Gerald Rafshoon

Gerald Rafshoon
Gerald Rafshoon
White House Communications Director
	In office; July 1, 1978 – August 14, 1979
President	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	David Gergen (1977)
Succeeded by	Frank Ursomarso (1981)
Personal details
Born	January 11, 1934; New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	University of Texas at Austin (BA)

Gerald Monroe Rafshoon is an American television producer and political operative. He is one of the four founding members of Unity08, and was the White House Communications Director under the presidency of Jimmy Carter (in doing so, Mr. Rafshoon became the first professional advertising executive to join the White House staff), and is a television producer.

In January 2008, Rafshoon and fellow Unity08 co-founder Doug Bailey left that organization to launch a national effort to draft New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for President of the United States as an independent candidate.

Rafshoon has spent over 40 years in various aspects of communications including advertising, publicity, politics and film. His experience includes running a successful advertising agency, serving as White House Communications Director and as Producer and Executive Producer of motion pictures for television and cable.

In 1976, Rafshoon was the architect of the advertising and public relations campaign that helped an unknown Southern Governor and peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, in his drive to become the 39th President of the United States.

Following his White House years, Rafshoon began producing motion pictures and television programs. He is a specialist in international co-productions working closely with the leading television networks and production companies in Europe and filming in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Television productions

He has produced 52 hours of television and cable entertainment for U.S. and international networks. Among them are two Emmy Award winning programs and three Emmy nominees. They include:

Circle of Violence starring Tuesday Weld, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and River Phoenix
The Atlanta Child Murders starring Morgan Freeman, Jason Robards, Rip Torn, Martin Sheen and James Earl Jones
The Nightmare Years starring Sam Waterston, the story of William L. Shirer and the Nazi Germany propaganda machine
Joseph starring Ben Kingsley and Martin Landau . Winner of Emmy for Outstanding MiniSeries. Part of a series of 8 films on the Old Testament for international television. Also including Abraham with Richard Harris, Moses, also starring Ben Kingsley, *Samson and Delilah, Jacob, Solomon, and David.
Running Mates, a political comedy drama starring Tom Selleck, Laura Linney, Faye Dunaway, and Terry Hatcher.
Georgetown, a dramatic series for CBS starring Helen Mirren

He also produced an Emmy-winning documentary series Decisions That Shook the World, about important controversial decisions made by American presidents that defined their character and affected the course of history.

Television work

According to Namebase, Gerald Rafshoon is mentioned in the following books:

Greider's Secrets of the Temple 1989 (47)
Hertsgaard's On Bended Knee 1988 (23, 38-9)
Jones's The Politics of Money 1991 (215)
Kilian & Sawislak's Who Runs Washington? 1982 (56)

gollark: You can, but you die horribly and cannot move.

gollark: In real life, they somewhat are, because there are better incentives to actually use land.

gollark: One would hope that they would actually be used for things.

gollark: Just never let anyone use any of your computing devices ever.

gollark: I already have 7.3 octillion.

External links

Gerald Rafshoon on IMDb
Mr. Rafshoon's White House Exit Interview conducted by David Alsobrook of the Presidential Papers Staff.
Appearances on C-SPAN

References

Political offices
Vacant Title last held by David Gergen	White House Communications Director 1978–1979	Vacant Title next held by Frank Ursomarso

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.