Jack Wiener, 79; Co-Produced ‘F/X’ and ‘The Eagle Has Landed’

Jack Wiener, 79, who co-produced “The Eagle Has Landed,” “F/X” and other films, died Monday of a heart attack at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He also had suffered from cancer, his longtime friend Robin French said.

Wiener, a native of Paris, came to the U.S. in 1949, and eventually joined MGM’s publicity department. He switched to Columbia Pictures in 1960 as an advertising and, later, production executive. In 1973, he formed Kelso Productions and became an independent producer.

“Eagle” and “F/X” received good reviews. “Eagle” (1976), based on Jack Higgins’ action bestseller and directed by John Sturges, had “hardly a dull moment,” film critic Leonard Maltin said. “F/X,” the 1986 thriller starring Bryan Brown as a movie special effects man caught up in a real-life assassination plot, was praised by a Times critic for having “a throwaway, seductive air, the better to lure us in.”