Martin Bregman

Martin Bregman, the outspoken, notoriously tenacious film producer behind “Scarface,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico” and other late-20th-century crime dramas, died on Saturday. He was 92. The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage, his wife, Cornelia, told he New York television station WNBC. The first film Mr. Bergman ever produced was Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico” (1973), the true story of a New York City cop who blew the whistle on police corruption and paid for it dearly. The film was also the beginning of a new kind of relationship with its star, Al Pacino, a former client who was then 33 and fresh from “The Godfather.” The pair and Mr. Lumet followed that with the offbeat bank-robbery drama “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975). Their next collaboration, on Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” (1983), was the story of a violent Cuban-American drug lord in Miami whose line “Say hello to my little friend” (referring to his sizable automatic weapon) entered film immortality. That film’s premise was mirrored by “Carlito’s Way” (1993), also directed by Mr. De Palma, with Mr. Pacino as a Puerto Rican criminal trying to go straight. In between, Mr. Bregman and Mr. Pacino did “Sea of Love” (1989), a crime drama about a homicide detective and a serial killer. Martin Leon Bregman was born in the Bronx on May 18, 1926, the son of Leon and Ida (Granowski) Bregman. He had polio as a child but recovered and attended Indiana University and New York University. As a young man, he worked as an insurance salesman and made his entry into the entertainment industry with a job as a nightclub agent. A contact with the real estate magnate Lewis Rudin helped him become a personal manager for stars including Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Bette Midler and Faye Dunaway. He signed Mr. Pacino in 1968 after seeing him in the Off Broadway play “The Indian Wants the Bronx” and continued to represent him for years. By the time Mr. Bregman produced his first film, it seemed like a midlife career change. He was 47.