Steven Bernhardt; Film Producer and Director

Steven Bernhardt, film producer, writer and director whose credits ranged from the television series “Maverick” to the motion picture “Tempest,” has died of cancer. He was 62.

Bernhardt, son of the better-known filmmaker Curtis Bernhardt, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles.

The younger Bernhardt, whose mother was ballerina Pearl Argyle, fled Nazi Germany with his family as a young child and grew up in Los Angeles, where he earned a film degree at UCLA.

Although he occasionally worked with his father--notably as associate producer of the elder Bernhardt’s 1964 “Kisses for My President”--he never achieved his father’s international following.

Steve Bernhardt, as he was usually credited, began his career assisting Charles Bloch in researching and outlining novels for motion pictures. He worked as an assistant director at ZIV and Desilu TV Productions before forming Pearlayne Productions. As an assistant director, he worked on the 1950s and 1960s small-screen series “Maverick,” starring James Garner, and “Batman” and “Peyton Place,” as well as the landmark 1969 motion picture “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Bernhardt produced the 1972 Brian de Palma-directed comedy “Get to Know Your Rabbit,” starring Tom Smothers as a tap-dancing magician.

In the mid-1970s, Bernhardt supervised production for Max Baer Jr. and then joined Mace Neufeld productions as vice president of motion picture development and production.

Bernhardt co-produced Paul Mazursky’s comedy film based on Shakespeare’s “Tempest” in 1980.

He is survived by a daughter, Emily Troper; a brother, Tony, and two grandsons.

Services will be private. The family has asked that any memorial donations be sent to the Cedars-Sinai Hospice Program, 444 S. San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048.