Madrid, Dec. 23
Simesite was saddened to leam that former mugg Frank Segers passed away in his home in Tucson, AZ on December 17.
A native of Chicago, after working on several local news outlets, Segers joined Variety‘s New York office on 46th Street in 1970 as a film reporter, sitting at a desk in the front of the elongated news room.
Several years later, he moved back to Chicago, working as a reporter in the Variety office located in the Wrigley Building. Various other muggs had put in stints at the Chicago office, among them Harlan Jacobson, Jack Pitman, Les Brown, who then became the paper’s TV editor in New York, and Robert Landry, subsequently managing editor of the Weekly on 46th Street. Bureau chief at that time in Chicago was Morry Roth. The Chicago office was closed in 1990 after the paper’s sale to Cahners in 1987.
In the 1970’s Syd Silverman was greatly expanding Variety‘s overseas operations. These included campaigns in the Far East, which were spearheaded by London-based bureau chief Harold Myers, who helped produce several highly-successful special sections after travelling to Japan, Hong Kong and Australia (a separate Variety office was subsequently set up in Sydney).
When Myers retired, the job of handling the Far East coverage, both editorially and advertising, was passed on to Segers. Though he continued to be based in Chicago, he travelled to Japan, Korea and Hong Kong extensively and followed up his Far East contacts at key trade events such as Cannes, Mifed and the American Film Market in LA.
Segers remained with the paper until 1999, after which he joined John Campbell’s short-lived Moving Pictures trade mag for about two years, until it folded, attending major filmic events such as those in Cannes, Berlin and Milan, covering both the editorial and advertising sectors. Upon retirement he moved to Tucson, AZ where, together with another former Variety mugg, Joe Morella, in 2011 he started an online blog called ClassicMovieChat until Morella’s death in 2023 (cf Simesite obit)
Frank Segers is survived by Barbara, his wife of 57 years and son Matt.