Syd Silverman, longtime publisher and owner of Variety and Daily Variety, who shepherded the entertainment trade papers into the modern era, died of a sudden illness August 27 in Boca Raton, FL. He was 85. In his three-plus decades at the helm of Variety Inc., he steered the trade publications founded in 1905 by his grandfather Sime Silverman to prosperity, through the revolutions in cable and pay-TV, independent film pre-sales, financial interest/syndication rules for TV…