Obit watch: September 26, 2022.

Dale McRaven. He co-created “Mork & Mindy” (with Garry Marshall) and created “Perfect Strangers”.

…McRaven wrote and produced The Partridge Family while also producing albums from the “band” made up of castmates Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Danny Bonaduce and Susan Dey.

Zack Estrin.

Estrin had a successful career in TV, starting with credits on Charmed, Dawson’s Creek and Tru Calling, before rising through the ranks to serve as co-executive producer of Fox’s Prison Break.
Estrin was showrunner and executive producer of two ABC paranormal thrillers, The River and The Whispers, as well as co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

He was only 51.

Rita Gardner.

In 1960, Gardner, who had recently appeared Off Broadway in the Jerry Herman musical review Nightcap, was cast in what would be her signature role: Luisa, or “The Girl,” in the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical The Fantasticks. Based loosely on Edmond Rostand’s 1894 play The Romancers, the musical told the allegorical story of two fathers who trick their children – The Girl, Luisa, and The Boy, Matt – into falling in love by pretending to oppose the union.
The production, at a tiny Off Broadway venue in Greenwich Village called the Sullivan Street Playhouse, became a huge success, spawning a hit song (“Try To Remember”), running 42 years and boosting the careers of Gardner and other cast members (including Kenneth Nelson, who went on to star in The Boys in the Band, and, most notably, Jerry Orbach, the Law & Order star who enjoyed a long career on stage, film and television).

She did a considerable amount of theater work, both on and off Broadway. She also did some TV, including three of the shows in the “Law and Order” franchise.

Jim Florio. former governor of New Jersey, “who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term“.

Nancy Hiller, woodworker. (Alt link.)

…she steadily built a quiet but forceful reputation as one of the best woodworkers in the country, turning out custom, precisely built cabinets, side tables and whole kitchens for clients as far as New York and Chicago. The actor Nick Offerman, himself an accomplished woodworker and a member of Ms. Hiller’s legion of admirers, called her an “Obi-Wan Kenobi level master.”

There was nothing fancy about her work. She resisted the label “artist,” though people tried to pin it on her. And she deliberately charged less than her peers, not to undercut them, but to make her work affordable to middle-class clients who appreciated good design and hard work.
“She didn’t want to do work that was only accessible to a few people,” Megan Fitzpatrick, a woodworker and editor, said in an interview. “She wanted work that was accessible to everybody.”

Just Jaeckin, director. His most famous film was probably the 1974 soft-core porn film “Emmanuelle”. Other credits include “The Story of O”, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, and “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak”.

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