Yuri Rasovsky, 67, wrote & directed radio dramas, audiobooks

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Yuri Rasovsky had worked professionally in theater and broadcasting as actor, writer, director and producer since 1970.

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Updated: February 23, 2012 8:20AM

When Yuri Rasovsky was a little boy growing up in the South Shore neighborhood, he carried on conversations with his teddy bear that were so animated a neighbor who overheard the chats thought his companion was another child — and invited the two of them for milk and cookies.

He would harness that powerful imagination and gift for mimicry, becoming a respected writer, director and producer of hundreds of radio dramas and audiobooks that in his 40-year career drew some of the nation’s best actors to his studio — even when they were getting paid scale.

Often, he adapted classics, such as an audio drama version of The Maltese Falcon. Mr. Rasovsky researched Dashiell Hammett’s classic of hard-boiled detective fiction to craft an adaptation with freshly unearthed material and suspense. He’d lay down sound effects and coax out performances that were so good, his works were nominated for — and won — the Grammy award.

Mr. Rasovsky, 67, died of esophageal cancer Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles.

Even in his final days, his partner, Lorna Raver, could hear him calling out directions to actors in his sleep.

Sandra Oh of “Grey’s Anatomy” worked on The Maltese Falcon with actor Michael Madsen, and she also performed in Mr. Rasovsky’s “Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You — a very GRIMM tale.”

“Being introduced to [performing] radio plays through [Yuri] was like discovering a new fun planet,” Oh said in a text message. “I knew from the second we worked together that I had so much to learn from him. His understanding of the medium, of storytelling and trust in his actors was superlative. He was a great and generous teacher.”

“Most people who worked for Yuri would have worked for him for free because it is so much fun,” said actor Meshach Taylor, best known for his role as Anthony Bouvier on the television show, “Designing Women.” Taylor performed in Mr. Rasovsky’s “The Mark of Zorro,” starring Val Kilmer, which has been nominated for a Grammy as Best Spoken Word Album of the Year. “You have to bring the role alive with just your voice,” he said. “. . . You don’t have to get into costume or makeup.”

“In my opinion, Yuri was the greatest audio dramatist of our modern age. I have often compared him to Orson Welles,” Craig Black, CEO of Blackstone Audio, said in an online tribute. His company bills itself as the nation’s largest independent publisher of audiobooks.

Before moving to Los Angeles, Mr. Rasovsky was a respected local actor. In 1972, he performed the accents of the Windy City on his “Chicago Language Tape” for WFMT. He won a Joseph Jefferson award for his role in the play “Green Julia” in 1976.

In the early 1970s, he founded the nonprofit National Radio Theater of Chicago, where he produced and directed “Of Thee I Sing” and “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He traveled to Greece to research his Peabody Award-winning eight-part series, “The Odyssey.”

After he relocated to California, his career began to shift from overseeing narrated versions of books to full-scale productions of audio dramas. He created two works for NPR: an anthology of science-fiction dramas called “2000X,” and “Craven Street,” a five-part series he researched and wrote about Ben Franklin in London that featured Martin Sheen, Elizabeth Montgomery and Sir Nigel Hawthorne.

He started a new company, the Hollywood Theater of the Ear. Its productions included “The Dybbuk,” starring Ed Asner, Carl Reiner and Kris Tabori, and “Saint Joan,” with Amy Irving and Edward Herrmann. Mr. Rasovsky shared in a Grammy; nine Audie awards from the Audio Publishers Association; four Listen-Up awards from Publishers Weekly; a Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Audio Theatre Festivals.

His works drew on an encyclopedic knowledge of classic literature and film, said Robin Whitten, editor and founder of AudioFile magazine, where Mr. Rasovsky was a contributing editor.

Blackstone Audio picked up several of the projects he pitched to the company, including the audio drama, “Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls.”

“He was so creative,” Black said. “It had nothing to do with the [Sweeney Todd] movie. He went back and researched the legends behind the story. I believe there were five stories written by various authors from earlier times, and he came up with his own.”

A self-described curmudgeon, he acted like he didn’t like children, and he enjoyed being called by the nickname he gave himself: “El Fiendo T. (The) Mighty.”

“If he wasn’t getting what he wanted” from an actor, Taylor said, “you heard about it, and you heard about it in a hurry.”

Mr. Rasovsky asked that his body be donated to science. A celebration of his life and work is being planned.