Stuart Regen; Producer and Art Dealer

Stuart Regen, a prominent art dealer and the executive producer of the highly successful film “Leaving Las Vegas,” has died. He was 39.

Regen owned the Regen Projects gallery in West Hollywood. He died Tuesday night at USC/Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Center and Hospital of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his wife, Shaun Caley Regen, said Wednesday.

Although art was his field, Regen became interested in motion pictures “just by moving to Hollywood,” his wife said. He had been involved in one film, an adaptation of Richard Ford’s “Bright Spring,” when he came across a copy of John O’Brien’s semiautobiographical novel about an alcoholic who goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. Regen was instantly attracted by the cover art.

“You know the cliche, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ ” Regen said in 1995. “But I looked at that cool cover and thought, ‘I’m going to love this book.’ And then I loved the first page, and the way Sera was spelled, with an E.”

Regen was so impressed he tracked down the author, met him at a coffee shop near his gallery and optioned the then out-of-print 1990 book for a couple thousand dollars. He saw O’Brien only that one time. The author shot himself to death April 10, 1994, just before “Leaving Las Vegas” went into production.

The art dealer had a tough three years moving the film to fruition.

“I knew it would be hard from the beginning because it’s a tragedy,” he said, “and tragedy in Hollywood is sort of the antichrist.”

After major studios turned down the project, Regen and a partner made the film with an independent company, Lumiere, for $3.6 million.

The 1995 film, directed by Mike Figgis, earned strong box office returns as well as major critical acclaim and a best-actor Academy Award for Nicolas Cage.

Regen was an unlikely movie producer, although he was highly respected in the art world.

Born in New York City, he studied arts administration at Skidmore College. He worked successively for the alternative art space P.S. 1 in Long Island City, N.Y., the Rudolf Zwirner Gallery in Cologne, Germany, and the Fred Hoffman Gallery in Santa Monica.

In 1989, the young art dealer opened his own Stuart Regen Gallery on Almont Drive in West Hollywood. In 1992, a year after he married, he renamed the gallery Regen Projects and moved it down the street.

In addition to his wife, Regen is survived by his mother, Barbara Gladstone; his grandmother, Evelyn Levitt; two brothers, David and Richard Regen; and three nephews.

A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Any contributions in his honor can be made to the Stuart Regen Memorial Fund at that museum, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles 90012.