Chinese Theater Owner Dies

By Stephen M. Silverman

10/03/1997 at 12:00 AM EDT

Theater owner and movie producer Ted Mann, 84, who had the temerity to rename Hollywood's fabled Grauman's Chinese Theater when he bought the 1927 movie palace in 1973, died of a stroke Monday in Los Angeles, reports the Associated Press. Mann and his wife, redheaded actress Rhonda Fleming ("Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"), attended premieres at Mann's Chinese Theater, though traditionalists continue to call the place Grauman's. (It's the theater whose forecourt has the stars' hand and footprints in cement.) Among the movies that Mann produced were "Brubaker" with Robert Redford and an adaptation of novelist Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man."