Robert B. Radnitz

Robert Bonoff Radnitz (August 9, 1924 – June 6, 2010) was an American film producer best known for his production of the family films Sounder and Where the Lilies Bloom. He produced several movies, many of which were adapted from children's literature.

An only child, Radnitz was born on August 9, 1924, in Great Neck, New York. As an asthmatic child, Radnitz would spend his weekends attending double features with his father, collecting themes that he would use throughout his filmmaking career. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in drama and English and spent a year on the university's faculty teaching English after graduating.

His start in the entertainment field was as an apprentice to theater director Harold Clurman. Radnitz went off on his own in the 1950s, producing the Broadway theatre productions of The Frogs of Spring and The Young and the Beautiful. On October 16, 1966, Radnitz married Joanna Crawford, author of the first novel Birch Interval which was then being adapted on film.

Radnitz moved to Hollywood, starting work for 20th Century Fox as a script consultant. In the 1960s, Radnitz produced several films with director James B. Clark. One of his first productions was the 1960 film A Dog of Flanders about a Belgian farm boy who aspires to be an artist. The film helped develop Radnitz's reputation as "a maker of high-quality movies for children and their parents", according to critic Valerie J. Nelson of the Los Angeles Times.

His 1961 film Misty tells the story of a family and their efforts to raise a filly born to a wild horse. Island of the Blue Dolphins in 1964 was based on the true story of a Native American girl left alone for 18 years on an island. Time described the film as "the very model of what children's pictures ought to be" in a film that "provided sentiment without sentimentality and a moral without a lecture".

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