Marvin Worth

Marvin Worth, an eclectic producer and writer best known for his biographical motion pictures "Lenny" and "Malcolm X," has died at 72. Worth, who had been working on the film "The James Dean Story," died of lung cancer Wednesday night at UCLA Medical Center, his publicist said Thursday.

Marvin Worth, an eclectic producer and writer best known for his biographical motion pictures "Lenny" and "Malcolm X," has died at 72. Worth, who had been working on the film "The James Dean Story," died of lung cancer Wednesday night at UCLA Medical Center, his publicist said Thursday.

From a religious icon to an ill-fated screen idol? Only Marvin Worth, Mr. Biopic producer, would go from 25 years of hell to bring "Malcolm X" to the screen (not to mention the hellish production itself) to tangling with the image of James Dean in one of his next movie projects.

Perhaps no living American composer is as associated with Broadway and Hollywood as Marvin Hamlisch, who performs Friday and Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. At 51, the New York City native is a multiple Oscar-, Tony- and Emmy-winning writer with a catalogue of songs and scores under his belt, including "The Way We Were," "The Sting," "A Chorus Line," "Ordinary People," "Ice Castles" and "Sophie's Choice."

Marvin Worth is dressed in an eye-catching red-and-gold silk shirt, his leopard-spotted socks picking up one of several patterns in the colorful garment. Short and wiry, with gray hair spilling onto his shoulders, Worth seems an unlikely clotheshorse. But his closet is filled with flamboyant and very expensive outfits by designer Gianni Versace, a favorite with the music industry. Versace, Worth admits, is one of his obsessions. Enter his modest suite of offices on Warner Bros.'

I am debating whether to see the new movie comedy smash, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" or wait for the sequel, which is sure to be on the drawing boards. Can you imagine what the stars, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder (who play a blind man and a deaf man, respectively) and producer Marvin Worth and director Arthur Hiller could do with epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease? Wouldn't those be blockbusters? And kudos to such eminent critics as Kevin Thomas (May 12 review)

The Emmy award-winning executive producer of the popular TV series "Get Smart" died Monday at his Studio City home of cancer. Arne Sultan was 60 and had worked in the entertainment industry as a comedian, writer and producer. His credits and co-credits over the years included "The Governor and J.J.," which he helped create; "He and She," "Barney Miller," "The Sandy Duncan Show" and "The Partners."

Perhaps no living American composer is as associated with Broadway and Hollywood as Marvin Hamlisch, who performs Friday and Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. At 51, the New York City native is a multiple Oscar-, Tony- and Emmy-winning writer with a catalogue of songs and scores under his belt, including "The Way We Were," "The Sting," "A Chorus Line," "Ordinary People," "Ice Castles" and "Sophie's Choice."

Joan Worth, an artist who became a theatrical writer-producer in her later years to carry on her late husband's work in furthering the legacies of comedian Lenny Bruce and black nationalist leader Malcolm X, has died. She was 72. Worth, the widow of writer-producer Marvin Worth, died Dec. 8 at her home in Beverly Hills, said her daughter Missy Worth. No cause of death was announced.

From a religious icon to an ill-fated screen idol? Only Marvin Worth, Mr. Biopic producer, would go from 25 years of hell to bring "Malcolm X" to the screen (not to mention the hellish production itself) to tangling with the image of James Dean in one of his next movie projects.

Marvin Worth is dressed in an eye-catching red-and-gold silk shirt, his leopard-spotted socks picking up one of several patterns in the colorful garment. Short and wiry, with gray hair spilling onto his shoulders, Worth seems an unlikely clotheshorse. But his closet is filled with flamboyant and very expensive outfits by designer Gianni Versace, a favorite with the music industry. Versace, Worth admits, is one of his obsessions. Enter his modest suite of offices on Warner Bros.'

I am debating whether to see the new movie comedy smash, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" or wait for the sequel, which is sure to be on the drawing boards. Can you imagine what the stars, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder (who play a blind man and a deaf man, respectively) and producer Marvin Worth and director Arthur Hiller could do with epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease? Wouldn't those be blockbusters? And kudos to such eminent critics as Kevin Thomas (May 12 review)

Another Malcolm X screenplay, the fifth since the early 1970s, is in the typewriter. Novelist David Bradley, a prof at Philadelphia's Temple University, is completing the first draft of a screenplay about the life of the late black leader. It's the latest commissioned by producer Marvin Worth, who produced the 1972 documentary "Malcolm X."

IN their search for a stage actor who could play Lenny Bruce, American entertainment's quintessential martyr for free speech, producers Joan Worth and Alan Sacks could have been following battlefield orders from 1775 that helped win freedom of speech in the first place: "Don't hire until you see the whites of their eyes." "He had those eyes, those piercing eyes. When he gets fierce, it all shows up in his eyes," Worth says.