OTTO Plaschkes was a film producer whose credits include Georgy Girl and whose own lifestory reads like the plot of a film or novel.
A Jewish boy, spirited out of Nazi Europe shortly before the Second World War, he settled with his family in Salisbury, where he was taught by William Golding and provided the template for the fat, bullied boy Piggy in the Nobel Prize winner's novel Lord of the Flies.
Starting as a production assistant at Ealing, he worked with such great directors as David Lean and Joseph Losey and stars of the magnitude of James Mason, Walter Matthau and Ewan McGregor. He had a spell as a studio boss and ultimately died of a heart attack shortly after leaving a private screening of a new Swedish movie about a man who has a heart attack.
Plashkes was born in Vienna in 1929, his father a butcher from Slovakia and his mother Hungarian. There is some suggestion, however, his mother may have added a year to his age to help his chances under the "Kindertransport" scheme to evacuate Jewish children from central Europe in the years before the Second World War.
He studied history at Cambridge University and education at Oxford, served as assistant director to another Viennese emigre, Otto Preminger, on Exodus (1960), and was production assistant on Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Georgy Girl (1966) was his first feature as producer. It was a huge international hit and helped define the image of Swinging London, with Lynn Redgrave as the modern young woman, "swinging down the street so fancy free", but ultimately torn between James Mason and Alan Bates.
Other films include the military drama The Bofors Gun (1968), Galileo (1975), with Topol as the Italian astronomer, Hopscotch (1980) , with Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau, and The Holcroft Covenant (1985) , a thriller starring Michael Caine.
He also produced memorable television adaptations of The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1983), with Ian Richardson as Sherlock Holmes.
In the mid-1980s, Plaschkes was briefly head of production at Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus's Cannon film company.
Plaschkes was a cultured socialist, it was an unlikely relationship, and AlexanderWalker, in his book Icons in the Fire, suggests he was an unwitting front guy for their attempts to take over the British film industry.
Before Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Plaschkes gave Ewan McGregor an early break when he cast him alongside the American star Elliott Gould in Doggin' Around (1994), a BBC drama about a jazz band on tour in the North of England.
He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Otto Plaschkes, film producer;
born September 13, 1929, died February 14, 2005.
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