ARTNEWSPRESS: Lan O’Kun, a multi-talent whose lengthy collaboration with sister-in-law and entertainer Shari Lewis dropped at life Lamb Chop and different beloved characters, died Jan. 9 at his house in Malibu. He was 87 and handed from coronary heart failure.
A composer, lyricist, author, performer, storyteller, and pianist, O’Kun created a whole bunch of scripts and songs for ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her puppets Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, and Hush Pet.,
Born January 13, 1932 in New York Metropolis, O’Kun was enrolled in New York’s Excessive College of Music and Artwork. He graduated from Syracuse College in New York.
His profession as a author contains scripts for “The New Twilight Zone,” “Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology,” “The Love Boat,” “Freeway to Heaven,” “Apple’s Approach,” “That Was the Week That Was,” and plenty of episodes of the award-winning “Perception” anthology collection. His Hallmark Corridor of Fame particular “The Littlest Angel” is thought to be a TV traditional, as is his kids’s collection, “Tales of the Riverbank,” a much-loved British TV present. He additionally wrote the ebook, lyrics, music and produced “The Juggler of Notre Dame”, for which he gained an Emmy. For a few years, he was the Musical Director at NBC tv.
O’Kun’s longest-running collaboration with performer-ventriloquist Shari Lewis lasted 44 years. O’Kun was Ms. Lewis’s brother-in-law, having married her youthful sister, Barbara, in 1960. Their collaboration outlined the favored puppets Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, and Hush Pet, and resulted in quite a few Emmy, Peabody, and different awards. After Lewis’s handed in 1998, O’Kun continued to write down and work along with her daughter (his niece) Mallory Lewis. Via their efforts, Lamb Chop lives on.
Different high-profile artists with whom O’Kun labored embody Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Duke Ellington, and Peggy Lee, in addition to the friends who appeared on varied Shari Lewis reveals, together with Martin Sheen, Dom DeLuise, Ossie Davis, Jerry Orbach, Fred Gwynne, and others.
He wrote the Broadway musicals “Coming of Age” with lyricist Sammy Cahn, in addition to the Broadway present “Pickwick.” Different endeavors embody occasions and programming for the New York and Canadian World’s Gala’s, the animated function “Puss ‘n’ Boots,” and youngsters’s books and movies in partnership with Shari Lewis.
In later years, he wrote and narrated audiobooks of quick fantasy tales together with “The Dragons of Broad Swatch” and numerous poems.
O’Kun is survived by his spouse of 60 years, Barbara O’Kun; niece Mallory Lewis; grand-nephew Jamie Hood; and a big prolonged household. The O’Kuns’ son, Shawn, predeceased his father in 2017.
Memorial plans haven’t been introduced.
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James Ashley
