FRED WEINTRAUB

6 Mar

(27 April 1928 - 5 March 2017)

Hollywood writer and producer Fred Weintraub made a lot of feature films for both the cinema and television and many documentaries, too. His first film in 1972, Rage, about a military gas leak, was directed by George C. Scott, who also starred. Weintraub’s first success, the following year, was Enter the Dragon, which starred Bruce Lee. He followed this with more martial arts, action and exploitation movies such as Black Belt Jones and Hot Potato with Jim Kelly, Truck Turner with Isaac Hayes, Golden Needles and The Pack with Joe Don Baker, and The Ultimate Warrior with Yul Brynner. In Britain he made Trial by Combat with John Mills, and also produced Steve McQueen’s penultimate film, Tom Horn. Then it was back to martial arts with Jackie Chan in Battle Creek Brawl and Joe Lewis in Force: Five and then High Road to China with Tom Selleck. Weintraub co-wrote The Women’s Club with his wife Sandra, who also directed the film, which was about a writer turned rent boy. There was Trouble Bound with Michael Madsen, Patricia Arquette and Billy Bob Thornton and many other action films up to 2003. Weintraub’s last production was Dream Warrior, a futuristic sci-fi thriller.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

FRED WEINTRAUB

ANN BEACH

BILL PAXTON