Stanley R. Jaffe, the veteran producer and studio executive who won the Best Picture Oscar for “Kramer vs. Kramer,” has died at his Rancho Mirage home at the age of 84, according to his daughter, Betsy.
Born in New Rochelle, New York, Jaffe was the son of Columbia Pictures chairman Leo Jaffe, who received the Film Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award in 1978. The younger Jaffe decided from an early age to follow his father in showbiz and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1962 before getting his start at Seven Arts as an assistant to studio co-founder Eliot Hyman.