, while others saw him as a concerned father figure. He was controversial for his treatment of the actors under his management, demanding compliance from female stars by threatening their livelihoods, such as in the case of Judy Garland, whom he forced to go on diets, take drugs, and work punishing schedules. Mayer was forced to resign as MGM's vice president in 1951, when the studio's parent company, Loew's, Inc., wanted to improve declining profits. A staunch conservative, Mayer at one time was the chairman of the California Republican Party. In 1927, he was one of the founders of AMPAS, famous for its annual Academy Awards.
2. Sam Zimbalist (1905 - 1958)
With an HPI of 45.07, Sam Zimbalist is the 2nd most famous Ukrainian Producer. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Sam Zimbalist (March 31, 1901 – November 4, 1958) was a Russian-born American film producer and film editor.
3. Elena Andreicheva (b. 2000)
With an HPI of 18.97, Elena Andreicheva is the 3rd most famous Ukrainian Producer. Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Elena Andreicheva is a Ukrainian-born producer and filmmaker. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 11, and later studied physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a Bachelor of Science and then a Masters in Science Communication. She worked in TV film production beginning in 2006. She is the producer of the 2019 documentary film Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl), for which she and Carol Dysinger won the (Oscar) Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 92nd Academy Awards. Her Oscar outfit was made sustainably and she related that to her work "dealing with inequality and injustice". She spoke at the Athens Science Festival in 2021 on how documentary film can help people understand science and technology. She was assistant director to Rebecca Marshall on a documentary titled The Forest in Me. The film was shot in Siberia and followed seventy-year old Agafia Lykova, a woman living a two weeks walk away from the nearest person, virtually a recluse from the Stalin era. She also helped fact check for Nick Rosen's book How to Live Off-Grid. On winning the Oscar, Andreicheva became the first female winner of Ukrainian origin since the country gained independence.
People
Pantheon has 3 people classified as Ukrainian producers born between 1884 and 2000. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Ukrainian producers include Elena Andreicheva. The most famous deceased Ukrainian producers include Louis B. Mayer, and Sam Zimbalist. As of April 2024, 1 new Ukrainian producers have been added to Pantheon including Elena Andreicheva.
