Paul Gregory

Paul Gregory died on Christmas Day 2015, in an Desert Hot Springs apartment where he had lived alone for many years. The cause was an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Gregory started out as an Iowa farm boy with a love of literature and made himself into the millionaire producer of 17 Broadway shows, notably “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” which opened in 1954. He also produced many television plays and Hollywood films, including “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), the terrifying tale of a murderous preacher, and an adaptation of Norman Mailer’s World War II epic, “The Naked and the Dead” (1958). He was born James Burton Lenhart on a farm near Waukee, Iowa, on Aug. 27, 1920, to James and Esther (Taylor) Lenhart. When James was 9 the family moved to Des Moines, where he attended public schools. MGM, glimpsing another Gregory Peck, signed him up and changed his name to Paul Gregory. But after a few minor roles he quit acting. In 1964 he married Janet Gaynor, the star of silent and talking pictures who won the first Oscar for best actress in 1929, when the Academy Awards began. She died in 1984. He married Kathryn Obergfel, an art collector and gallery owner, in 1998. She died in 2001. Mr. Gregory, who lived in retirement at Desert Hot Springs, about 10 miles north of Palm Springs, apparently had no immediate survivors.