Sandy Frank, a television producer and distributor known for bringing Battle of the Planets to U.S. audiences, has died at the age of 97. He was born on July 11, 1929.
Frank began his career as a sales executive at Paramount Pictures in the late 1940s. He later worked at Guild Films and NBC before becoming president of worldwide sales at the Wrather Corporation.
In 1964, he founded Sandy Frank Program Sales, a television syndication company that later expanded its operations and was renamed Sandy Frank Entertainment in 1978. The company produced and distributed game shows including Name That Tune, The Dating Game, and Face the Music.
That same year, Frank produced and distributed Battle of the Planets, the English-language U.S. adaptation of the anime series Kagaku Ninja-Tai Gatchaman. He later worked on another Gatchaman adaptation, G-Force: Guardians of Space.
His company also distributed and dubbed Japanese monster films produced by Daiei Film.
Sources: Anime News Network.