George Cooper Stevens, Jr. is an American award-winning film and television writer, director, producer, and founder of the American Film Institute. He has received eleven Emmys, two Peabody Awards and eight Writers Guild of America Awards for his television productions, including the annual Kennedy Center Honors, Separate But Equal and The Murder of Mary Phagan. His production of The Thin Red Line was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture. While working with the United States Information Agency, he commissioned Charles Guggenheim's Academy Award winning 1964 short documentary, Nine from Little Rock. Alfred A. Knopf published his recent book, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood?s Golden Age at The American Film Institute. He is also a playwright, writing the one-person play Thurgood, the story of the life of Thurgood Marshall, starring Laurence Fishburne, who was nominated for a Tony as best actor in a play on Broadway in 2008. 

April 3rd, 1932 in Los Angeles (Age 92)