Bruce Kessler OBITUARY

Bruce Kessler OBITUARY

Bruce Kessler, an international racing driver, Hollywood film and television director, innovative boat designer and global circumnavigator, died April 4 at his home in Marina del Rey, California, after a brief illness. He was 88.Beginning in 1953, when he was 17, with the help of a fake ID, he earned the nickname “Little Lead Foot” racing illegally as an amateur, soon advancing to the top ranks of drivers in a variety of sports and formula cars in California before turning professional and drivingand often winning or setting track recordsat major road-racing venues across the United States. At 21, in 1957, he began working in Europe as test driver before co-driving for Ferrari the following year with fellow American Dan Gurney in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where, in the dark of night, in the rain, he crashed into the wreckage of another car, escaping death by bailing out of his before it burst into flames. After surviving two more crashes in the following years, he retired from racing at 26 in 1962. That year he directed his first film, “The Sound of Speed,” a 19-minute short subject that earned its place as the United States entry in its category at the Cannes International Film Festival. Without dialogue, with only the sound of the engine, and with the camera mounted on the car for many shots to show the driver’s point of viewa technique he invented that was later adopted by countless other directors”The Sound of Speed” portrayed the intense drama of the testing of a Formula 1 racecar, the Scarab, on the track at Riverside Raceway. In the film the car is driven by his friend Lance Reventlow, collaborator with Kessler and a team of designers, engineers and mechanics to build and race it. This pathbreaking short film led to his being hired as a technical adviser on racing and chase sequences for Hollywood action movies, then as a script supervisor, and soon enough as a second-unit director for Howard Hawks on the stock-car racing film “Red Line 7000.” Hawks became his mentor and opened doors that led to his long career as a director of movies for television and hundreds of episodes of dozens of series including “The Rockford Files,” “McCloud,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The A-Team,” “The Flying Nun,” “CHiPs,” “Baretta,” “The Fall Guy,” “To Catch a Thief,” “The Monkees,” “The Commish” and many others. His reliability in bringing projects in on time and on budget brought him continuous employment for four decades as a hardworking director in an industry known for its relentless deadlines and unforgiving production pressures.A lifelong sport fisherman, while still directing, Kessler began his third career, as a boat concept innovator, using the hull of a fishing vessel to build a yacht, the Zopilote, on which passengers and crew could live comfortably and fish for marlin from a custom deck at the stern. He and his wife, the actress Joan Freeman Kessler, spent many years cruising and fishing in various waters all around North America and beyond. They circumnavigated the globe from 1990 to 1993, making port in 34 countries as one of the first trawler power yachts to complete such a round-the-world voyage. In their travels they clocked a total of some 100,000 nautical miles. In Kessler’s later years he was something of a legend in the boating community as his innovative hybrid concept of a yacht built on the hull of a commercial fishing trawler revolutionized the industry. Delta Marine, the fishing-boat builder that had to be cajoled into building the original Zopilote, is now a major producer of such yachts. He received many awards and gave frequent talks on the subject, which he once described as not unlike the modifications he and his friends made on their hot rods as teenagers in the early 1950s, changes that he called simply “logical” for improved performance. Bruce Michael Kessler was born March 23, 1936, in Seattle to parents Jack Kessler, a sportswear salesman, and Nina (Ifland) Kessler, who managed the household. In 1946 his parents, Bruce and his two younger siblings, Ricky and Mimi, moved to Los Angeles where the Kesslers founded a ladies’ swimwear company in partnership with the fashion designer Rose Marie Reid. Rose Marie Reid Swimsuits was so successful in the postwar economic boom years that in 1950 the Kesslers moved to Beverly Hills, where Bruce had the privilege to embark on his racing career amid a circle of close friends including such Hollywood legends as James Dean and Steve McQueen. He had no way of knowing at the time that he would have a longer and more prolific presence in that world than either of them, or that his innovations in boat design would make that arguably the most consequential of his three careers. He is survived by his wife, Joan, partner and first mate for 54 years; his brothers Rick and Stephen; and many nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews. He was predeceased by his sister, Miriam Kessler Warshow. Despite his many accomplishments and his renown in all three of his unusual pursuits, Kessler was without any pretense of his importance or elevated sense of his own celebrity. He was always just doing his own thing in his own way, learning from and collaborating with partners of complementary skills and expertise, and following instincts that seemed to him completely natural. Not long after a social event where he was asked for his autograph by an admirer, he said to his brother Rick, “Why would anyone want my autograph?” A scale model of his pioneering trawler yacht, the Zopilote, is displayed in a glass case in the lobby of the Del Rey Yacht Club in Marina del Rey.