Pandro Samuel Berman (28 March 1905 - 13 July 1996), known as Pandro S. Berman, was an Academy Award-winning American film producer.

His father Henry was general manager of Universal Pictures during Hollywood's formative years. The younger Berman (Pan to his friends) spent most of the 1920s as an assistant director, learning the business from such masters as Mal St. Clair and Tod Browning.

In 1930, Berman was hired as a film editor at fledgling RKO Radio Pictures, then became an assistant producer. When RKO supervising producer William LeBaron walked out during production of the ill-fated The Gay Diplomat (1931), Berman took over LeBaron's responsibilities, remaining in the driver's seat until 1939. He managed to survive David O. Selznick’s general firing of most of the staff, the independent producer recognising something in Berman that warranted making him his assistant.

During the Berman regime, the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals hit their peak, Katharine Hepburn rose to prominence, and such RKO classics as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Gunga Din” (both 1939) came to fruition. Berman was willing to give creative people plenty of elbow room, but there were limits; having been coaxed by Katharine Hepburn and director George Cukor to push through production of the 1936 film “Sylvia Scarlett”, Berman reacted to the poor audience response to that film (the worst in RKO's history) by telling Hepburn and Cukor that he never wanted to see their faces again!

Upset when an RKO power-play diminished his authority, Berman left for MGM in 1940, where he oversaw such productions as “Ziegfeld Girl” (1941), “National Velvet” (1944), “father of the Bride” (1950), “Blackboard Jungle” (1955) and “BUtterfield 8” (1960). He survived several executive shake-ups at MGM and remained there until 1963, then went into independent production, closing out his career with the unsuccessful “Move” (1970).

The winner of the 1976 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (Berman was considered to be RKO’s equivalent of Thalberg during the 30s), Pandro S. Berman became a sort of guru to film historians in his twilight years, providing crystal-clear insights into the day-to-day operations of the old Hollywood Studio System.

Berman died of congestive heart failure on July 13, 1996 in his Beverly Hills home; he was 91.

Six of his films were unsuccessfully nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture: The Gay Divorcee (1934), Alice Adams and Top Hat (both 1935), Stage Door (1937), Father of the Bride (1950), and Ivanhoe (1950).

Pandro S. Berman was born into the film industry. His father, Harry, was distributor and exhibitor of films. Pandro also had a number of relatives in the film industry. When he started working in the 1920's he started as a script clerk and then rose to film editor. By 1931, the 26 year old Berman was an assistant director at RKO when Selznick took over the floundering studio. Selznick fired many people at RKO, but he saw something in Berman and made him his assistant. Pandro was a success and brought to the screen many stars and great films. It was he who paired Rogers with Astaire; and made Katherine Hepburn a star. He was considered to be the Irving Thalberg of RKO and produced many prestige pictures over the years. In 1940, after a power struggle, he moved to Culver City and MGM where he continued to produce well received movies. He survived many of the purges and finally left MGM for independant work in 1963. His final film was 'MOVE' made in 1970. In 1977, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards.

Pandro S. Berman was born on March 28, 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a future movie industry executive Harry M. Berman. By the time he retired in 1970, he had produced over 100 movies, including six Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, and helped develop or revive the careers of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor and Lana Turner. Berman entered the movie industry at the age of 18 after graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City, apprenticing at Unversal Studios, where his father was general manager. He learned the craft of motion pictures by working as an assistant director to such top directors as Tod Browning. After his apprenticeship at Universal in the 1920s, he moved on to become the chief film editor at the Film Booking Office (FBO), which was bought by Joseph P. Kennedy in 1925 and later merged with his Keith-Orpheum theater chain to form the nucleus of the new major studio R.K.O.-Radio Pictures in 1929. (The studio acquired sound technology from David Sarnoff's Radio Corp. Of America, necessary to produce talkies.) He began working at R.K.O. as an assistant to producers William LeBaron and 'Charles R Rogers', and later David O. Selznick, whom he would eventually replace as the studio's resident "Boy Genius." In 1931, Berman produced his first film at R.K.O., the gangster movie "Bad Company" (1931). Berman succeeded Selznick as RKO's most important producer on the lot, producing Katharine Hepburn's third film, "Morning Glory" (1933), which won her her first Best Actress Academy Award. In all, Berman would produced 14 films with Hepburn. He also projected a Warner's contract play to stardom when he borrowed `Bette Davis' for "Of Human Bondage" (1934). That same year, he won his first Best Picture Oscar nod with "The Gay Divorcee", the first of eight Astaire-Rogers vehicles he would produce at R.K.O. Another Astaire-Rogers musical, "Top Hat" (1935), received a Best Picture nod the following year, as did the Hepburn movie "Alice Adams"). Berman was adept at balancing lush production values with the exigencies of the narrative drive. In 1937, he was promoted chief of all studio production at R.K.O.., from which post he signed a distribution agreement with Walt Disney for its features beginning with the smash hit "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). He teamed Hepburn and Rogers in "Stage Door" (1937), which won him his fourth Best Picture Oscar nomination. R.K.O. had been a money-making operation for Joe Kennedy, who bailed out soon after putting the studio together. The studio never had a true studio boss like Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Jack L. Warner at Warner Bros., or 'Harry Cohn' at Columbia. The ownership of the studio changed hands many times, and Berman was often cut out of the decision-making loop even though he was studio boss, something that would be unheard of at the other majors. In 1940, he accepted Louis B. Mayer's offer to become one of the producers that were part of his "college of cardinals". He would remain in Culver City for 25 years, where his professionalism thrived in what was considered the world's premier studio, with with enormous capital in terms of both finance and the human beings who made and starred in the films During most of his career at M.G.M., Berman produced A-list star vehicles, including prestigious literary adaptations and period pictures like had produced at R.K.O. He produced five pictures starring Lana Turner, including his first M.G.M. production, the lavish "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941), which boosted Turner's star farther into the heaven's. He also played a key role in the development of Elizabeth Taylor's career, including "National Velvet" (1944) and her crossover to adult roles with "Father of the Bride" (1950), which netted him his fifth Best Picture nomination. (A pre-"Le scandale" Liz won her first Best Actress first Oscar in the soap-opera "Butterfield 8" (1960, which he produced.) Berman's "The Three Musketeers" (1948) opened up a new era of swashbucklers at M.G.M., which gave Robert Taylor career a great boost, starring in such Berman-produced action adventure flicks as "Ivanhoe" (1952), which co-starred Liz Taylor and brought Berman his sixth and last Oscar nod for Best Picture. Berman made Stewart Granger a star in the action adventure genre with such movies as "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1952). Berman also produced two seminal "rock n' roll-era films, "The Blackboard Jungle" (1955), a social drama about juvenile delinquency, and the Elvis Presley bombshell "Jailhouse Rock" (1957), the film that launched the King of Rock n' Roll's career in motion picture star. By the 1960s, Berman was producing prestigious pictures on a smaller scale, such as an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) and "A Patch of Blue" (1965). 1965 'Ed Begley' and Shelly Winters won best supporting actor Oscars for "Bird" and "Blue", respectively. Berman left M.G.M.in 1965, and eventually signed on with 20th Century-Fox in two years later, but he was not a success at his new studio. He produced George Cukor's film "Justine" (1969), and though they had worked together on and off for 27 years, the movie was a critical and box office failure. Berman's last production was a minor comedy starring Elliott Gould, "Move" (1970), after which he retired When he was young executive at R.K.O., he was often compared to M.G.M.'s resident boy genius, Irving Thalberg. In 1977, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awarded Berman with the highest award possible for a producer, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. Pandro S. Berman died on July 13, 1996. He was 91 years old.