Jack Valenti, a Hollywood pioneer, a highly decorated WWII bomber pilot, a former White House aide to President Lyndon Johnson, a film industry lobbyist and the one man crusader who instituted the modern movie ratings system is dead at 85 from complications of a stroke he suffered nearly a month ago.

Valenti was also responsible for guiding the entertainment industry away from it’s late 1920’s to early 1960’s censorship era to something that is now taken for granted — MPAA Ratings and the digital age.

After leaving Washington politics, at the behest of Hollywood giants Lew Wasserman and Arthure Krim, Valenti moved to tinsel town in the mid 1960’s to do battle against the censorship system that had held sway over the industry for nearly four decades.

He eventually became president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) where he abolished the old Hays Code for the movie ratings system that still is in play today. Some have argued that Valenti’s System, as it was first called” was just as restrictive as the Hays Code but just tied with a colorful bow, while others hailed it as the first step to return of freedom of expression that the industry had before Hays. That same debate continues to rage on today, but will probably remain Valenti’s greatest achievement.

Valenti was once quoted as saying that if he had not introduced the ratings system when he did, the country would face a labyrinth of local censorship boards with conflicting standards throughout.

“While I believe that every director, studio has the right to make the movies they want to make, everybody else has a right not to watch it,” Valenti told The Associated Press shortly before his retirement in 2004. “All we do is give advance cautionary warnings and say this is what we think is in this movie.”

Dan Glickman, his successor at the MPAA, said Thursday that Valenti embodied the “theatricality” of the industry.

“Jack was a showman, a gentleman, an orator, and a passionate champion of this country, its movies, and the enduring freedoms that made both so important to this world,” continued Glickman in an official press release.

Valenti, due to his years in Washington and also his lobbyist activities on behalf of the industry he loved, was not only very familiar with members from both sides of the political aisle, but was also comfortable with such diametrically opposing political forces from the left and right. He could rub shoulders and share a laugh with a Teddy Kennedy, then turn in his chair and hobnob with a Jesse Helms and be on equal footing and favor with both. This interpersonal quality allowed him to get far in moving his entertainment agenda through legal and political obstacles. Without a doubt Valenti and entertainment were made for each other, he was a natural showman.

When VHS, DVD’s and the internet burst on the scene he continued pushing the boundries in the continuing battle against video piracy, getting countries not friendly with the U.S. to allow American film exports into their borders and becoming a very recognizable international goodwill Ambassador for the American film industry.

Under Valenti’s watchful eye and keen sense of direction and purpose, since the 1960’s the entertainment industry in the United States grew to unprecedented levels with no decline yet visible on its horizon.

Just a year in a half ago, Jack Valenti probably summed up his life best when he said, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world, because I spent my entire public working career in two of life’s classic fascinations, politics and Hollywood. “You can’t beat that!”