Debra Martin Chase

Debra Martin Chase (born October 11, 1956) is an American film and television producer.

Her company, Martin Chase Productions, is affiliated with Universal Television, a division of NBCUniversal Television Group.

She earned her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1977 and J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981.

Chase practiced law throughout the 1980s, eventually moving to the film industry when she joined the legal department at Columbia Studios.

In the 1980s, she worked as a legal consultant, a freelance writer, and for the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, nominee of the Democratic Party.

In the late 1980s, Chase became involved with the film business and left Houston for Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles, California.

She was selected for a spot in its executive-training program.

Chase was later promoted to become an executive assistant to Frank Price, the top executive with the studio.

After she worked up the courage to speak to actor Denzel Washington at Columbia studios, he suggested they set up a meeting.

In 1981, Chase took an entry-level associate job with a law firm in Houston.

She realized that law was not the career that she wanted.

She ran Denzel Washington's Mundy Lane Entertainment from 1992 to 1995 and Whitney Houston's Brown House Productions from 1995 to 2000.

Later, Washington hired Chase to run his production company, Mundy Lane Entertainment, where she stayed from 1992 to 1995.

She worked with Washington to executive produce Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, a two-hour documentary on the baseball legend, which aired on the TBS Superstation in April 1995.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy.

It won a Peabody Award, the Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival, and was voted Best Documentary by the National Association of Minorities in Cable.

In an interview with Essence magazine in 1997, she told journalist Audrey Edwards, "I'm the kid who was in the movie theater every Saturday."

Debra adds, "I've been a movie fanatic since I was a child, and my images of the world were shaped by what I saw on the screen. I want to do my part to see that Blacks are not only represented in film but also enhance it."

About first starting out, Chase has said, “I didn’t know the mechanics of how things worked.

So I read books, went to seminars, met with anybody who’d meet with me just to learn information.” Chase met with the general counsel at Columbia Pictures production company through a good friend's sister.

Later she met with and became the executive assistant to Frank Price, chairman of Columbia Pictures.

Chase worked with Price for a year.

After Sony brought Mark Canton in for the top job and Price gained a spot for Chase on the creative staff, before he left the company.(Alexander, George)

Among her favorite directors are Carl Franklin, Steven Soderbergh, and Martin Scorsese.

Chase works to express positive messages through her TV and films.

"It's immensely rewarding to know that you are having a huge impact on the self-image, values and life perspective of kids," she contends.

In an interview with George Alexander, Chase offered advice for aspiring producers, encouraging those who are interested in a film career too.

Chase was one of the executive producers of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, which aired in November 1997 on ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney and stars Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg.

The television musical was watched by more than 60 million viewers.

It was nominated for seven Emmys and won the Emmy in the category of Art Production.

She formed her own company, Martin Chase Productions, in 2000, in California.

It was affiliated with the Walt Disney Company from 2001 to 2016.

She is the first African-American female producer to have a deal at a major studio.

Chase was born in Great Lakes, Illinois, but moved with her family as a child to Pasadena, California.

In 2001, partnering with Disney, Chase produced a movie hit with The Princess Diaries.

Starring Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway, the movie grossed more than $108 million in domestic box office receipts and sold over 17 million video and DVD units.

She also produced The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.

Her work with Princess Diaries was designed to make "Every girl, and the girl in every woman, [wish] that she would wake up one day and find out that she’s a princess."

(Alexander, 497) Chase inspires young girls to believe they have the power to do what they want to do.

"I hated every minute practicing law," she admitted to Essence in 2003.