Producer Daniel O. Selznick, the last direct link to one of Hollywood's founding families, died Aug. 1 at the rural Film and Television Fund campus in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles.
Selznick grew up in Beverly Hills as a member of showbiz royalty. He was the youngest child of Gone with the Wind producer David O. Selznick and theater producer Irene Meyer Selznick. His grandfather was Louis B. Mayer, the outgoing Canadian immigrant who led Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to the top of the entertainment and business world during Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and ’40s. By the time Daniel Selznick was a teenager, his parents had divorced and his father had remarried, to Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Jones.
In his professional life, Selznick has worked as a champion of the arts and to preserve his family's legacy. Daniel Selznick served as a production executive at Universal Studios for four years. He produced the 1988 Peabody Award-winning documentary The Making of Myth: Gone with the Wind with his older brother Jeffrey Selznick. Jeffrey Selznick was three years older than his brother and died in 1997.
As a producer, Daniel O. Selznick's credits include the 1983 television miniseries Blood Feud, directed by Mike Newell and starring Robert Blake as Jimmy Hoffa and Cotter Smith as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He also produced the 1987 miniseries Hoover vs. the Kennedys, the 1977 television thriller Night Drive, starring Valerie Harper, and the 1981 documentary drama Reagan's Way: Pathway to the Presidency.
Selznick was a longtime director of the Louis B. Mayer Foundation and a resident of the MBTF County Hospice. He helped oversee construction of the Louis B. Mayer Theater at the facility in 1967, and spoke at the opening of the redesigned theater complex in 2017.
The Film and Television Fund said that “his wit, charm, kindness and generosity will be remembered by the residents and staff of the Fund.” Selznick wrote a memoir, “Walking with Kings,” about his early years as a “young prince in Hollywood,” which is set to be published by Alfred Knopf next year.
Selznick was married three times and left no immediate survivors, according to the MPTF.
The family requests that donations be made in Selznick's memory to the MPTF.
