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Martin Poll was an American film and television producer. Poll produced eleven feature films during his career, including The Lion in Winter, for which he received a 1968 Academy Award nomination for Academy Award for Best Picture. The Lion in Winter, which starred Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, received nine nominations and won three Academy Awards. It also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama.
Poll was born on November 24, 1922, in New York City. Poll launched his production career in 1954, when he produced thirty-nine episodes of the televisions series, Flash Gordon, for distribution in West Germany and France.
Poll purchased and restored the Biograph Studios, a studio facility and film laboratory complex in the Bronx, during the 1950s. He reopened the studios in 1956 under a new name, Gold Medal Studios. The reopening made the Bronx-based facility the largest film studio in the United States located outside of Los Angeles at the time. Poll helped create numerous films at Gold Medal Studios, including A Face in the Crowd in 1957, The Goddess in 1958, The Fugitive Kind in 1959, Middle of the Night in 1959, and BUtterfield 8 in 1960. Poll was appointed the Commissioner of Motion Picture Arts of New York City in 1959 for his work with Gold Medal Studios. The New York City government soon established its own film commission shortly after Poll's appointment. Poll sold Gold Medal Studios during the early 1960s to focus on film production.
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