Daniel Mayer Selznick, the last direct member of the family that produced some of Hollywood’s most iconic films, died Thursday of natural causes. He is 88 years old.
Selznick died at the Film Country House in Woodland Hills, where he was a “long-time beloved resident,” according to a statement released Friday by the Motion Picture and Television Foundation.
Selznick is the son of David O. Selznick, who wrote “Gone with the Wind” when his son was 3 years old. Gone With the Wind); and Irene Mayer Selznick, the daughter of Broadway producer and movie mogul Louis B. Mayer.
Selznick grew up in Beverly Hills, graduated from Harvard University, and later studied at Brandeis University and the University of Geneva. He also worked in the entertainment industry, serving as a production executive at Universal Studios for four years. He and his brother, Jeffrey, who died in 1997, made a documentary about their father’s greatest work called “The Birth of a Legend: ‘Gone with the Wind,'” a documentary about their father’s greatest work.
Selznick also produced several television movies and miniseries and served as a director of the Grandfather Memorial Foundation. In the last years of his life, he wrote a memoir, “Walking with Kings,” about growing up in one of Hollywood’s first families. The book will be published by Alfred Knopf next year, the statement said.
At Film Country Home, Selznick helped build a theater named for his grandfather and will be remembered for “his wit, charm, sweetness and generosity,” the statement said.
Selznick was married three times and left no immediate family members.
