Richard Donner, the prolific Hollywood director and producer whose helming credits include some of the most iconic movies of the 1970s and ’80s including the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman, The Goonies and the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover buddy cop series Lethal Weapon, has died. He was 91. No cause of death has been revealed.

Donner died Monday, according to his wife, the producer Lauren Schuler Donner, and his business manager.

In the closing scene [of The Omen], Richard Donner used reverse psychology on young Harvey Stephens telling him, "Don't you dare laugh. If you laugh, I won't be your friend." Naturally, Stephens wanted to laugh, and he instead smiled directly into the camera.

Following the news of legendary director Richard Donner’s death, heartfelt tributes are emerging from all over Hollywood, including from Steven Spielberg, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.

Donner, who directed the original “Superman” film, the 1985 classic “The Goonies” and the “Lethal Weapon” series, died on Monday at the age of 91.

Fellow director Spielberg, who wrote the story for “The Goonies,” remembered Donner in a statement to Variety.

“Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres. Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favorite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and — of course — the greatest Goonie of all,” Spielberg said. “He was all kid. All heart. All the time. I can’t believe he’s gone, but his husky, hearty laugh will stay with me always.”

Gibson, who starred alongside Danny Glover in Donner’s “Lethal Weapon” movies, also shared a statement with Variety mourning the loss of Donner.

“Donner! My friend, my mentor. Oh, the things I learned from him! He undercut his own talent and greatness with a huge chunk of humility referring to himself as ‘merely a traffic cop.’ He left his ego at the door and required that of others,” Gibson said. “He was magnanimous of heart and soul, which he liberally gave to all who knew him. If we piled up all the good deeds he did, it would stretch to some uncharted place in the firmament. I will sorely miss him, with all his mischievous wit and wisdom.

Glover also chimed in, saying in a statement: “My heart is broken.”

“Working with Dick Donner, Mel Gibson and the Lethal Weapon team was one of the proudest moments of my career. I will forever be grateful to him for that,” Glover said. “Dick genuinely cared about me, my life and my family. We were friends and loved each other far beyond collaborating for the screen and the success that the Lethal Weapon franchise brought us. I will so greatly miss him.”

There were also plenty of remembrances posted to social media, with “The Sparks Brothers” director Edgar Wright writing a lengthy thread on Donner’s impact.

“Richard Donner’s big heart & effervescent charm shone in his movies through the remarkable performances of his cast, which is no mean feat,” Wright said. “You remember all the characters in Superman, Lethal Weapon, The Goonies & more, because Donner knew how to capture that magic onscreen.”

Jeff Cohen first met Richard Donner while making “The Goonies,” the 1985 adventure classic about a group of misfit kids hunting for treasure. Cohen played Chunk, a mischevious preteen who loves ice cream and prank calls. Decades later, he credits Donner with coaxing out his performance, but Cohen owes more to the late director than a memorable role in an iconic film. Donner and his wife, Lauren Shuler Donner, paid his college tuition and provided a critical source of emotional and financial support when he needed it the most. Cohen is now a prominent entertainment attorney and the co-founder of the Cohen & Gardner firm in Beverly Hills.

Donner died Monday in Los Angeles at age 91. In addition to “Goonies,” his credits include “Superman,” “The Omen,” “Scrooged,” and the “Lethal Weapon” series. Tributes to Donner’s talent have been offered from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Danny Glover, and Mel Gibson, but few could touch the heartfelt memories that Cohen shared after the news broke. An emotional Cohen spoke to Variety about Donner’s legacy and generosity.

Here are his remarks, which have been edited for clarity:

Dick Donner was and is my favorite person in the world. He is the best person I’ve ever known. He is remarkably talented, remarkably kind, remarkably loving, and, as an artist, Dick Donner is one of the greatest film directors of all time.

Dick Donner directed the greatest superhero film of all time with “Superman.” That is the film that cracks the genre. You don’t have Tim Burton’s “Batman” if you don’t have “Superman.” You don’t have the Marvel movies without “Superman.” Dick Donner also directed one of the greatest kids movies of all time with “The Goonies.” Additionally, Dick directed one of the greatest horror movies of all time with “The Omen.” Additionally, Dick directed one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time with “Scrooged.” Additionally, Dick directed some of the greatest action movies of all time with the Lethal Weapon series. What director can make stellar films in all those categories?

As a human being, Dick was so kind to me. I’m an entertainment attorney, and I have a firm out here in Los Angeles. None of that would have happened for me without Dick Donner helping me when there was nothing I could do for him. To me, that’s a unique thing in our business. Dick Donner and Lauren Shuler Donner, because they were kind, paid for my college when I went to Berekley.

The story is when my acting career started to peter out, I still loved show business, and Dick let me be a production assistant for him. I worked for him at Warner Bros. When I was applying to college, I said, ‘hey Dick, can you write me a letter of recommendation for college?’ And he said, ‘sure kid.” He called everybody kid. If you were seven years old he called you kid. If you were 50 years old he called you kid. He asked me to put some notes together to give him an indication of what he should say. In the note to him, I told him about my life and some of the struggles that I went through as a kid — my father not being there and other issues that I dealt with. And he called me on the phone and instead of merely writing a letter of recommendation to college, he told me that he and Lauren had read my letter and they were going to pay for my college. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I was shocked. I had to sit down, because, for me, paying for college was going to be a problem. That changed my life. Not only economically, but it showed that Dick and Lauren believed in me. They believed in me. They thought I could do something. They thought I could make something of myself. That is Dick Donner — being kind, being empathetic, and not because he wanted anything in return.

