Died February 18, 2011. Born November 7, 1914.

Walter Seltzer, a Hollywood press agent-turned-producer who started out at MGM in the 1930s and made an enduring mark on the industry in the 1980s as a tenacious fundraiser for the Motion Picture and Television Fund, has died. He was 96.

His successful ad campaign for MGM's "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) helped him land a job in the studio's publicity department, where employees alternated giving stories to the gossip columnists of the day — Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons — and were told how to mark their Oscar ballots, Seltzer later recalled.

By the late 1950s, Seltzer was helping to run Marlon Brando's production company and in the 1960s began making a series of movies with his close friend, actor Charlton Heston. The films included the 1970s science-fiction thrillers "Soylent Green" and "The Omega Man."

Seltzer died Friday of an age-related illness at the Motion Picture and Television Fund's retirement home in Woodland Hills, said Jennifer Fagen, a spokeswoman for the fund.