Philip Rogers, a producer with credits including the 1960s ABC sitcom Love on a Rooftop and the 1988 action film Shoot to Kill, starring Sidney Poitier, has died. He was 90.
Rogers died Feb. 27 at his home in Las Vegas, his wife of 49 years, Stephanie Rogers, announced.
As president of Century Park Pictures, Rogers served as an executive producer on Shoot to Kill, which was directed by Roger Spottiswoode and also starred Tom Berenger and Kirstie Alley.
Later, he headed the PhiliPiCo Pictures banner, where in 1996 and ’97 he developed and produced for Lifetime the telefilms The Haunting of Lisa, starring Cheryl Ladd, and The Hired Heart, starring Penelope Ann Miller.
After moving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2000, he produced another telefilm, the 2001 straight-to-video thriller Blind Terror, starring Nastassja Kinski.
Born on July 26, 1934, in Oxnard, California, Rogers as a youngster was signed to an acting contract at 20th Century Fox. He graduated from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles and, with a bachelor’s degree in dramatic arts, Cal State L.A.
Rogers played minor-league baseball with the Portland Beavers and served two years in the Special Services entertainment branch of the U.S. Army as an emcee for a touring choral group.
He began his Hollywood career as a casting director with Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, and moved up to associate produce two ABC comedies: 1966-67’s Love on a Rooftop, which featured Peter Duel and Judy Carne as a young couple in San Francisco, and 1968-69’s The Ugliest Girl in Town, starring Peter Kastner as a guy pretending to be a woman.
Rogers later worked as a vice president at Universal Television, as a literary and talent agent and as a principle in Barry & Enright/Rogers Productions, and he was a member of the film and TV academies and the Hollywood Radio & TV Society.
In addition to his wife, survivors include his sons, Jeffrey and Todd. Celebrations of life in Las Vegas and Los Angeles are being planned.
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