Stan Rogow, ‘Lizzie McGuire’ Producer, Dies at 75

December 9, 2023 @ 9:59 AM

Stan Rogow, writer and Emmy-award-nominated producer who worked on “The Lizzie McGuire Show,” has died at 75. Rogow died on Thursday at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to media reports.

Rogow’s first hit came working as a producer on NBC series “Fame.” He received an Emmy nomination for his work in 1982.

Rogow served as an executive producer for Hillary Duff’s “The Lizzie McGuire Show” from 2001 to 2004. He was again nominated for Emmys in 2003 and 2004 for his work on the show.

In 2021, he told Vice that “Lizzie McGuire” was inspired by a somewhat unlikely source. Rogow explained, “One day, I ended up watching a German movie called ‘Run Lola Run’ and it blew me away.”

“It’s a piece of odd experimental filmmaking, but all of a sudden it opened up a style that led to ‘Lizzie McGuire,’ which had very aggressive cutting and random digital stills thrown in wherever we wanted,” he said. “The rule was simple: If it’s funny, we’d get to do it.”

He built a career in children’s television, joining Discovery Kids as an executive producer for “The Clan of the Cave Bear” in 2004. Rogow cocreated the series “Flight 29 Down” for that network in 2005.

Rogow was born in Brooklyn, New York, in November 1948. He graduated from the Boston University School of Law and worked as a lawyer in the city before he joined the CBS TV movie “Playing for Time” as a producer.

The movie, which was based on Fania Fénelon’s autobiography “The Musicians of Auschwitz,” starred Vanessa Redgrave. Rogow later told Luke Ford that the casting was controversial because of “her anti-Zionist statements at the Academy Awards,” in reference to Redgrave’s public backing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1978.

He said of the star, “She’s an actor, who cares about her politics. At the end of the day, she certainly isn’t antisemitic. Why would she take this role if she was antisemitic? She has issues with how Zionism is playing itself out, but that is not the whole of Judaism.”

Rogow moved to Los Angeles after completing the telefilm and began work on “Fame” for NBC.

Rogow is survived by his son Jackson, his grandson Vega and his sister Marian. Rogow’s death was first reported by Variety.