If you're even a moderate movie fan, Penn State alumna Marion Dougherty says you've probably seen a film she worked on.

"If you see any movies that were done more than 10 years ago, you may see my name on a lot of good movies," she said, citing 1969's Midnight Cowboy as one of the best films she worked on.

Dougherty, Class of 1943, who celebrated her 86th birthday Feb. 9th, revolutionized the modern film casting industry by opening the first casting director's office in New York City, Marion Dougherty Associates, in the late 1940s. Since then, she has cast dozens of movies, including Slaughterhouse-Five, the Lethal Weapon series and two Batman movies.

A feature film about Dougherty, called Casting By: Revolution in Hollywood, is in production, said Margaret Whitton, executive president and senior producer at Tashtego Films.

"I believe they really wanted to put Marion in the context of how important she has been to the industry," Whitton said of the filmmakers. "They took it to the independent film market and they got some very positive response on it," she said. The film is scheduled for release in 2010, according to imdb.com.

Dougherty's friend and former co-worker, casting director Juliet Taylor, who has been interviewed for the film, called Dougherty a "pioneer in the field of casting."

"She turned [casting] into a profession that was regarded highly in the film community," Taylor said.

Part of what made Dougherty's approach to casting different was that she worked closely with actors and picked people for roles based on their individual talents, rather than having hundreds of people come in to read for a tiny part, said Steve Hoesly, who met Dougherty in the late 1990s and helped her write her unpublished autobiography.

"If I were an actor I would be kissing her feet because I don't have to go in on a cattle call for little roles," he said.

Dougherty jump-started the careers of many now-famous actors.

"I gave first jobs to almost all of the kids in New York who were good," Dougherty said. Those "kids" included Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, among many others, she said.

Taylor said another new element Dougherty brought to casting was her respect for the actors.

"She treated actors much more carefully than they had ever been treated before. The whole process was a much more generous and cordial thing with Marion running it," she said.

Dougherty was an actress herself, and said this helped her to sympathize with other actors.

"I was very kind to actors because I knew how hard it was for them to get a job. I don't think I was ever nasty to them at all. People liked me because I liked them," she said.

Hoesly said Dougherty had a "sixth sense" about actors. If the hairs on the back of her neck stood up seeing someone perform, she knew they were good, he said.

"That happened with Al Pacino when she saw him," Hoesly said.

Dougherty acted in productions in college in the '40s, and spoke fondly of Penn State.

"Penn State was a wonderful place. When I was there it was the early '40s and there were about 100 guys to every woman that was there," she said.

After she graduated, Hoesly said Dougherty basically created the field of casting, a fact that he thinks is especially impressive given the atmosphere of that time.

"The fact that she was a woman in show business is what I found truly exceptional. It was a woman doing it in a man's world," he said.

Taylor said she and Dougherty felt accepted in the business.

"Marion used to say men didn't go into it because we didn't get paid enough," Taylor said. Whatever the case, Dougherty only hired women, and Taylor said the atmosphere Dougherty created in the office was fun, but hard-working at the same time.

Dougherty did casting in New York until the 1970s when she moved to California to work for Warner Bros. After working there for about 25 years, she retired from her position as head of casting at the end of the millennium and moved back to New York City.

Hoesly, who is looking for a publisher for the autobiography he helped Dougherty write, said her story is largely unknown because she is humble.

"I don't think she had a true appreciation of how exceptional her casting career was until we started writing the book," he said.

Taylor said she tries to get together with Dougherty every week for lunch.

"I love her, she's like a second mother to me," Taylor said. "We talk about what it was like back in the old days."