An influential manager of comic talent, Charles Joffe was, in partnership with Jack Rollins, the producer of almost all of Woody Allen’s films, most notably Annie Hall, which beat Star Wars to the Best Picture Oscar in 1977. In addition Joffe and Rollins fostered the careers of Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and had been among the first to promote Lenny Bruce. The actor Robin Williams good-naturedly called the cigar-brandishing Joffe “the Beast” in tribute to his tenacity in wresting worthwhile payment from studios.

Born in New York in 1929, Joffe graduated in journalism from Syracuse University in 1950. Before that he had developed a sideline in hiring student acts to clubs after realising that he was not likely to go very far as a singer. This landed him a job at the talent agency MCA in New York, a port of call also made by Rollins who, 15 years his senior, was in the promotion business but at that stage not making much headway on behalf of his one client, Harry Belafonte. Eventually Rollins’s persistence paid off — even if the singer did go elsewhere when success came. Rollins’s client base grew, and in 1953 when Joffe was fired by MCA, he was taken on by Rollins.

Their partnership developed, thanks to a shared belief that management should not simply be an eye for the main chance, but also a willingness to nurture artists in whom they believed — that is, artists who lived for their work, not those who simply parroted gag-writers’ material.

In the 1950s their list expanded. A hunch paid off well in 1957 when Mike Nichols and Elaine May arrived in Manhattan from Chicago with only $40, and set about creating their own two-handed show. Rollins and Joffe got them booking at a small club from which came a Village Vanguard engagement and long queues. Radio, television and Broadway followed for an act which caught the moment (Lenny Bruce’s New York debut was below them one night), and never shied from mentioning, in swift succession, such people as Bernard Baruch, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway alongside their takes on domestic dispute.

In 1960 Woody Allen asked them whether he could write for the comic team. In fact Nichols and May created their own material, but Joffe and Rollins so liked Allen’s and they soon realised that it would be easier to sell his work if he were visible, and so, very reluctantly, Allen appeared at the off-Broadway Duplex Theatre, sometimes in front of five or six people. “Twelve was a big night,” he recalled.

Allen’s confidence and audiences grew, and he was soon a lucrative act. This led to work on the lamentable movies What’s New, Pussycat? and Casino Royale. This made Allen financially secure and allowed Joffe to negotiate with film companies. Owing much to its reworking with the editor Ralph Rosenblum, Take the Money and Run (1969) gained cult success by dint of gradual screenings and enabled Joffe to forge a deal at United Artists by which, at $350,000 a time and rising, Allen kept control over his work, as he did with subsequent studios. Joffe and Rollins were retained as titular producers. Their early involvement in a script lessened as Allen developed from linked sketches to the Rosenblum-salvaged Annie Hall, for which Joffe collected the Oscar on behalf of Allen, who preferred to play clarinet in Manhattan.

Alen’s Broadway Danny Rose (1984) revisited that hustling world his mangers knew so well. They, in the meantime also worked on behalf of Dick Cavett, who soon found that he preferred television interviews, and they had been particularly supportive of the slow-burning career of the baseball hopeful turned comic, Billy Crystal.

With Allen established in films, Joffe worked in Los Angeles from 1972, as well as in television production, and independently produced a huge hit in Arthur (1981), on which his wife Carole was set designer (she had worked on Allen’s Stardust Memories the previous year.)

Although his importance to Allen diminished as Allen’ success grew, Joffe’s name appeared this year on Allen’s best work in some while, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Joffe is survived by his wife, from whom he was separated, a son, and stepdaughter, the director Nicole Holofcener.

Charles Joffe, film producer, was born on July 16, 1929. He died after a long illness on July 9, 2008, aged 78