David Yarnell, producer of the Melissa McCarthy– and Richard E. Grant-starring Can You Ever Forgive Me? movie and a slew of early radio and TV series, has died. He was 96.
Yarnell died on Jan. 28 at his home in Los Angeles, with his wife Toni Howard at his side, the talent agency CAA confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Born on March 14, 1929 in Brooklyn, Yarnell graduated from Brooklyn Law School and also attended Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan. That led him to pursue early work in radio, film and television.
While in radio, Yarnell became the program director for Channel 5 in New York. He created the weekly radio show Firing Line, with host William F. Buckley, worked with David Frost and produced the radio broadcast of early Muhammed Ali boxing matches.
In a January 2019 profile in The Hollywood Reporter, Yarnell recalled his early career breaks: “I reached out to William F. Buckley in the early 1960s, and he agreed to do a weekly show. And I give myself credit — or I condemn myself — for getting an authentic conservative voice on [the air]. Then I did specials and I became a hired hand and worked with David Frost. I did a boxing match with Muhammad Ali, who was still under his original name of Cassius Clay. And I kind of whispered to him, ‘I need seven rounds to get all the commercials in.’ And he winked — and knocked him [Zora Folley] out in the seventh round. Then I was doing a weekly rock and roll music show and I decided I should be in Los Angeles.”
As he moved into TV, Yarnell’s credits include the Anne Bancroft-starrer Deep in My Heart, for which the actress won an Emmy and the American Masters documentary Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy. He served as vp of programming at Metromedia and RKO General, and later became an executive at Screen Gems.
Yarnell also directed Joe Bob Briggs for TNT for 11 years, created and produced In Concert for ABC, which later became known as Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, and did 1970s rock TV specials for The Rolling Stones, Queen and Black Sabbath.
Yarnell also produced multiple Candid Camera specials for NBC, That’s Incredible for ABC, specials featuring Roseanne Barr and Dolly Parton for HBO and the comedy anthology series Love, American Style for ABC, which was later spun off into the Happy Days series.
Yarnell launched his production company DY Productions as his focus turned to documentaries. And his love for Hollywood came through as he produced series like AFI 100 Years, a TNT series of 10 one-hour specials celebrating American cinema and Television’s Greatest Performances Part I & II for ABC.
In 2018, Yarnell produced Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a movie based on the memoir by Lee Israel that was plagued by production delays before rebounding to star Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. Yarnell optioned the book 20 years before the film was made and it was his relationship with Israel that allowed the project to move forward.
That’s before production on the movie was halted just days before principal photography. Yarnell in the 2019 THR profile recalled the movie’s collapse. “Nicole (Holofcener) and Julianne (Moore) clashed. Nobody is quite sure what created that unworkable situation. And the project collapsed with everybody signed up contractually — all the locations locked in, costuming, camera tests performed. And Fox Searchlight took a sizeable financial hit on this because of these commitments. Maybe $2 million. The budget was around $8 million.”
Eventually, the movie came back to life and McCarthy and Grant earned Oscar nominations for their performances in the Fox Searchlight film. In 1989, Yarnell married Hollywood talent agent Toni Howard.
Together, they established the Toni and David Yarnell Merit Award of Excellence in Architecture and Art at Cooper Union to pay it forward to aspiring creatives and continuing Yarnell’s philanthropic legacy.
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