Dorothea G. Petrie, Two-Time Emmy-Winning Producer of Telefilms, Dies at 95
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Dorothea G. Petrie, a two-time Emmy winner and founding member of the Producers Guild of America who guided telefilms starring the likes of Jean Stapleton, Denzel Washington, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, has died. She was 95.
Petrie died Tuesday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, her family announced.
Survivors include her sons Daniel Petrie Jr., the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Beverly Hills Cop, and Donald Petrie, director of films including Mystic Pizza and Grumpy Old Men. She was married to Emmy-winning director Daniel Petrie from 1957 until his death in 2004.
Petrie won her Emmys in 1986 and 1990 for her work on a pair of Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations: Love Is Never Silent, directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Mare Winningham, Cloris Leachman and Phyllis Frelich at NBC, and Caroline?, starring Stephanie Zimbalist and George Grizzard at CBS.
She received another Emmy nom for outstanding drama/comedy special for 1987’s Foxfire, starring Tandy and Cronyn for CBS.
Her producing credits also included 1981’s Angel Dusted, starring Stapleton for NBC; 1984’s License to Kill, featuring Washington for CBS; 1985’s Picking Up the Pieces, starring Margot Kidder for CBS; 1991’s The Perfect Tribute, starring Jason Robards as Abraham Lincoln for ABC; and 1996’s Captive Heart: The James Mink Story, starring Louis Gossett Jr. for CBS.
Petrie began her career in New York as an actress and talent agent before stepping aside to raise her four children. She ended her hiatus in 1979 by writing and producing the CBS telefilm Orphan Train, starring Jill Eikenberry.
In 1992, she executive produced Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 for ABC, and also worked on Getting Out, starring Rebecca De Mornay, in 1994 for ABC; The Face on the Milk Carton, featuring Kellie Martin, in 1995 at CBS; Secrets, starring Veronica Hamel, in 1995 for ABC; The Echo of Thunder, starring Judy Davis, in 1998 at CBS; and The Song of the Lark, starring Maximilian Schell, in 2001 for PBS.
She was given the PGA’s Charles FitzSimons Award in 2011 for her many years of service to the guild.
At Women in Film, she helped spearhead the Legacy Project, an archive of interviews of female trailblazers now housed at UCLA, and was a fervent supporter of the American Film Institute.
In addition to her sons, survivors include her two daughters, Mary, a writer, and June, a producer and teacher, and her grandchildren, Emily, Charlie, Leila, Hannah, Fiona, Sam and Annie-Claire.
The family requests donations be made to the Daniel and Dorothea Petrie Scholarship at the American Film Institute.