Alan Sacks, who teamed with stand-up comic and fellow Brooklynite Gabe Kaplan to create the popular 1970s ABC sitcom Welcome, Back, Kotter, has died. He was 81.
Sacks died Tuesday of complications from lymphoma in New York while on a visit there, his wife, talent agent Annette van Duren, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was first diagnosed 22 years ago but spent several years in remission before the cancer returned.
In the 1980s, after a project involving the iconic L.A. band The Runaways never got off the ground, Sacks took the footage and incorporated it into a plot about a director working on a tight deadline to finish a movie starring Runaways member Joan Jett.
The resulting film, Du-Beat-e-o (1984), which he also helmed, was set against the background of the hardcore L.A. punk scene and featured Ray Sharkey and Derf Scratch of the punk band Fear.
He also wrote and...
Sacks died Tuesday of complications from lymphoma in New York while on a visit there, his wife, talent agent Annette van Duren, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was first diagnosed 22 years ago but spent several years in remission before the cancer returned.
In the 1980s, after a project involving the iconic L.A. band The Runaways never got off the ground, Sacks took the footage and incorporated it into a plot about a director working on a tight deadline to finish a movie starring Runaways member Joan Jett.
The resulting film, Du-Beat-e-o (1984), which he also helmed, was set against the background of the hardcore L.A. punk scene and featured Ray Sharkey and Derf Scratch of the punk band Fear.
He also wrote and...
- 10/24/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film and TV writer-producer Alan Sacks, who had an eclectic career that included co-creating the popular 1970s series “Welcome Back, Kotter” and working on projects set in the 1980s L.A. punk scene, died of complications from lymphoma on Tuesday in New York. He was 81.
Sacks was born in Brooklyn and started his career in the research department of ABC Television. After moving to Los Angeles, he continued working at ABC as a program executive. Along with Gabe Kaplan and Peter Meyerson, he helped develop and co-create “Welcome Back, Kotter,” basing the sitcom on his high school friends in Brooklyn and on Kaplan’s stand-up routine.
He also worked on “Chico and the Man,” created by “Welcome Back, Kotter” executive producer James Komack.
In 1991, Sacks created and produced a Saturday morning children’s show, “Riders in the Sky,” for CBS, which replaced the “Pee-Wee Herman Show.”
During the 1970s and ’80s,...
Sacks was born in Brooklyn and started his career in the research department of ABC Television. After moving to Los Angeles, he continued working at ABC as a program executive. Along with Gabe Kaplan and Peter Meyerson, he helped develop and co-create “Welcome Back, Kotter,” basing the sitcom on his high school friends in Brooklyn and on Kaplan’s stand-up routine.
He also worked on “Chico and the Man,” created by “Welcome Back, Kotter” executive producer James Komack.
In 1991, Sacks created and produced a Saturday morning children’s show, “Riders in the Sky,” for CBS, which replaced the “Pee-Wee Herman Show.”
During the 1970s and ’80s,...
- 10/24/2024
- by Pat Saperstein
- Variety Film + TV
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