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Robert Towne, who gained an Oscar for his Chinatown authentic screenplay and was nominated for his The Final Element, Shampoo and Greystoke scripts, died Monday at his dwelling. He was 89.
PR agency McClure & Associates introduced the information on the a part of Towne’s household.
Towne additionally earned BAFTA, Golden Globe and WGA awards for Chinatown, the L.A.-set 1974 thriller starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It was considered one of three Writers Guild Awards he gained throughout his profession, together with Shampoo and the drama collection Mad Males. He additionally was nominated for The Final Element (1973) and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1985). He was honored with teh guild’s Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement in 1997.
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November 23, 1934, Towne acquired his begin along with his screenplay for 1960’s Final Girl on Earth earlier than writing for early-’60s TV collection together with The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Lloyd Bridges Present. He went on to work with Roger Corman on movies together with The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) and later co-penned with Sam Peckinpah the 1968 Mexican Revolution movie Villa Rides, starring Yul Brenner, Robert Mitchum and Charles Bronson.
His breakthrough got here with The Final Element, a dramedy starring Nicholson as a Navy man tasked with escorting to the brig a inexperienced recruit (Randy Quaid) who has been court-martialed for a petty offense. Otis Younger, Clifton James and Carol Kane co-starred. That movie would arrange Towne’s career-defining screenplay the next 12 months.
Directed by Roman Polanski and produced by Robert Evans, Chinatown advised the story of California’s water-rights wars of the early 1900s. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards together with Finest Image, however solely Towne would win amid that 12 months’s dominance by one other Paramount Footage traditional, The Godfather Half II.
Towne’s subsequent movie additionally was a industrial and important hit.
Data concerning a celebration of life ceremony can be introduced at a later date.
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