Lawrence M. Lansburgh, who joined Walt Disney in the mid-1940s and directed eighteen features and episodes of TV’s The Wonderful World of Disney, died on March 25th, aged 89.
Polish-born cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski was found dead in a Vancouver hotel room on March 26th, soon after completing the Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis.
67-year-old Larry Tucker who, with Paul Mazursky, co-developed, co-produced and scripted The Monkees TV series, died on April 1st of complications from multiple sclerosis and cancer. A former stand-up comedian, he appeared in Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and produced and scripted Mazursky’s Alex in Wonderland.
French film director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, whose credits include the 1966 international hit Le Grand Meaulnes (The Wanderer), died forgotten and destitute in Brazil on April 10th. He was 65.
French-born Canadian film and TV producer Nicolas Clermont, who as co-founder of Filmline International was responsible for the long-running Highlander series and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, died of cancer on April 11th, aged 59.
American visual effects artist Sean Dever died on April 13th, aged 32. His credits include such overblown blockbusters as Red Planet, Thirteen Days, The Sixth Day, Waterworld, Angels in the Outfield, True Lies, The Fifth Element, Flubber, My Favorite Martian, Sphere and Batman and Robin.
American film and television director Michael Ritchie died of complications from prostate cancer on April 16th, aged 62. His credits include The Island, The Golden Child, A Simple Wish and TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Italian director Giacomo Gentilomo died the same day in Rome, aged 92. His films include Goliath and the Vampires and Hercules Against the Moon Men.
Director, producer and writer Jack Haley, Jr., the son of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, died on April 21st, aged 67. He created MGM’s That’s Entertainment! series and numerous award-winning TV specials and documentaries based around the Golden Age of Hollywood (The Making of the Wizard of Oz, etc.). He also directed the 1970, 1974 and 1979 Academy Award shows and was once married to Liza Minnelli.
British screenwriter and director Ken Hughes died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in a California nursing home on April 28th, aged 79. A former cinema projectionist, his film credits include The Brain Machine, The Atomic Man (aka Time-slip), Joe Macbeth, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Casino Roy ale (both based on books by Ian Fleming), Sextette with an 86-year-old Mae West and the slasher film Night School (aka Terror Eyes).
Veteran animator Maurice J. Noble died on May 18th, aged 91. Co-director of the Oscar-winning short The Dot and the Line, he worked on such Disney classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Fantasia and Dumbo, and more than sixty Warner Bros, cartoons (including Duck Dodgers in the 24 y2 Century). With business partner Chuck Jones he also produced many Dr Seuss (Ted Geisel) cartoons, including The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
83-year-old Herbert Wise Browar, former vice-president of production at Filmways Television, died of a cerebral haemorrhage on May 19th. He served as an associate producer on such popular TV shows as Mr Ed (1961–65) and The Addams Family (1964–66).
Italian director Alfonso Brescia died on June 6th, aged 71. He directed more than fifty films (often credited to ‘A1 Bradley’), including The Conqueror of Atlantis, The Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women, War in Space, Battle of the Stars, Iron Warriors and many more.
French cinematographer Henri Alekan, whose credits include Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, died on June 15th following a brief hospitalization for leukaemia. He was 92.
Michael Green, the chairman of leading independent British film distributor Entertainment, died on June 17th, aged 84. After co-founding Regal Films International in the late 1950s, he launched Entertainment Film Distributors in 1978, since when the company has released everything from Hellraiser to Lord of the Rings and produced the sci-fi flop Slipstream.
Entertainment attorney Paul Schreibman, who was responsible for making the deals with Toho to bring Godzilla, Mothra, Varan etc. to America, died on June 23rd, aged 92.
Oscar-winning special effects supervisor A. D. Flowers died from complications of emphysema and pneumonia on July 5th, aged 85. Chief of mechanical special effects at Twentieth Century-Fox for many years, his film credits include The Poseidon Adventure, Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and Apocalypse Now.
Disney animator Ted Berman died on July 15th, aged 81. He worked on Fantasia, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and co-scripted and co-directed The Black Cauldron.
Producer Jules Buck, whose credits include What’s New Pussycat and The Ruling Class, died on July 19th, aged 83.
Record producer and songwriter Milton Gabler, who founded the independent jazz label Commodore Records in 1937 and produced Bill Haley and the Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in one take, died on July 20th, aged 90.
Film and TV director Alan Rafkin died of complications during heart surgery in Los Angeles on August 6th, aged 73. A former nightclub comic, he began his career in 1958 with such TV series as 77 Sunset Strip, directing more than eighty prime-time sitcoms along with a number of movies, including Ski Party, Angel in My Pocket and The Ghost and Mr Chicken.
Former film editor and TV producer Art Seid died on August 9th, aged 87. He edited Lost Horizon (1937) and A Taste of Evil.
Oscar and Emmy Award-nominated American sound designer and sound editor Richard Jay Shorr died of melanoma at his home in Paris on August 13th, aged 58. In 1979 he wrote and directed Witches Brew, a comic adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife, which was completed by Herbert L. Strock. Switching to sound production, Shorr also worked on The Day After, Die Hard, Poltergeist III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Highway to Hell.
Music editor Daniel Adrian Carlin died of lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis on August 14th, aged 73. His credits include Ghost, Ghostbusters, Fatal Attraction and All That Jazz.