We found out yesterday that Irv Letofsky died this week at 76.
(In My Heart Editor: Hollywood Reporter says Letofsky died of liver cancer)
Irv was a television critic for The Hollywood Reporter, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section and an important collector of film lobby and title cards and other memorabilia.
He also has a unique place in tabloid history.
Irv is among those mentioned in the acknowledgments of the book, “Tabloid Baby.” Back in early Nineties, he wrote about the tabloid television show “Hard Copy” for The Hollywood Reporter, and his articles were cited by author Burt Kearns. A decade later, Letofsky and Kearns wound up working together on Frozen Pictures’ documentary series, “All The Presidents’ Movies,” that ran on Bravo and will one of these days wind up on DVD.
Irv had been the connection to Paul Fischer, the former White House projectionist who was at the center of the acclaimed presidents project.
Irv was very well-liked by print journos in LA. Over at our pal Ray Richmond’s Past Deadline site, Barry Garron writes:
“There will never be another like him… He was a genius. He was a mentor. He was capable of the driest wit and the greatest insight. He was never without a mischievous twinkle in his eye or a half-dozen projects on his agenda…”
This gentle and genial soul was, at one time or another, a reporter (St. Paul Pioneer Press), an assistant city editor (Minneapolis Tribune), a features editor (Sunday Calendar of the Los Angeles Times), an executive producer of a documentary and a short film, an author and a key figure in establishing the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theatre in Minneapolis.
He was an important collector of film lobby and title cards and other film memorabilia. He donated part of his collection to his alma mater, the University of North Dakota, and to the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He lent part to the Richard Nixon Library.
Letofsky is survived by his wife, actress Brian Ann, and four children.
Moses M. Weinstein, 95, who got his start in New York electoral politics in his 40s, spent 10 days as acting governor, and then became a judge, died Friday in Florida.
Weinstein was born in New York on July 8, 1912. According to the New York Times, his first name was originally Morris and he had no middle initial, but a program for a theatrical production while he was a student at Brooklyn College gave him an initial. His degree from Brooklyn Law School erred in changing his name from Morris to Moses, which he continued to use in professional life. He was known to friends as Moe. (more…)
Peter Zinner, film editor on the first two “Godfather” films, and an Oscar winner for 1978’s “The Deer Hunter,” died Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007 at 88.
Zinner died of complications from an almost five-year battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Zinner was born in 1919 in Vienna, and fled the Nazis with his family and moved to the Philippines in 1938. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1940 and “always wanted to be in film,” his daughter was quoted as saying by Associated Press.
After working as a taxi driver and piano player in silent movie theaters, Zinner landed a job as an apprentice film editor at 20th Century Fox in the early 1940s.
In 1960, he quit MGM and started his own company with two other film editors, his daughter said.
Zinner also worked on such major movies as 1967’s “In Cold Blood,” 1974’s “The Godfather: Part II” and 1976’s “A Star Is Born.” Along with his Oscar for “The Deer Hunter,” he was nominated for the first “Godfather” film and “An Officer and a Gentlemen.”
Director Francis Ford Coppola told the Associated Press the music that accompanied the Godfather’s climactic and bloody baptism sequence was Zinner’s idea. (more…)
