Who was Stanley R Jaffe? All about Kramer Vs Kramer Oscar winning producer as he dies at 84

Oscar winning producer, Stanley R Jaffe died on March 10, 2025. The famed movie executive was 84.

Jaffe had won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1979 for his hit masterpiece, Kramer vs. Kramer. The news of Jaffe’s death was broken by Deadline, which confirmed the producer’s demise through his representatives.

Jaffe left an indelible mark on the film industry with his seminal work on Kramer vs. Kramer, which starred Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman as an estranged couple fighting over their son’s custody. The film shone bright at the 52nd Academy Awards - it won five awards, including Best supporting actress for Streep, the Best actor award for Hoffman, and the direction and writing awards for Robert Benton.

While receiving the Best Picture Oscar back in 1979, Jaffe had acknowledged his upbringing in a family associated with the film industry, saying,

“I grew up in a home that's been associated with this business for fifty-one years. This [patting the Oscar] has always been very important to all of us as a representation of excellence.”

Jaffe had counted his blessings while appreciating all those who were associated with the film. Jaffe had said,

“I stand here very happy and very blessed. Blessed because a person named Avery Corman wrote a book called "Kramer vs. Kramer." Lucky because Richard Fischoff came to work for me that week and found the book. Blessed because Bob Benton was free, and he wrote and directed it. And I was lucky enough to be able to get, along with Bob and the words he wrote, Dustin and Meryl and Jane and Justin. And it's a film that's made with love, and it's made about love.”

In a 2021 interview with Hawk Koch, Stanley R Jaffe revealed how he came to work on the film. Sharing how the book on which the film is based impacted him, Jaffe said,

“I read it overnight, I was through a divorce and all I know is it moved me so much I drove around Los Angeles crying for three hours…I had lunch with [representatives of the book, Cohen and Donovan] two days after I’d moved out of my house and so I was a wreck when we had lunch. And I remember saying to him I'm going to buy the book which is not a great way to stop negotiation, I said but, ‘you two saw me at my worst no one will do this picture better than I will,’ and they agreed we made a deal.”

Stanley R Jaffe’s Hollywood career

Stanley R Jaffe’s wide-ranging career in the film industry included a stint as the youngest head of Paramount Studios in 1969, according to Deadline. The same year, his production Goodbye, Columbus was released, which introduced the world to actress Ali MacGraw. Jaffe worked on the 1976 Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal starrer The Bad News Bears. He was also a producer on the 1981 film Taps which launched the career of superstar Tom Cruise.

In 1983, Jaffe delved into direction with Without a Trace. Speaking to The New York Times that year, Jaffe had discussed why he felt directing the film himself was the correct choice. He said,

“I would see a movie and think, 'I wonder what I would have done if I had directed it?' The bottom line was that I wanted to be confronted with a blank piece of film every day, and to fill it interestingly. I've been thinking about directing for four years now; the picture where I really started to get this feeling was 'Taps,' but I felt it was too big a movie for me to do at that time.”

Stanley R Jaffe is perhaps best known for his biggest box office success, 1987’s Fatal Attraction, featuring Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, which depicted a love affair gone wrong. As per Deadline, the film stayed at No. 1 at the US box office for eight weeks. Jaffe received his second Oscar nomination for the film.