PASSINGS

Ciro ‘Mario’ Marino

Los Angeles restaurateur

Ciro “Mario” Marino, 76, who opened his first Los Angeles restaurant in 1957 and held court at Marino Ristorante near Paramount Studios for more than two decades, died of lung cancer Wednesday at his Los Angeles home, his family said.

For more than 50 years, Marino served unpretentious Neapolitan-style Italian cuisine at his Los Angeles restaurants.

Born Oct. 26, 1932, in Naples, Italy, he was the son of a merchant marine. He was one of 10 siblings; only four survived World War II. At 16, Marino also joined the merchant marine.

By 1952, he was working as a waiter in Los Angeles, and in 1957 opened an outdoor cafe, Via Veneto, on Sunset Plaza. Two of his successive restaurants -- Martoni’s on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood and Martoni Marquis on the Sunset Strip -- were said to be celebrity hangouts.

In 1976, Marino and his wife, Maria, moved back to Italy with their three children but returned to Hollywood to open Marino Ristorante on Melrose Avenue in 1983.

A son, Mario, will continue to run the restaurant. He co-owns La Bottega Marino trattorias in the Larchmont area and West Los Angeles with his brother, Salvatore, who also is the chef-owner of Il Grano in West Los Angeles.

Wayne Lewellen

Former executive at Paramount

Wayne Lewellen, 65, former longtime head of distribution for Paramount Pictures, died of cancer Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, according to publicist Sean Rossall.

During Lewellen’s 40-year career, he was responsible for the distribution of some of Hollywood’s most successful films, including “Titanic,” “Forrest Gump,” “Top Gun” and three of the four movies in the “Indiana Jones” saga.

Born in Texas, Lewellen began his career in 1965 for Warner Bros. in Dallas, where he booked the cartoons that accompanied features.

He joined Paramount in 1973 as the branch manager of the studio’s Texas-Oklahoma office after a four-year stint with Columbia Pictures.

He became head of distribution in the early 1990s and held the post until he left the studio in 2005.

“In my entire experience in the motion picture industry, no one did as good a job as Wayne Lewellen,” Sumner Redstone, owner and chief executive of Viacom Inc., said in a statement. “Not only was Wayne a good executive, he was a great and loyal friend.”

Emery Stoops

USC professor, philanthropist

Emery Stoops, 106, a USC alumnus, philanthropist and professor emeritus of the USC Rossiter School of Education, died Wednesday in Playa Vista, the university announced.

FOR THE RECORD:
Passings: In Saturday’s Section A, a brief obituary on USC alumnus, philanthropist and educator Emery Stoops misidentified USC’s Rossier School of Education as Rossiter. —

Stoops taught at USC for 17 years before retiring in 1970. In 1994, he and his wife, educator Joyce King Stoops, created a $1.25-million trust fund to establish an educational administration chair in their names at the USC Rossiter School of Education. Two years later, an additional $2.25-million gift from the couple -- along with a $250,000 contribution from the Rita H. Small Charitable Trust -- endowed the chair in perpetuity.

Stoops was born in Pratt, Kan., and attended a prairie school before graduating from the University of Colorado in 1930. For several years, he grew wheat in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Later in the 1930s, he came to USC to work on a master’s in education,

He returned to Kansas to teach but came back to USC to earn his doctorate in educational administration and supervision in 1941.

After teaching at local high schools for several years, he returned to USC in 1953 as a professor of educational administration and supervision. After leaving the university, he started a second career in estate planning, life insurance and tax-sheltered annuities.

-- times staff reports news.obits@latimes.com