Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, an LA-based retirement community set up by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, has announced the death of Allen Daviau, the man who brought alive Steven Spielberg's extraordinary vision for E.T. on the big screen.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is one of Hollywood's greatest movies and an all-time classic. After its release, it surpassed Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time, only for the record to be broken by Spielberg's Jurassic Park.
The veteran cinematographer, who has also worked on Spielberg's Empire of the Sun and Barry Levinson's Bugsy, was staying at the facility after becoming wheelchair-bound post a surgery in 2012. His other movies include the likes of Avalon, Congo, Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom and Van Helsing.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, Allen is the fourth resident at the place to have died of the disease. The other three were actor John Breier, Allan Garfield, and Ann Sullivan, a veteran Disney animator, who has worked on a number of Disney animation films, including The Lion King.