‘Mission Impossible’ Producer Joseph Gantman Dead at 95

Emmy award winning producer Joseph Gantman died on Dec. 26, 2017 in Santa Monica according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter. He was 95 years-old.

Gantman won the Emmy award for Outstanding Drama for his consecutive years as the executive producer for Mission: Impossible television series, which ran from 1966-68. His work as a producer stretches from 1958 all the way to 1983, working on such shows as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., General Electric Theater, Hawaii Five-O and The Dukes of Hazzard.

He produced all but one of M:I’s 53 episodes when it originally aired on CBS while also bringing in two of his writers from his previous project Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Gantman was born on April 5, 1922. He went on to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, graduated from UCLA and attended the Yale School of Drama. He began his television career in 1954 as an assistant on the CBS series Mama.

He married Lucile Nudelman in 1949, and the two remained together until her death in 1987. They went on to have three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His middle child, Nina, confirmed Gantman’s passing to THR on Wednesday.