OBIT - SAUL ZAENTZ

Film and music producer Saul Zaentz, who had been suffering from Alzheimer's, died yesterday, Friday the 3rd of January 2014, at age 92. Following a successful career in the music industry, Zaentz turned to film producing with 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest adaptation, a move which would see him win his first of three Best Picture Oscars. That film's director, Milos Forman, also directed Amadeus in 1984, which won Zaentz another Best Picture award. His final of the three came with 1996's The English Patient, which marked new territory for Zaentz as he was forced to seek funding from outside sources - Miramax, in this case, who declined his offer to produce three Lord of the Rings films after his animated 1978 adaptation - after the failure of his 1991 venture At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Besides that, his films, though few in number, were largely extremely successful, both financially and critically. In 1997, he became only the third person to have won three Best Picture Oscars, alongside Sam Spiegel and Darry F. Zanuck, and also the first to be rewarded both the Thalberg Award and Best Picture since Cecil B. DeMille 44 years earlier. He is survived by four children, Dorian, Joshua, Athena and Jonnie, and seven grandchildren.