Jean-Claude Tramont, 66; Film Director

Jean-Claude Tramont, film director and screenwriter who directed the 1981 comedy “All Night Long,” has died of cancer at his Los Angeles home. He was 66.

The Belgian-born Tramont, the husband of talent agent Sue Mengers, died Dec. 27.

The Universal release “All Night Long,” starring Barbra Streisand, Gene Hackman, Diane Ladd and Dennis Quaid, was Tramont’s best-known film, but it was savaged by critics. Some of them hinted that Streisand was only in the movie because she was a client of Mengers, who became a star in her own right.

Tramont at the time told an interviewer with a straight face, “If [Mengers] had the ability to force Barbra to do a picture with me, I wish she had done it sooner.”

Originally, the film’s script had called for another actress, Lisa Eichhorn, to play a kind of goofy, sexy, soft-voiced suburban housewife in the film.

Tramont said he wasn’t surprised when Streisand, who stepped into the part intended for Eichhorn, was criticized too. “In most of her pictures, she’s criticized for overpowering the screen,” he said. “In ‘All Night Long,’ she’s criticized for not overpowering the screen.”

He also directed a drama for HBO, “As Summers Die,” in 1986; directed and adapted the screenplay for the Warner Bros./Columbia film “Le Point de Mire” in 1977 and wrote the screenplay for the Paramount Pictures drama “Ash Wednesday” in 1973.

A private Mass will be held in Paris.