Igo Kantor, Producer and Post-Production Executive, Dies at 89

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Igo Kantor, whose Hollywood career took him from Howard Hughes’ projection room to supervising post-production on “Easy Rider” and producing B-movies like “Kingdom of the Spiders” and “Mutant,” died Oct. 15. He was 89.

Kantor, who was born in Vienna and raised in Lisbon, met “Dillinger” director Max Nosseck on the ship to New York. Nosseck gave him an intro to his projectionist brother while Kantor was studying at UCLA, leading to a job screening screened movies for Hughes at a private theater while he was secretly dating actress Jean Peters, whom Hughes later married.

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In the early 1960s, Kantor opened post-production house Synchrofilm, becoming the post-production supervisor on “The Monkees,” which led to Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson hiring him to head post-production on “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces” and “The King of Marvin Gardens.”

He received Emmy nominations three years in a row for his work on the Bob Hope Christmas specials.

According to his son Loren, he also worked with Dennis Hopper on the infamous “The Last Movie.” Loren Kantor recounts that Hopper asked Kantor to steal the negative from Universal and drive it to Taos, New Mexico after Hopper was removed from the editing room, though Kantor declined.

Kantor closed his post production facility in 1971 after Dalton Trumbo reportedly left his bill unpaid for “Johnny Got His Gun.” Kantor then moved on to Warner Bros., where he supervised post-production music on “The Exorcist.”

For the rest of his career, he produced low-budget films including “Hardly Working” with Jerry Lewis, “Act of Piracy” with Gary Busey and “Shaker Run.”

A longtime member of the Motion Picture Academy, Kantor spoke seven languages and made movies and TV shows in Greece, South Africa, New Zealand, South Korea and Germany.

He is survived by his wife Enid, a former production coordinator; son Loren and daughter-in-law Gabrielle; son Mark and daughter-in-law Lijian; daughter Lisa and daughter-in-law Renee and two grandsons, Anthony and Andre.

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