Skip to main content

Irwin Rosten, Award-Winning Documentary Maker, Dies at 85

By IDA Editorial Staff


Editor's note: This obituary for Irwin Rosten comes to us courtesy of Mr. Rosten's son, Peter. We added additional information, as reported in the Los Angeles Times

Irwin Rosten, writer, producer, director, world-traveler and consummate gentleman, passed away Sunday May 23, 2010, in Hollywood, after a brief illness. He was 85.  

Rosten grew up in Brooklyn, and worked for television in its infancy at the DuMont Network in New York where he wrote news. He moved to Los Angeles in 1954 where he worked for KNXT and KTLA, writing news and producing half-hour specials.

Rosten's credo was simple: "I hire the best people I can--I get out of the way--and somehow I get a lot of credit for it." He fiercely resisted self-promotion. When he was nominated for an Emmy for the National Geographic documentary Grizzly, Irwin's friends and business associates bought a full-page ad in Variety, and at the bottom of the page wrote: "This space paid for by the admirers of Irwin Rosten, a modest man who cannot be trusted to blow his own horn."

In the late 1960s Rosten and his business partner, 2009 IDA Pioneer Award honoree Nicolas Noxon, created the first stand-alone documentary unit at a major studio. During their partnership with MGM, Rosten wrote and produced Hollywood: The Dream Factory, the first of numerous award-winning programs made for the studio and National Geographic. Over a long and extraordinary career he created hundreds of hours of first-quality television, taking home a Peabody, four Emmys, several WGA awards and two Oscar nominations.

According to an obituary in the Los Angeles Times, among other documentaries that Rosten produced for National Geographic and PBS include The Incredible Machine, from 1975, which took viewers inside the human body via the medical imaging technology that was available at the time. "It was very, very popular and sort of opened people's eyes to what could be done with a documentary," Noxon told the Los Angeles Times. "It was groundbreaking for its time." The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature; Rosten had received an earlier Oscar nomination in 1969 for The Wolf Men, about the hunting of timber wolves in North America. He would later win an Emmy Award for Mysteries of the Mind, which aired on PBS.  

True, Rosten was an extraordinary writer and producer--but something should also be said about Irwin Rosten, the man. He was gentle and kind, strong as steel, quiet and unassuming and entirely non-judgmental. He was a great cook, a generous friend, a loving father and husband and a mentor to many. His was the quintessential American success story: a first-generation American born to immigrant parents, a child of the Depression who made an unparalleled success of his life. He traveled broadly and lived well, and will be sorely missed by his wife Marilyn, son Peter, family and friends.