Legendary television producer Aaron Spelling, who launched a string of star-making global hits such as Dynasty, Charlie’s Angels and Beverly Hills 90210, died following a stroke on Friday. He was 83.
”Mr Spelling died at 6.25pm this afternoon. He was in his home in Beverly Hills with his wife, Candy, and son, Randy, at his bedside. I don’t know if his daughter, Tori, was with him at this moment,” publicist Kevin Sasaki said.
According to the Guinness World Records book, Spelling was ”the most prolific TV producer of all time”, producing more than 5 000 hours of television programming, including more than 300 hours of made-for-television movies and at least a dozen films.
He produced about 200 television shows from the 1960s to date, also including The Mod Squad, Starsky and Hutch, The Love Boat, Vegas, Hart to Hart, TJ Hooker, Fantasy Island, Hotel, Melrose Place, Seventh Heaven and Charmed, People magazine noted in its online edition.
Dynasty, the prime-time soap opera starring Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe, which was shown round the world, became the most widely watched series in television history.
Spelling, Leonard Goldberg and Mike Nichols joined forces in 1976 to make the domestic drama Family, a rare critical success for Spelling, often blasted for making escapist television, short on substance and long on pretty locations and pretty people. Family won four Emmy Awards for acting.
A Texan, Spelling went to New York to become an actor, and met and wed in 1953 actress Carolyn Jones, later famous as Morticia Addams on TV’s The Addams Family.
The couple settled in California and divorced in 1964. By that time, Spelling had found success as a TV writer, and with TV star Danny Thomas launched Spelling’s first hit, The Mod Squad, back in 1968.
Though he grew up poor in Dallas, the fourth son of immigrant Jews, by the 1980s Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $300-million. His home is believed to be the largest in California, a mansion with a floor of closets and a gift-wrapping room, built on rollers to make it through earthquakes unscathed.
”I grew up thinking ‘Jew boy’ was one word,” the producer wrote in his memoir, Aaron Spelling: A Prime-Time Life. Beaten and mocked by classmates, at eight, he said he suffered a sort of nervous breakdown, and spent a year in bed, reading and learning to love storytellers like O Henry.
Most of Spelling’s shows were popular but few as much so as Charlie’s Angels, which debuted in 1976 and was broadcast in about 90 countries worldwide.
”I can’t say this of every show I ever produced, but I loved Charlie’s Angels,” Spelling told People in 1988. ”It put us over the top and made our company financially secure and incredibly desirable.”
Spelling wed his second wife, Candy (60), in 1968. They have two children, Tori (33), who has starred in 90210 and her current reality comedy So Notorious; and Randy (27), who starred in Sunset Beach. — Sapa-AFP