Ralph D. Hetzel; Motion Picture Assn. Executive

Ralph D. Hetzel, 81, film executive who was interim president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America until he was succeeded by Jack Valenti. A labor leader, Hetzel served as executive secretary to John L. Lewis and Philip Murray in the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1951 he was named an assistant administrator of the Economic Stabilization Agency at the Commerce Department under Eric Johnston, who was on loan to the government from MPAA. When Johnston returned to the film industry as MPAA president, he brought Hetzel along as his vice president. Hetzel took over as interim president when Johnston retired, and served until Valenti was appointed. Hetzel later became dean of fine and professional arts at Kent State University in Ohio and then provost of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. An accomplished artist, his landscapes of the Southwest and other locales hang in several museums and were in the private collections of Edward R. Murrow and R. Buckminster Fuller. In Encino on Thursday of complications of Parkinson’s disease.