David Yarnell, an Emmy-nominated director and producer, has died at 96. Yarnell’s wife, Toni Howard, shared that the filmmaker died peacefully in his Los Angeles home.
Yarnell has served as a producer for decades, working on such television projects as “Candid Camera,” “In Concert” and “Love, American Style.” Yarnell more recently produced “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” which picked up three nominations at the 2019 Academy Awards.
A graduate of Brooklyn Law School and Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan, Yarnell started his career working in radio, eventually becoming program director for Channel 5 in New York. He later created the radio series “Firing Line” and produced radio broadcasts of Muhammad Ali fights.
After marrying CAA agent Howard in 1989, the pair created Toni and David Yarnell Merit Award of Excellence in Architecture and Art at Cooper Union.
Yarnell soon moved to television, becoming VP of Programming at Metromedia and RKO Genera and an executive at Screen Gems. He served as a producer and director for “Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater,” earning an Emmy nomination for his work on the show, which spanned more than a decade.
Yarnell picked up a number of producing credits on television: for the CBS movie “Deep in My Heart” (for which Anne Bancroft won an Emmy), ABC’s “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert,” NBC’s “Candid Camera” specials, ABC’s “That’s Incredible,” ABC’s “Love, American Style” (which later spun off into “Happy Days”) and more.
The filmmaker eventually created DY Productions, a production company that allowed him to focus on documentary productions. Yarnell began producing a number of documentaries that celebrated film and television, including “AFI 100 Years” for TNT and “Television’s Greatest Performances Part I & II” for ABC.
“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” became one of Yarnell’s last major projects, picking up Oscar nominations for Best Actress (Melissa McCarthy), Best Supporting Actor (Richard E. Grant) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty). Marielle Heller directed the film based on Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir of the same name.
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