BY TODD GARBARINI
Film
producer, director, and sometime actor Ewing Miles Brown, who was known affectionately to legions of performers and
crew members in the industry as “Lucky†Brown, passed away from respiratory
failure on Monday, May 27, 2019 at the age of 97 according to his personal
friend of forty years, actor and film historian Douglas
Dunning.
After
making his acting debut in bit parts in the Our Gang shorts
(which were later titled The Little Rascals for syndication),
Mr. Brown followed up with a stint as the head editor at Emperor Films and was
personally recruited by film producer and movie theater owner Robert L. Lippert
to head up production. Dissatisfied with working for others, Lucky branched out
on his own in the late 1950’s and started his own motion picture film company
called Movie Tech Studios which he built from the ground up. It
was one of the oldest independent movie studios in the United States which
ceased operations last year just prior to his 97th birthday.
Lucky’s father, in fact, was the eponymous Dr. Brown, who was a personal doctor
to the stars in the 1920’s through the 1940’s. He delivered Howard Hughes!
As
an actor, Lucky’s career was extremely varied and far more extensive than the
truncated list than the Internet Movie Database will lead one to believe. In
1976 he produced and directed A Whale of a Tale, the only
family-oriented film that William Shatner made in his career. The film also
starred Marty Allen and Andy Devine.
Lucky’s
last film credit is in the unfinished production of Terror of the
Gorgon which he directed as well as appears in. Mr. Dunning has stated
that he will finish the film as a tribute to Lucky.
Lucky
was also the last surviving cast member of George Stevens’s Shane (1953). He was a
saddle buddy to Alan Ladd in the cattle drive sequence which ran an hour in
length but was cut shortly after the film was previewed in 1953, reducing the
film’s original three-hour running time to 118 minutes.
Lucky,
a true Hollywood legend, will be sorely missed by those who knew him.