Denis O’Dell, a producer on two Beatles’ videos as perfectly as “How I Received the War,” “Robin and Marian” and “Heaven’s Gate,” died Dec. 30 from pure results in in Almería, Spain at his dwelling in San José, Cabo de Gata. He was 98.
Father of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” producer Denise O’Dell and grandfather of Denis Pedregosa, producer of Netflix hit “The Paramedic,” O’Dell’s link with films stretches again to the ‘40s.
He had already manufactured 6 flicks, these as Brian Desmond Hurst’s “The Playboy of the Western World” in 1962, in advance of his association with the Beatles which started in qualified phrases with O’Dell getting an affiliate producer credit rating on Richard Lester’s “A Tricky Day’s Evening,” starring the Beatles and launched in 1964.
O’Dell is typically credited with persuading John Lennon to go to Almería to star in absurdist WWII drama “How I Received the War,” during whose shoot Lennon composed a lot of “Strawberry Fields Endlessly,” a milestone in the Beatles’ output. An affiliate producer on “How I Received the War,” O’Dell took a full producer credit score on the built for Television set “Magical Secret Tour,” directed by George Harrison, Lennon and Paul McCartney.
These kinds of was the Beatles’ gratitude to O’Dell that on “You Know My Name (Search Up the Amount),” 1 of the very last songs the group recorded, Lennon introduces McCartney by the identify of “Denis O’Bell.”
O’Dell would go on to make significant movies, these types of as Sidney Lumet’s 1973 “The Offence,” Lester’s 1975 Flashman-based “Royal Flash” and previously mentioned all 1976’s “Robin and Marian,” starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, and Michael Cimino’s 1980 “Heaven’s Gate,” exactly where he worked on the film’s prologue, set and shot in Oxford, but had little to do with the rest of the movie.
By then, O’Dell experienced made a next residence in Almería, residing in a spectacularly-situated house on a compact hill overlooking a cobalt blue Mediterranean Sea. There he proved a generous host to anybody from the film business browsing Almería and an integral part of its important international shoot scene which observed Spielberg film element of 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Final Crusade” just down the road at the Playa de Monsúl and Ridley Scott shoot a lot of “Exodus” in Almería.
Even with ranking as 1 of Spain’s most important movie producers, O’Dell under no circumstances sought the limelight. In a uncommon minute of general public notice, in 2013 he was bestowed with the Almería Land of Cinema Award by the Almería Small Film Pageant, its best honor.
He is survived by daughter Denise O’Dell, who co-made “Sahara” and “The Kingdom of Heaven,” and grandson Denis Pedregosa whose creation credits also get in “Cold Skin” and “Black Mirror’s” “Black Museum” episode.