David Korda, a leading member of the Korda family film dynasty, a producer and major film financier during his career in show business spanning more than 60 years, has passed away. He was 87 years old.

Author, editor and film historian Charles Drazin, British Film Finances Ltd. Korda died at Cromwell Hospital in London on September 18, the company’s president said. Hollywood Reporter. He was in poor health after his battle with cancer.

Korda’s parents were Zoltan Korda, the director of the epic film starring Ralph Richardson. Four Feathers (1939) and actress Joan Gardner (Dark Journey, Red Molecule).

One of his uncles was Alexander Korda, founder of London Films, owner of British Lion Films and producer of classics. Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and Third Man (1949) and the first filmmaker to receive a knighthood. My other uncle, Vincent Korda, was a painter and an Oscar-winning art director.

Korda helped the independent film production with behind-the-scenes contributions as a completion guarantor. Francis Ford Coppola Recovered from massive spending Apocalypse Now (1979) and One from the Heart (1981) by assisting in the 1983 films, foreigners And Thundering Fishlet it be done.

Terry Gilliam’s epic fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), which threatened to cost more than double its original budget—and risked ruining Film Finance—it was Korda who spent almost a year trying to “restore some sanity and order.”

As an executive producer for RKO Pictures and then Capella Films in the 1980s and ’90s, Korda spearheaded the production of feature films such as: Hamburger Topping (1987); Broken (1991), Wolfgang Petersen‘s first Hollywood film; And Austin Powers: International Mysterious Man (1997).

“After experiencing the glamor of the film industry up close, he grew to be wary of its excesses,” Drazin wrote in a tribute read at Korda’s celebration of life in London last month.

“A modest and reticent person, he chose to avoid the spotlight in his own film career. He saw himself as a pragmatic producer rather than an entrepreneurial one; his skill was to run businesses and provide a stable platform from which others could achieve success.”

David Alexander Korda was born on 26 May 1937 in Hampstead, London. At the beginning of World War II, he and his family moved from London to Beverly Hills when he was 3 years old, living in a house on Rexford Drive.

His first memory of Los Angeles was Uncle Alex arriving in a limo, taking him on a tour of town, and then sending him home with a bag of silver dollars. Had to play with props Thief of Bagdad (1940) and The Jungle Book (1942).

Sabu, the young star of those movies, would come with wild animals as gifts. These included three ravens living in the garage, a monkey kept in the garden, and a baby jaguar that had to be given to the LA Zoo after clawing at curtains and furniture.

After the war, Korda returned to England to study at the Lycée in South Kensington, then attended the International School in Geneva, Pomona College in California, and Oxford, where he acted in plays for the drama society.

(While on holiday from Oxford he worked at the Cinecittà studio in Rome as an assistant on the famous 1959 car race. Ben-Hur.)

After leaving Oxford in 1960, David founded a theater company with Polish actor-director Wladek Sheybal, best known for his role as the villain Kronsteen. From Russia With Love (1963). The initiative was financed by Zoltàn Korda through the sale of his stamp collection. The 101 Company, based in Bromley, featured performances by the likes of Eileen Atkins, Prunella Scales and Jeremy Brett.

After his father died in 1961, Korda worked as an assistant at Peter Brook’s company. Lord of the Flies (1963) and Ray Harryhausen were tasked with finding old footage for producer Charles H. Schneer to reuse in films such as: Saxon Siege (1963), east of sudan (1964) and Land Raiders (1969).

He even used the following sequences: Four Feathers. “I always thought my father must be turning in his grave,” he said.

Korda was unit manager on Schneer’s big-budget musical Half a Sixpence (1967) worked at Paramount, then graduated to producer roles. Ruling Class (1972) and man friday for (1975) Peter O’Toole‘s production company.

In the late ’70s, he served as a production supervisor on independently financed films, and later as an associate producer. Sunburn (1979) and Annie and Little Britches (1981), both shot in Mexico for the British company Hemdale.

In 1980, Korda accepted an offer to work as Film Finances’ London-based production manager and subsequently assisted Coppola in financing the film. foreigners And Thundering Fishthe company will provide bonds terminator, Romanticizing the Stone And A Nightmare on Elm Street a year later.

In 1985, he was hired as RKO’s head of production, where he worked on parent company General Tire Inc. He spearheaded approximately 10 films before selling the studio in 1987. He returned to Film Finance and started his cleaning business. Baron Munchausen.

Korda returned to Los Angeles in 1990 to join Capella, but returned to London in 2002 to spend most of the rest of his life at Film Finances.

Survivors include his son Nik and daughter Lerryn.

Drazin noted that Korda had only four movie posters in his office: foreigners, Thundering Fish, Baron Munchausen and Peter Greenaway Night Watching (2007) was underwritten by Film Finances shortly after Korda returned from Hollywood.

“A small, independent film telling the story of the famous Rembrandt painting Vigil“It would not be obvious to visitors why this was on his wall,” Drazin wrote. “It was a characteristically muted nod to the first film his Uncle Alex had directed at Denham, the major studio he founded for London Films in the mid-1930s – RembrandtA film starring Charles Laughton, about the compromises between art and commerce that David negotiates with great grace in his own life.