Alan Sacks, who teamed with stand-up comic and fellow Brooklynite Gabe Kaplan to create the popular 1970s ABC sitcom , has died. He was 81. Sacks died Tuesday of complications from lymphoma in New York while on a visit there, his wife, talent agent Annette van Duren, told .
He was first diagnosed 22 years ago but spent several years in remission before the cancer returned. In the 1980s, after a project involving the iconic L.A.
band The Runaways never got off the ground, Sacks took the footage and incorporated it into a plot about a director working on a tight deadline to finish a movie starring Runaways member Joan Jett. The resulting film, (1984), which he also helmed, was set against the background of the hardcore L.A.
punk scene and featured Ray Sharkey and Derf Scratch of the punk band Fear. He also wrote and produced the skateboarding film (1986), which starred Josh Brolin, Robert Rusler and Pamela Gidley and included a musical performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, their first appearance in a movie. More recently, he produced projects for the Disney Channel.
Produced by The Komack Co. and Wolper Productions, debuted in September 1975 and starred Kaplan as the wisecracking teacher Gabe Kotter. His students at James Buchanan High School — nicknamed the Sweathogs — included Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta), Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) and Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo).
The sitcom lasted four seasons and .