Crackle of Death

Alexander Grasshoff was an American documentary filmmaker and director who received 3 Oscars nominations. Along with fellow producer Robert Cohn, he is possibly best known for writing and directing the documentary Young Americans, won an Academy Award for best feature documentary in April 1969.... However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences soon found out the film had been shown first in October 1967, thus mading it ineligible for a 1968 award and the Oscar status was revoked. Grasshoff, who reportedly slept with the Oscar on the first night, also directed Academy Award-winning films The Really Big Family and Journey to the Outer Limits . Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Grasshoff earned a bachelor's degree in cinema at the University of Southern California and began his career as an editor at Paramount in 1951. Grasshoff died on April 5, 2008 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from bypass surgery on a leg. He is survived by his wife of 38 years, Madilyn Clark Grasshoff, and two sisters, Yrsa Grasshoff and Edith Rand.
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Don Weis was an American film and television director. Weis was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Southern California where he studied film. During World War II, Weis served in the Air Force as a film technician. After the war, he began working at MGM directing such... films as Bannerline , Just This Once , You for Me and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis . Weis began directing for television in 1954 and worked on such series as M*A*S*H, Ironside, It Takes a Thief, Twilight Zone, Happy Days, Starsky and Hutch, CHiPs, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, and Hawaii Five-O among others. Weis won two Directors Guild of America Awards for television direction in 1956 and again in 1958. Weis died in Santa Fe, New Mexico at 78 years of age.
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