Italian
Victoria Preminger, daughter of director Otto Preminger, died Feb. 7 in Studio City, Calif. following a fall at home. She was 63.
Her mother was actress Hope Bryce Preminger and her uncle was film producer Ingo Preminger, the literary agent who represented clients such as Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, who were both blacklisted throughout the McCarthy period.
Born in New York in 1960, Preminger studied at the Lycée Français de New York and later graduated with honors from Smith College. During her undergraduate career, she starred in a number of television soap operas as well as the 1988 feature “Spike of Bensonhurst,” which was directed by Paul Morrissey.
Four years later, she graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law. She spent the following six years producing audiobooks in Beverly Hills, Calif. for Dove Audio, one of the premier audio book companies nationally. She went on to produce, edit and lead celebrities including Glenda Jackson, Joanne Woodward, Ben Kingsley and Audrey Hepburn in their readings of classic novels like “Madame Bovary,” “Little Women,” “Tarzan” and “The Enchanted Tales.” Her work with Hepburn earned the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word and her work with Carl Reiner on Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper” earned a nomination for the Best Spoken Word Album for Children Grammy Award.
Popular on Variety In addition to audio book production, Preminger also penned six children’s books for Dove Books’s print division. Among her literary works are “Barkley Unleashed: A Pirate’s Tail” and “The Adventures of Woodrow the Woodchuck.”
Preminger eventually left Dove Audio and joined Rysher/Spelling Entertainment, where she used her legal background to oversee domestic television rights. She produced the 2009 film “The Northern Kingdom” and the the TV series “Crowned in a Far Country.”
Following her time at Rysher/Spelling Entertainment, Preminger served as the vice president of business and legal affairs at NBC Universal.
Preminger was involved in equestrianism throughout much of her life, winning many awards for riding in horse shows and jumping events in the Hunter Division. She is survived by her brother Dr. Mark Preminger, as well as by her half-brother Erik Lee Preminger, the son of actress Gypsy Rose Lee.
