Stan Rogow, Emmy-Nominated ‘Lizzie McGuire’ Producer, Dies at 75

Stan Rogow, the writer and Emmy-nominated producer who guided the Hilary Duff-starring Lizzie McGuire series and feature that spawned from the Disney Channel hit and partnered with John Sayles on several projects, has died. He was 75.

Rogow died Thursday at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, family spokesperson Scott Fisher told The Hollywood Reporter.

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Early in his career, Rogow served as a producer on the pilot of the acclaimed NBC series Fame and shared an Emmy nomination for outstanding drama series in 1982 with William Blinn and two others.

The Brooklyn native was also an exec producer on the 2004-06 Discovery Kids sitcom Darcy’s Wild Life, starring Sara Paxton, and he co-created another show for the network, the 2005-07 adventure series Flight 29 Down, featuring Corbin Bleu.

Rogow produced Sayles-written The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), starring Daryl Hannah, before they teamed to create the 1990 NBC drama Shannon’s Deal, starring Jamey Sheridan as a struggling lawyer with a gambling problem.

He then received story credit on the Sayles co-written actor movie Men of War (1994), starring Dolph Lundgren.

Rogow produced both seasons (2001-04) of the wholesome Lizzie McGuire and received Emmy noms for outstanding children’s program in 2003 and ’04. He also produced The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), which grossed nearly $56 million at the worldwide box office.

“Originally, the show [featured a voiceover where Lizzie would] talk her inner thoughts,” Rogow revealed in an interview for Luke Ford’s 2004 book, The Producers. “The network asked for a higher concept. I said we could visualize the voiceover with pop-up videos where the words come up, or we could do an animated character. They said let’s do the animated character.”

Born in Brooklyn on Nov. 30, 1948, Rogow was 5 when Paramount Pictures wanted to sign him to a contract “because I could sing and dance,” he said in Ford’s book. “But I would have had to move to L.A., and my parents weren’t interested. The president of Paramount at the time told me, ‘Son, if show business is in your blood, don’t worry about it. It will always be there.’”

Rogow graduated from Boston University School of Law and worked as a lawyer in Boston’s rough-and-tumble Roxbury district before serving as an executive in charge of production on the 1980 Emmy-winning CBS telefilm Playing for Time, starring the controversial Vanessa Redgrave as a member of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.

He then moved to Los Angeles and hooked up with Fame.

Rogow also created the 1992 CBS comedy-drama Middle Ages, starring Peter Riegert, and produced other series such as State of Grace, Afterworld and Woke Up Dead.

Survivors include his son, Jackson Rogow, who starred on the 2009-11 live-action Cartoon Network series Dude, What Would Happen; his grandson, Vega; and his sister, Marian. A service will be held at 10 a.m. on Monday at Mount Sinai Memorial Park.

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