Faye Schwab, a producer on films including The Morning After, Chattahoochee and Demolition Man, died Friday of natural causes in Reseda, her family announced. She was 101.
Schwab also developed the 1986-87 NBC sitcom Easy Street, starring Loni Anderson and co-created by Hugh Wilson, and was a co-executive producer on the 2003 Hallmark Channel telefilm Love Comes Softly, starring Katherine Heigl.
Schwab had launched a women’s sportswear line when she got into Hollywood and served as an executive producer on Sidney Lumet’s The Morning After (1986), the psychological thriller starring Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges.
She then was a producer on Mick Jackson’s Chattahoochee (1989), the drama set in a Florida state psychiatric hospital starring Gary Oldman and Dennis Hopper, and Marco Brambilla’s Demolition Man (1993), the sci-fi flick toplined by Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes.
Born in Detroit to Morris Pradell and Esther Kostman on April 17, 1924, Schwab joined the Ford Motor Co. to support the country’s efforts during World War II, then earned a scholarship to the Meinzinger Art School in the Motor City, where her passion for design took form.
In the mid-1940s, she moved west and launched Sun Fun of California, which sold Capri pants, fitted tops and casual-chic styles meant to express the West Coast aesthetic. “Her designs reflected what Faye herself embodied: modern, confident and ahead of her time,” her family noted.
Survivors include her sons, Jeff, Nate and Eric, and her grandchildren, Brett, Julia and Ethan. She was preceded in death by another son, Alan (Nate’s twin).
Schwab was married twice, first to Arthur Edelstein and then to Aaron Schwab, who in 1957 helped launch El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana at a time when many clubs excluded Jewish members. (He also was a producer on Chattahoochee and Demolition Man.)
She also shared “a lifelong bond” with late two-time Tony-winning producer Chase Mishkin.
Services for her were held Monday at Glen Haven & Sholom Memorial Park in Sylmar, California.
Her family described her as “a socialite with substance, glamorous yet grounded … she will be remembered as a woman who lived a century’s worth of dreams and achieved them.”
