David L. Wolper, Producer of Groundbreaking ‘Roots’, Is Dead at 82

Laurie Wierzbicki/BEI for Warner Bros., via Reuters

David L. Wolper, an award-winning movie and television producer best known for the groundbreaking mini-series “Roots,” died on Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 82.

The cause was congestive heart failure and complications of Parkinson’s disease, said Dale Olson, Mr. Wolper’s publicist.

Mr. Wolper produced hundreds of films and television shows, including the hit 1983 mini-series “The Thorn Birds,” a romantic drama set in Australia, with Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward. But the work with which he was most closely associated was “Roots,” shown in eight parts on ABC in 1977.

Read the whole story at The New York Times, by Richard Severo