Film lobbyist, ex-LBJ aide Valenti dies

LOS ANGELES – Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85.

Valenti had a stroke in March and was hospitalized for several weeks at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore. He died of complications from the stroke at his Washington, D.C., home, said Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Valenti was a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson when he was lured to Hollywood in 1966 by movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim.

As president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti abolished the industry’s restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today’s letter-based ratings system.

Valenti’s Washington career was born from tragedy. Valenti was riding in the presidential motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Hurried aboard Air Force One for Johnson’s historic flight back to Washington, Valenti was instantly drafted as a special assistant to the new president.