Daniel Mayer Selznick, the last immediate member of a family that produced some of Hollywood's most iconic films, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 88.
Selznick died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, where he was a “longtime and much-loved resident,” according to a statement released Friday by the Motion Picture & Television Fund.
Selznick was the son of David O. Selznick, who produced Gone with the Wind when his son was 3, and Irene Mayer Selznick, a Broadway producer and daughter of 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, too, made a career in show business, holding an executive production position at Universal Studios for four years. He and his older brother Jeffrey, who died in 1997, produced a documentary titled “The Making of a Legend: 'Gone with the Wind,'” about their father's major work.
Selznick also produced several television movies and miniseries and was director of a foundation in memory of his grandfather. In his later years, he wrote an autobiography, “Walking with Kings,” which chronicles his coming of age in one of Hollywood’s first families. The book will be published next year by Alfred Knopf, according to the statement.
At Motion Picture Country Home, where Selznick helped build a theater named after his grandfather, he will be remembered for “his intelligence, charm, sweetness and generosity,” the statement said.
Selznick, who was married three times, left no surviving close relatives.
