Noreen Fraser, television producer who raised millions while fighting breast cancer, dies at 63

Noreen Fraser, a successful television producer who during a 16-year battle with breast cancer became a crusading activist who raised millions for research and swifter treatment for all cancer patients, has died at 63.

Fraser died Monday at her home in Brentwood. The cause was Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, her family said.

Fraser was a co-founder of Stand Up to Cancer, a highly successful telethon that aired on three major U.S. networks and in more than 150 other countries in 2008 before becoming an annual event. Stand Up to Cancer has raised a reported $100 million.

The money raised by the telethon is awarded to cancer researchers who agree to work cooperatively with other researchers, bypassing the competitive currents that Fraser and others felt were slowing and perhaps crippling the effort to make rapid headway in the fight against the disease.

Fraser was propelled to activism after learning in 2001 that she had breast cancer, a diagnosis her husband said left her frustrated, angry and acutely aware that the simple joys of being a young mother might slip away before they were realized.

“She didn’t know if she’d see her children graduate from grade school, then high school, then college,” said Woody Fraser, a television producer. “But she got to see if all.” Denied, though, will be the chance to see her daughter’s upcoming wedding, he said.

After her diagnosis, Fraser was hurled into a medical cosmos where she came to believe that competition among researchers and the wide gulf between laboratories and front-line physicians slowed the development of new treatments for cancer patients like herself.

The concept for Stand Up to Cancer was built on a platform of basic teamwork, requiring researchers, doctors, clinics and others to reach across the aisle and join forces with those who might otherwise be seen as their competitors in order to get grant money, Woody Fraser said.

Fraser also established and oversaw the Noreen Fraser Foundation, which raised more than $2 million to fund translational women’s cancer research. Unlike foundations that devoted their resources to specific cancers, hers was aimed at all cancers affecting women. In 2016, she directed the foundation’s assets to the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, where a research lab now bears her name.

Born Dec. 6, 1953, in Cleveland, Fraser attended the University of Dayton and, later, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. In L.A., she and her husband became a Hollywood power couple — she producer of televisions shows such as “Entertainment Tonight” and the “Home Show,” he overseeing “The Mike Douglas Show” and helping develop ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

But cancer refocused their lives.

“She was absolutely dedicated to maintaining a certain quality of life,” her husband said. “She fought cancer straight ahead, but she wasn’t going to let it run her life.”

In addition to her husband, Fraser is survived by two children, Madeline and Mack; her parents, Jackie and Fred Friend; and eight siblings.

steve.marble@latimes.com

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