Kenneth Utt (July 13, 1921 – January 19, 1994), was an American film producer and unit production manager. He received the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Life and career

Utt was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 13, 1921. He graduated from Elon College (now Elon University) in Elon, N.C. in 1942. He received a scholarship to Juilliard School where he studied vocals in hopes of becoming an opera singer. Utt served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. He returned home and became a stage and radio actor, appearing in shows like Carousel.

Utt began working in production on stage performances of Peter Pan, the lesser known 1950 Broadway version with music by Leonard Bernstein.^[1] He then became a film line producer for films like Midnight Cowboy (1969), The French Connection (1971), The Seven-Ups (1973) and All That Jazz (1979). Utt was a producer and unit production manager on four Jonathan Demme films: Something Wild (1986), Married to the Mob (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993), with Lambs and Philadelphia earning awards at the Oscars. Utt was among the three producers who received Best Picture for Lambs, in which he also made a cameo appearance.

Death

Utt died on January 19, 1994, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 72. The cause was bone cancer.^[2] He is survived by his wife Angie, son Tim Utt, and daughter Robin Utt Fajardo.

Filmography

He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

References

External links

• Kenneth Utt at IMDb
• Kenneth Utt at the Internet Broadway Database