Daniel Melnick, 77, film producer

LOS ANGELES - Daniel Melnick, 77, producer and former head of production at MGM and Columbia studios who was known for making literate and carefully crafted films that included

Network

, has died.

Mr. Melnick, who recently had undergone surgery for lung cancer, died Tuesday of multiple ailments at his home in Los Angeles, said his son, Peter.

"He was an extraordinary producer and an extraordinary executive," said Sherry Lansing, a former studio executive whom he mentored.

Inspired by the success of James Bond movies, Mr. Melnick made his mark on popular culture with the 1960s spy-spoof television series Get Smart, which starred Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart.

"James Bond and Inspector Clouseau - those are the two biggest hits out there. Take a hint," he told his writers, Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, according to a 2008 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Get Smart won several Emmy Awards, but Mr. Melnick received his in 1966 for producing Ages of Man, which featured John Gielgud in a Shakespearean turn, and in 1967 for a presentation of Death of a Salesman. He shared his Emmys with producing partner David Susskind.

The first film Mr. Melnick produced was Sam Peckinpah's violent Straw Dogs. Released in 1971, it led to Melnick's being offered a job at MGM, his son said.

After joining the studio in 1972, Mr. Melnick rose to head of worldwide production, mining the vaults to help create the That's Entertainment greatest-hits franchise.

He also oversaw such films as the Neil Simon comedy The Sunshine Boys and Network, the biting 1976 satire of television that foreshadowed the ensuing decades.

While in charge of production at Columbia in the late 1970s, he helped develop the divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer, the nuclear drama The China Syndrome and the violent Midnight Express.

For nine months in 1978, Mr. Melnick served as president of Columbia after studio president David Begelman was ousted in an embezzlement scandal.

The next year, he produced Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, which earned praise for experimenting with the musical genre.

Regarding his approach to filmmaking, Mr. Melnick told the New York Times in 1990: "What I try to do is identify and work with the most talented people I can get."

He was born April 21, 1932, in New York to Benjamin and Celia Melnick. His father was a Russian immigrant who died after a car crash when his son was 9.

He attended New York University and served in the Army in the 1950s. Stationed in Oklahoma and Fort Dix, he produced entertainment for the troops.

In 1955, he married Linda Rodgers, daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and mother of Peter Melnick. Mr. Melnick and his wife divorced in 1971. He never remarried but had a daughter from another relationship.