Polly Anthony
American music industry executive (1953–2013)
Mary Kathryn "Polly" Anthony (1953–2013) was an American music industry executive. One of the first women to head a major record label, she was the president of Epic Records from 1997 until 2003.
Early life
Anthony was born in Alexandria, Virginia to Patrice H. and Bernard J. Anthony, an aerospace executive. She and her family moved to Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California in 1963. In 1965, she saw The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, a concert that "pointed the way to the road her life would take."
Career
Anthony began her career in the music industry at RCA Records. She worked briefly at an artist management company and in 1978 was hired as an assistant to the head of promotion at Epic Associated Labels. She "assiduously worked her way up the ladder," and in 1988 moved to New York to become
the senior vice president of promotion at Epic. In 1993 Anthony became the president of 550 Music, an Epic imprint, and in 1997 she was appointed president of Epic Records. Over the course of her career at Epic, she worked with artists including Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine.
In 2003 Anthony returned to California as the president of DreamWorks Records; after a corporate reorganization, she was named co-president of Geffen Records.
The public source identifies “Polly Anthony” as american music industry executive (1953–2013). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Polly, Anthony and American.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q35160407. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2013, 1997 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Polly Anthony” 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.