Jennings Lang; Produced ‘Airport’ Movies

Jennings Lang, veteran MCA-Universal vice president and producer who pioneered long-form television shows and TV movies, created the Sensurround theater sound system for his film “Earthquake” and produced the “Airport” series of motion pictures, has died. He was 81.

Lang, who was seriously debilitated by a stroke in 1983, died Wednesday of pneumonia at the Manor Care nursing home in Palm Desert, publicist Alan Eichler announced.

The producer’s 1974 “Earthquake” won the Academy Award for best sound as his innovative Sensurround system made theatergoers feel as though they were sitting at the epicenter of a major Southern California temblor.

Like that film, Lang’s series “Airport 1975,” “Airport ‘77” and “The Concorde: Airport ‘79” had all-star casts and recorded major box office success.

A former Hollywood agent, Lang made international headlines in 1951 when he was shot in the groin by film producer Walter Wanger in a Beverly Hills parking lot. Wanger, later convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, said the married Lang was romantically interested in Wanger’s wife, actress Joan Bennett. Lang was Bennett’s agent.

Born in New York and educated at St. John’s University, Lang began his career as an attorney with a firm specializing in motion picture law. He moved to Los Angeles in 1938 and worked as a Thrifty drugstore clerk until he could set up shop as an agent.

Lang joined MCA in 1950 and within two years became vice president of its television division, Revue, which became Universal Studios. He helped create such series as “Wagon Train,” “The Robert Cummings Show,” “Mike Hammer” and “McHale’s Navy.”

Believing in TV shows that lasted 90 minutes to two hours, Lang helped develop “The Virginian,” the first 90-minute regular weekly filmed television series.

He also battled the network in support of such successful anthology shows as “General Electric Theater,” “Chrysler Theater” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”

“The longer we got in television,” Lang told The Times in 1974, “the closer we got to movies.”

He created the concept of the television movie with made-for-television features on Universal’s “World Premiere” films.

Lang also transformed several television series into successful motion pictures, including “Winning” starring Paul Newman and “Coogan’s Bluff” starring Clint Eastwood.

He also produced the Eastwood films “Play Misty for Me,” “High Plains Drifter,” “The Eiger Sanction” and “The Beguiled.”

Lang’s other films included “They Might Be Giants” and “Sometimes a Great Notion” with George C. Scott, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” and “The Great Waldo Pepper” with Robert Redford, and four films with Walter Matthau, “The Front Page,” “Pete ‘n’ Tillie,” “House Calls” and “Little Miss Marker.”

In 1956, Lang married singer Monica Lewis, who appeared in several of his films including “Earthquake” and the 1985 “Stick” with Burt Reynolds and Candice Bergen.

In addition to Lewis, Lang is survived by their son, Rocky; two sons from a previous marriage, Robert and Michael, and three grandchildren.