Frank Daniel; Oscar Winner Headed U.S. Film Schools

Frantisek “Frank” Daniel, a Czech-born filmmaker who headed four major American film schools, wrote myriad motion picture scripts, books and plays and produced about 40 movies, has died. He was 69.

Daniel, whose “The Shop on Main Street” earned the Academy Award in 1965 for best foreign picture, died Wednesday of a heart attack at his home in Palm Springs.

After studying music, Daniel attended the Moscow Film Institute and then became dean of the Prague film school, FAMU, and headed a prolific Czech film production company.

He fled Czechoslovakia when the Soviet Union invaded in 1968, and took a Ford Foundation position to study film education programs in the United States.

A year later, he was asked to become the first dean of the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Study of Motion Pictures. He later co-chaired the film division at New York’s Columbia University, served as artistic director of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and, from 1986 until his retirement in 1990, chaired the USC School of Cinema-Television.

Although he firmly espoused film schools as the best route into the industry, Daniel’s candid comments on film curricula and students did not always endear him to others.

“All schools create people who behave like fools,” he told The Times in 1988. “They have the mentality of servants and want to be seen as great masters. To go through the journeyman training seems too bad or too humiliating.”

Daniel is survived by his wife, Eva; two sons, Michal and Martin; a brother and a grandson.

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the USC School of Cinema-Television.