Douglas S Cramer

Douglas S. Cramer, who produced some of the most successful television shows of the 20th century, many — including “The Love Boat” and “Dynasty” — in partnership with Aaron Spelling, and who used his substantial wealth to become a leading art collector, died on Friday June 3 2021 at his home on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. He was 89. His husband, Hubert Bush, said the cause was kidney failure. Cramer had a long career in television, producing or helping to develop shows including “Peyton Place” in the 1960s, “The Odd Couple” in the 1970s and “Hotel” in the 1980s. In the 1990s he produced a string of television movies based on novels by Danielle Steel. Cramer joined forces with Mr. Spelling, the most prolific American television producer of the era, in the mid-1970s. “The Love Boat,” which they produced jointly, ran for 250 episodes beginning in 1977, He also amassed a collection that included both known names and up-and-coming talents, and he made significant gifts to museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, whose director, Glenn D. Lowry cited Mr. Cramer’s donation of “a superb group of paintings and sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly, among others.” Douglas Schoolfield Cramer Jr. was born on Aug. 22, 1931, in Louisville, Ky. After six months at Northwestern University in Illinois, he left college at 18 and went to live in New York, securing a job as a production assistant at Radio City Music Hall. The Korean War in 1950 led him to conclude that “I’d rather be at the University of Cincinnati than fighting in Korea,” as he put it in the oral history; he eventually earned an English degree there. He returned to New York as a graduate student at Columbia University, obtaining a master’s degree and also making a start on a career as a playwright. In the early 1960s he took a job at ABC. From ABC Mr. Cramer moved to 20th Century Fox, and then to Paramount. Mr. Cramer’s marriage to the gossip columnist Joyce Haber ended in divorce in the 1970s. A daughter, Courtney, died in 2004, and a son, Douglas III, died in 2015. Mr. Cramer began his relationship with Mr. Bush in 1991, and they married in 2006. A brother, Peyton, also survives him.