David Lewis, Producer of Films in ‘30s and ‘40s, Dies

David Lewis, a producer of several successful films in the 1930s and 1940s, died late Friday.

Lewis, 83, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for pneumonia, said his brother, Harold Levy.

Born David Levy in Trinidad, Colo., Lewis moved to New York in 1925. He was a stage actor there until a bronchial infection affected his voice and ended his stage career about 1928, Harold Levy said.

Lewis began his film career as a script reader in the early 1930s and was an assistant to producer Irving Thalberg for the films “Riffraff” (1936), starring Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, and “Camille” (1937), starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor.

After Thalberg’s death, Lewis continued as an associate producer and worked on films that included “Dark Victory” (1939), starring Bette Davis.

He began receiving full credit as a producer in the mid-1940s and produced “Arch of Triumph,” a 1948 film starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

Lewis retired from film making in the early 1960s, his brother said. He had been living in West Hollywood.

No funeral services are planned for Lewis, Levy said.