Producer/Author Craig Zadan Dies
The world will remember Craig Zadan, who died in L.A. this week at the age of 69, as the producer of many award-winning television and movie broadcasts, especially of musicals. But my introduction to him came with his book “Sondheim and Company,” written when Zadan was a young man. Until Sondheim himself wrote two brilliant books about musicals, Zadan’s volume was the best introduction to the work of the master. Zadan had a long producing partnership with Neil Meron in Storyline Entertainment, which was recently renamed Zadan/Meron Productions. The two were known for shepherding high-end movies and miniseries for broadcast and cable networks, ranging from dramas to musical productions ranging from Bette Midler in “Gypsy†for CBS in 1993 and Whitney Houston in “Cinderella†(ABC, 1997) to NBC’s live musicals starting with 2013’s “The Sound of Music Live” to the recent “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
