Jorn Winther, a former soap opera executive producer and director, was killed November 9 in an automobile accident in front of Palm Desert High School outside Palm Springs. He was on a business trip and on his way back to his Sherman Oaks home, his wife of 31 years, Claire, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 88.In the 1960s, Winther directed for the ABC music showcase Shindig! and worked on variety shows hosted by Jonathan Winters, Sonny & Cher and Barbara McNair.
He later spent more than five years as an executive producer and director on ABC's One Life to Live, and five years in those roles during two stints at All My Children. He directed episodes of other soap operas including NBC's Another World and Santa Barbara, and the syndicated Rituals. He also served as senior executive producer for NBC's Generations and produced Canadian drama Family Passions.
His shows collected 37 Emmy nominations and won 12.
Winther was the director on the landmark David Frost-Richard Nixon interviews that kept television and radio audiences transfixed over four consecutive nights in 1977. Winther and Frost already had collaborated on a pair of 1975 "salute" specials, about the Guinness Book of World Records and The Beatles, when the British television personality contacted the director, asking if he would help with an interview session that Frost had set up with the disgraced former president.