Biography

In 2008, TV Week quoted David Howe, then president of the Sci Fi Channel, about the irrepressible Halmi, then 84. "He never switches off. He is on 24/7. I don't think he sleeps," Howe said. "He lives for reading books and figuring out what his next project is, and he's got the rights to books and comic books that I've never heard of. He really is a guru on some of this stuff, and he's very passionate about the genre and very committed to telling great stories through this genre.".

Co-founded "Robert Halmi, Inc.," their family production company, with his son, Robert A. Halmi, in 1979. They renamed the company "RHI Entertainment," before selling the company to Hallmark Cards in 1994, who renamed it again, as "Hallmark Entertainment." The Halmi's, Jr. and Sr., bought the company back from Hallmark in 2006, before filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2010. Halmi Sr. left the family company in 2012 to found another production company, this one named simply "Halmi Co.".

He was twice imprisoned and sentenced to death, first by the Nazis as a Hungarian Partisan during World War II, and secondly after the war by the Soviet Russians due to spying for his soon to be adopted country, the United States, specifically for the agency which later became the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under the legendary Wild Bill Donovan.

Executive producer of two television versions of "A Christmas Carol." The first, A Christmas Carol (1999) starred Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge. The second was a musical version, A Christmas Carol: The Musical (2004): The Musical, with Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge.

He was a 1946 graduate of Budapest University, with a degree in economics.