Tracey Ullman’s Husband Allan McKeown Dies At 67
Tracey Ullman’s husband, producer Allan McKeown, died Tuesday in the couple’s Los Angeles home after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 67.
McKeown and Ullman co-created the HBO sketch comedy series Tracey Takes On…, which ran from 1996 to 1999 and Showtime’s State of the Union, which ran from 2008 to 2010. Tracey Takes On… won six Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Variety Musical Comedy Series, and State of the Union took home the Emmy for Outstanding Makeup for a Single-camera series.
McKeown was born in Ealing, London, on May 21, 1946. He left school at 14 to become a hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon, and opened his own salon in 1966. His clients included The Beatles, Michael Caine, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton.
Three years later, he joined James Garrett and Partners as a commercial producer, and later formed the production company Witzend with Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. McKeown went on to become a founding member of the Meridian consortium.
Allan McKeown was one of the first independent TV producers in the UK, and served as executive producer on Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Shine on Harvey Moon, Lovejoy, and Birds of a Feather. He also produced Jerry Springer the Opera at the National Theatre, which won the Olivier Award in 2004 for Best New Musical. In 2005, McKeown produced Lennon the Musical on Broadway with Yoko Ono.
His other television credits include Girls on Top, Freddie and Max, and Mumbai Calling, a British-Indian comedy series set in the fictional Teknobable call center in Mumbai.
McKeown and Tracey Ullman married in 1983 in Los Angeles, where McKeown worked at the time for Paramount and Fox Studios. The couple had two children together, Mabel and Johnny. They would have celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary Friday. In July, it was announced that Ullman had joined the film adaptation ofInto the Woods as the mother of Jack the Giant Killer.
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