Stephen Owen Frankfurt
Stephen Owen Frankfurt of Quiogue and Manhattan died on Friday, September 28. He was 80.
Mr. Frankfurt was born on December 17, 1931 in Manhattan, the first of two children of Blanche and Milton Frankfurt. In 1967, he became the youngest president of Young & Rubicam, the world’s second largest advertising agency. He helped bring the 1960s creative revolution to television by building a creative department that ushered in an “era of the art directed commercial” and that launched directors and producers of the TV industry.
Under his leadership, Young & Rubicam produced award-winning advertising for Lays Potato Chips (“Bet you can’t eat just one”), Bristol Meyers (“The Excedrin Headache”) and public service campaigns for The Peace Corps and Partnership for a Drug-Free America. In 1983, Mr. Frankfurt was inducted onto the Art Directors Hall of Fame.
Mr. Frankfurt’s revolutionary influence was also felt in Hollywood when he designed the opening titles for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Alien,” “That’s Entertainment” and “Superman: The Movie” to name a few of the more than 55 films he worked on with his partners, Gips and Balkind.
Mr. Frankfurt gave generously by working with the Children’s Television Workshop and serving the boards of the American Film Institute, NYC Center of Music and Drama, NYU School of the Arts, Partnership for a Drug-Free America and Pratt Institute, from which Mr. Frankfurt graduated in 1957, and from which he earned a doctorate in 1975.
Besides his family, Mr. Frankfurt’s other great joy was his home on Quiogue. He delighted in giving tours of his farm, showing his llamas, French geese, exotic chickens, ducks, tortoises and wild turkeys. If a frog was sunning itself on his pond, he might snatch it up to have a closer look.
Mr. Frankfurt is survived by his wife, Kay Gadda Frankfurt of Quiogue and Manhattan; three daughters, Abigail, Emily, and Rebecca Nadler and her husband Lee, all of Manhattan; three sons, Peter and his wife Liseanne of Los Angeles, and Jaime and Nicholas of Manhattan; a brother, Michael and his wife Tiiu of Manhattan; and three grandchildren, Sacha and Ines Frankfurt, and Jasper Nadler.
Funeral services took place at Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan on Tuesday, October 2.
Memorial donations may be made to either the Wildlife Rescue Center, 228 West Montauk Highway, Hampton Bays, NY 11946 or to the Quogue Wildlife Refuge, 3 Old Country Road, Quogue, NY 11959.
on Oct 1, 2012