Allison Shearmur, 54

Before Allison Ivy Brecker was Allison Shearmur and left the Five Towns for Hollywood, she was famous. As the third of the “Brecker Quads” quadruplets born to Woodmere residents Martin and Rhoda Brecker, she and her siblings, Lisa, John and Jodi, were in several television commercials and print ads for Beech-Nut baby food.

Shearmur, a movie producer, died on Jan. 18 from lung cancer. She was 54.
The four children were born on Oct. 23, 1963 in Manhattan. Martin was a lawyer and Rhoda, a schoolteacher. It was a traditional Jewish household, and Shearmur addressed trying to please her father, while seeking her dream when she spoke at the University of Pennsylvania’s Media and Entertainment Week in 2012. Madeline McCallum reported on Shearmur’s appearance for UPENN NEWS.

“If you want to have a career in film or TV, you will have to move to Los Angeles,” Shearmur said. McCallum wrote: “In an attempt to simultaneously please her traditional Jewish father and follow her dreams, Allison attended law school at USC (passing up an acceptance to Columbia that she conveniently ‘forgot’ to tell her father about). This maneuver ended up being ‘one of the best decisions of her life.’ ‘It’s not who you work with, it’s who you’re next to,’ she explained. ‘It’s the people in the mail room with you, not who you work for.’ In fact, Allison said it was the ‘extra special superpower’ of persistence that she gained from law school that eventually got her the rights to “The Bourne Identity.”

Shearmur graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, attended its law school and the USC Gould School of Law. She became a member of the bar in California. Her first job in the movie industry was as an assistant at Columbia TriStar.

She was a vice president at Disney from 1994 to 1997, then became an executive vice president at Universal, a co-president of production at Paramount and in 2008, president of motion picture production at Lionsgate. Three years later, Shearmur and several other top executives were fired. She formed her own company, Allison Shearmur Productions.

Among the other movies she is known for include: “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2” (2015),” The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (2013) and “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1” (2014). Her work also included the “American Pie” movies, the live-action remake of “Cinderella”(2015) and the Star Wars anthology films “Rogue One” (2016) and “Solo” (scheduled for a May 25 release).

She was married to Ed Shearmur and had two children. A house they owned was featured in “House Beautiful” in 2014.

The New York Times obituary caught Julie Laura Rose’s eye. She posted on Facebook. “I didn’t know her or her family, just was reading her obit, which was the story of an interesting, nice, accomplished woman, and got to the word “Woodmere” had to share it here, especially for people who knew her, but also for those of us who didn’t. Seems like a big hole in the world now, that she filled.”

Marcy Gold Futernick had a connection with the quadruplets. “OMG, they went to Norwood Day Camp with me. I was older, but I was absolutely fascinated by them. They were adorable! I'm so sorry to hear such terrible news,” she posted on Facebook.