Don Jurwich, a director and producer who worked on series including Scooby-Doo, Spider-Man, and G.I. Joe, died of natural causes on July 13. He was 87.
Born in L.A. on January 1, 1934, Jurwich studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He started out in the animation industry in the mid-1950s at Graphic Films, and soon racked up credits at Ray Patin Productions, Quartet Films, and Jay Ward Productions. You can listen to him speak about his career in this interview.
By the mid-1960s, he’d landed at Hanna-Barbera working on The Flintstones. Jurwich would go on to produce and direct series including Super Friends, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Richie Rich, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, The Smurfs (for which he was nominated for a Daytime Emmy), and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. He also produced the primetime special Scooby Goes Hollywood.
