Yahoo Autos Ronald L. Schwary Dies: Oscar-Winning ‘Ordinary People’ Producer & Sydney Pollack Collaborator Was 76
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Ronald Schwary, who won an Oscar as the producer of Ordinary People and whose other major film successes include A Soldier’s Story, Absence of Malice, Scent of a Woman and Tootsie, has died. He was 76. He passed away Thursday in West Hollywood, according to his sons.
No cause of death was provided, but reports indicate Schwary had struggled with a rare neurological autonomic disorder.
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Schwary was the producer on six Sydney Pollack-directed films: The Electric Horseman (1979) and Havana (1990), with Robert Redford; Absence of Malice (1981), starring Paul Newman; Best Picture nominee Tootsie (1982), with Dustin Hoffman; Sabrina (1995), featuring Harrison Ford, and Random Hearts (1999), also starring Ford.
Even though the films were nominated for Best Picture, Schwary did not receive a nomination for either Tootsie or Scent of a Woman or because he was not credited as “Producer.”
On Tootsie, there was a dispute between Columbia and the production regarding the number of credited producers. Columbia offered a co-producer credit to Schwary, but he turned it down. Thus, he is uncredited as a producer — though he is credited as an actor on the film.
His body of work also includes *batteries not included (1987), starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy; The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), with Barbra Streisand; and Meet Joe Black (1998), starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.
