Richard L. O'Connor, the veteran Hollywood producer who helped bring The Muppet Movie and On Golden Pond to the screen, has died at 96, closing a career that stretched from a CBS mailroom to an Emmy win.
O'Connor died July 22 in Palm Desert, his family announced. No cause of death was disclosed. A funeral mass is scheduled for 1 p.m. on August 8 at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Mendocino, California, the coastal community where he grew up and eventually returned after decades in the film business.
His credits spanned more than 20 years of features, television movies, and miniseries. He served as executive in charge of production on The Muppet Movie in 1979, working alongside producer Jim Henson, and held the same role on On Golden Pond in 1981, a film that became one of the most celebrated dramas of its era. The Sun reported on his death and career highlights.
Born Richard Lynn Richard on January 7, 1930, in San Francisco, O'Connor was raised on the Mendocino coast after his mother, Doris, accepted a teaching position there. His father, Lester, stayed behind in Richmond, California, where he worked for Standard Oil Co. O'Connor and his twin brother, Don, graduated from high school in Richmond.
O'Connor served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War from 1950 to 1951. When he came home, he started at the bottom of the entertainment industry, the mailroom at CBS Television City in Los Angeles.
By the early 1970s he had worked his way up to overseeing business logistics for film and television productions. In 1972 he served as executive in charge of production on Across 110th Street and Hickey & Boggs, two gritty features that marked his arrival as a serious figure behind the camera.
O'Connor's producing credits through the late 1970s and 1980s read like a cross-section of mainstream American entertainment. He produced Stanley Donen's Movie, Movie in 1978, Borderline and Raise the Titanic in 1980, Hard Country in 1981, and Barbarosa in 1982.
His miniseries work earned him an Emmy nomination for Fatal Vision. He also produced A Death in California, Tom Clancy's OP Center, and Amerika, the last a Cold War, era miniseries that imagined a Soviet occupation of the United States.
In 1988 he produced Distant Thunder. Two years later came his biggest individual honor: an Emmy for outstanding children's program for the NBC telefilm A Mother's Courage: The Mary Thomas Story, starring Alfre Woodard. In 1991 he produced the telefilm Wild Texas Wind, which starred country music legends Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.
After stepping away from the industry, O'Connor returned to the northern California coastline where he had grown up. He spent more than two decades living in Caspar, a small community near Mendocino, a quiet coda for a man whose career had taken him from combat in Korea to soundstages in Hollywood.
He is survived by his fourth wife, Brona; daughters Kathleen, Triglia, and Karen; stepchildren Kate, Marc, and Matt; grandchildren Rachael, Kayleigh, Seth, and Joshua; great-grandchildren Jessica and Carter; and great-great-granddaughter Bayleigh.
His family asked that memorial donations be directed to the Motion Picture & Television Fund or the Marine Corps League Foundation, two institutions that bookend the twin pillars of O'Connor's life: military service and the movie business.
Men like O'Connor built the infrastructure of American entertainment before the industry decided it needed to apologize for the country that made it possible. His generation served first and created second, and the work still holds up.