There’s a quote from Ben Franklin: “It is the height of cleverness to conceal it.” That is Dick Donner. He was the smartest guy in every room, but he never made anyone feel less than him. He always made everyone feel great. He made you feel smart and important. He never needed to show off. He never needed to step into the limelight. He wanted everyone else to look good. He wanted everyone else to succeed.

Dick’s through line in cinema was verisimilitude. He could take the most fantastic, remarkable situation, like a man flying, and make you believe it. You will believe a man can fly. In “Goonies,” this fantastic situation where there’s bad guys chasing these kids and there are all these booby traps, that could be ridiculous. But he made you believe it. He made you buy into it. Dick brought this humanity and understanding of the human spirit to all his work.

This is how great of a director Dick Donner is. I’m a terrible actor and he made me look great. The fact that I looked like I knew what I was doing and looked like I could act, proves that he was a genius.

I love him and I miss him already. The world is a darker place without him in it, but his amazing films and his good works as a human being will live on.

Lauren Shuler Donner, the wife and sometimes producing partner of husband Richard Donner, who died Monday at age 91, was understandably emotional when I spoke with her today. She expressed sadness at the loss, as well as sympathy for the loss of movie lovers everywhere who were fans of Superman, The Omen, The Goonies, Ladyhawke, Scrooged, the Lethal Weapon movies, Maverick, 1997’s now oddly-timelier Conspiracy Theory and countless others including those he produced like Free Willy, The Lost Boys and X-Men. No question Dick Donner was a giant, and widely admired as you can probably tell from the outpouring of reaction on Deadline.

Steven Spielberg, for whom Donner made the aforementioned The Goonies, called him “the greatest Goonie of them all” (a proposed long-awaited sequel, and a “re-enactment” TV film are listed on IMDb with Donner’s name attached as an executive producer).

“He was a great man. I was a very very lucky woman. But he was very sick, so it was time for him to go,” Shuler Donner told me with sadness clearly in her voice, but also a determination to make sure Donner is remembered for everything he stood for, and a remarkable directing career that stretched back more than 60 years after first starting as an actor.

Donner’s first feature behind the camera was a 1961 film called X-15 (an ironically titled debut film for a man who also was executive producer with his wife on X-Men). That debut project co-starred Charles Bronson and a then virtually-unknown Mary Tyler Moore (“Actually Filmed In Space,” the movie poster exclaimed). Donner’s work on many classic TV shows in the 1960s — including the iconic 1963 “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” episode of The Twilight Zone starring William Shatner (one of many he did for that immortal series) — only prepared us for a memorable, long-lasting film career.

“The love for him coming out is amazing. That’s who he was, Pete. He was larger than life and fun and generous, and everybody who knew him loved him, absolutely loved him. I have so many emails and texts — I will never be able to get through them. The outpouring of love. The good news is all this love came out when he was alive, just his attitude and his joie de vivre,” Shuler Donner said. “I have this philosophy. I believe that the director’s personality is on the screen. Dick was a big, larger-than-life, generous, happy guy who just wouldn’t get bogged down in anything petty, wouldn’t get bogged down in competition, he was just always personable. If he couldn’t remember your name, he’d call you ‘kid.’ Everybody would say later on, ‘Oh he had a nickname for me. He called me kid,’ but he always made you feel you were very special.

“He had a really big heart. He was a big guy, he’d wrap your arms around you. You felt love. You felt the warmth. He was giving, he was caring, he didn’t bother with bullsh*t. He was tough when he had to be tough. His crews loved and respected him. He was a great leader, but he also made it fun for them. He would play pranks on everybody, and they would play pranks on him. Going on the set you took your life into your hands. He found the joy in life and he was hellbent on sharing it. We were together 38 years, but certainly those years before he also lived life – a lot of women, he did a lot of drugs, he did a lot of parties, and he made a lot of good movies.”

She told me there will be a celebration of his life later this year. “I will have a memorial in September at Warner Bros when everybody is back from their vacations. I want to make sure everybody who wants to go can go,” she promised.

During our conversation I mentioned my own encounters with Dick Donner, most memorably for me in 1988 on the set of his Christmas classic with Bill Murray, Scrooged. I was a producer on Entertainment Tonight and had arranged for the first time ever in the show’s history to do a live set visit on an adjacent stage where the film was shooting at Paramount, right near the ET soundstage. We never did this kind of thing live within the taping of the show, but Donner was excited to make it happen, and it was all ready with our host John Tesh standing by to interview Murray right in the heart of the set on a brief break from shooting.

However, as the actual moment approached, Murray, apparently not in a great mood, was AWOL, and actually in that Hollywood cliché of clichés “not coming out of his dressing room” for whatever reason. With mounting pressure from not only my crew on set, but also our control booth ready for this “live” event, I was beginning to see my career pass in front of my eyes when Donner, as only he could do it, took charge, promised us this would happen, and somehow coaxed his star on to the set just moments before we had to start. It went great, and it was only because no one ever said no to Dick Donner.
Warner Bros

It was just a few days ago I got word from an industry source that there was movement in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to give Donner an Honorary Oscar at the next Governors Awards being presented January 15. However I am told that at the board meeting on June 22, it didn’t come together in time. In reporting on the 2022 honorees selected at that meeting (ironically, one of them is Jean Hersholt Humanitarian recipient Danny Glover, who just gave a statement to Deadline about how heartbroken he is over the loss of his Lethal Weapon director), I mentioned the anecdote about Donner and that maybe the Academy would recognize him next time. No one would certainly have deserved it more.

Dick Donner didn’t really make the kind of auteur-driven movies that win lots of prizes anyway. Donner made movies for people who loved movies, many of them beautifully larger than life, just like the man himself.