Jonathan Taplin
American film producer
Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American writer, film producer and scholar. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and has lived in Los Angeles since 1973. Taplin graduated from Princeton University in 1969 and is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Taplin is chairman of the Board of the Americana Music Foundation. He currently writes for Rolling Stone magazine.
Taplin's early production work included producing concerts for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973, he produced Martin Scorsese's first major feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for the Public Broadcasting Service) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until the End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and chosen for the Cannes Film Festival six times.
Early career
Taplin began working as a part-time tour manager on weekends and school breaks for Albert Grossman Management in the summer of 1965.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jonathan Taplin” is american film producer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jonathan, Taplin and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american film producer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15440196. VIAF identifies the subject as 94066833. The Library of Congress control number is no97010725. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1973, 1969 and 1974.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Jonathan Taplin”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Jonathan Taplin primary sources, Jonathan Taplin archive and Jonathan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jonathan Taplin”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Jonathan Taplin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.