Don Widener, 73; Writer, Producer of Documentaries on Dangers to Environment
Don Widener, the writer and producer who made award-winning and often controversial television documentaries about environmental and nuclear dangers, has died. He was 73.
Widener died of lung cancer April 22 at a hospice in Henderson, Nev., said Dorris Halsey, his longtime Los Angeles agent.
In the 1960s, working for Los Angeles’ KNBC-TV Channel 4, Widener earned two local Emmys and a DuPont award for investigative broadcast journalism.
But he fell victim somewhat to his own success when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. initiated an eight-year court fight over his interview with an engineer at the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant for his 1971 documentary “Powers That Be.” The utility claimed that Widener filmed the interview and later dubbed in a soundtrack of an earlier off-the-record discussion to embarrass the engineer and the company.
Widener countersued for libel, claiming the utility’s efforts to keep the program off the air -- it was shown once locally -- ruined his producing career. A jury awarded Widener $7.75 million in damages, but a judge voided that ruling. As the case plowed through appellate courts, it was settled, with PG&E; paying Widener $475,000 in 1979.
Nevertheless, Widener told a Times interviewer a few months afterward: “PG&E; succeeded in keeping the film off the air. It tied up this documentary producer for eight years and made me unable to produce anything worthy of the name.... You might say I won my point and some money, but everyone else, including the American people, still lost.”
Widener had a close association with actor Jack Lemmon, who narrated “Powers That Be,” which warned of the dangers of a major reactor accident, nuclear waste disposal and the long-term effects of low-level radiation. The film, and Lemmon’s 1979 commercial motion picture “The China Syndrome,” nearly matched what would happen in the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in Pennsylvania later in 1979.
“A lot of people assume that because Lemmon did the documentary with me and did this film, they assume that we are antinuclear, and we aren’t,” Widener told The Times after the Three Mile Island disaster. “We’re not antinuclear; we’re pro-public. As soon as the problems are cleared up, we’ll be for it.”
A Times reviewer, who screened the “Powers That Be” documentary before its single airing on May 18, 1971, on KNBC-TV, wrote: “Widener and Lemmon fairly and squarely present both sides of the controversy.... Widener’s clear, forceful narrative, delivered devastatingly by Lemmon ... makes you sit at attention.”
Lemmon narrated Widener’s documentaries “Plutonium: Element of Risk,” also about nuclear problems; and two on environmental concerns, “Timetable for Disaster” and “The Slow Guillotine.”
Widener wrote “Lemmon,” an authorized biography of the film star, in 1975. He also wrote the 1970 nonfiction book “Timetable for Disaster,” about global environmental problems, and a 1974 novel, “N.U.K.E.E.,” a farcical warning about nuclear power.
The eclectic Widener also tried his hand at screenplays, including one for “N.U.K.E.E.”; “The Tenth Option,” on assignment from Marlon Brando; “Night of the Possum”; “Scuttle”; and “The Ballad of Bigfoot.”
A native of Holdenville, Okla., Widener studied journalism at Compton College and served in the Air Force during the Korean War. He began his career writing for newspapers and aerospace companies in Los Angeles, then joined KNBC in 1964 and remained until 1970, when he became an independent film producer and writer. He was a founding member of the advisory board of the California Museum of Science and Industry.
A widower, Widener is survived by two sons, Jeffrey and Christopher.