Longtime professor of cinema studies at New York University.
Died from a brain injury as a result of a biking accident while traveling in Spain.
Was a passionate baseball fan who co-edited "Rotisserie League Baseball" book in 1980.
He received a PhD in the history of American civilization at Harvard in 1965. His dissertation became his first book, "F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoön" (1967).
As a member of the National Film Preservation Board, he helped choose the movies to be included on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
After earning a bachelor's degree in 1958, he worked on the rewrite desk in the Newark bureau of the Associated Press, and as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.