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Born 1 July 1934, Lafayette, Indiana · raised in South Bend · died 26 May 2008
The tie: Sydney Pollack was born in Lafayette and raised in South Bend, graduating from a South Bend high school in 1952 — Washington High School in the standard accounts — before leaving for New York at seventeen to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner. His full profile, acting apprenticeship, and directing career are carried in the people and producers records of this history; what belongs here is his standing in comedy, which rests on one film.
The record: Tootsie (1982) was directed and produced by Pollack and acted in by him besides — Dustin Hoffman pushed him into the role of the agent George Fields, and the film's comedy runs on the two of them as much as on the disguise at its center. The film took ten Academy Award nominations, including Pollack's own nomination for Best Director. Its settled standing in the form is a matter of a published list: the American Film Institute's 100 Years… 100 Laughs (2000), the institute's own ranking of American screen comedy, places Tootsie second, behind only Some Like It Hot. That is the rank as the AFI's own page carries it, checked for this record in November 2026; a recent claim in a reference summary that the institute reorganized the list in 2026 is not corroborated by the institute's own site and is not printed as fact anywhere in this history.
Sources
- American Film Institute, 100 Years… 100 Laughs (2000) — Tootsie ranked second; the institute's own list, consulted November 2026.
- The Pollack record in this history — the South Bend raising, the 1952 graduation, the Neighborhood Playhouse years, the George Fields casting at Hoffman's insistence, the ten nominations.