Patricia Finnegan dies at 83

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Produced TV movies including 'Lincoln'

Prolific television movie producer Patricia Marie Finnegan died of bronchiectasis on July 16 at her home in Manhattan. She was 83.

Finnegan was exec producer of 1988’s “Lincoln,” an adaptation of the Gore Vidal novel that starred Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore and drew multiple Emmy nominations, including one for best miniseries that Finnegan shared with her husband, William Finnegan, and their partner Sheldon Pinchuk. The miniseries won the director award.

Finnegan also exec produced 1985’s “This Child Is Mine,” starring Lindsay Wagner; 1992’s “Quicksand: No Escape,” with Donald Sutherland; and 1997’s “Hope,” directed by Goldie Hawn and starring Christine Lahti. Her many other telepics included “A Father for Charlie” and “The $5.20 an Hour Dream.”

She also took a stab at series TV with the brief “She-Wolf of London,” which ran 1990-91 on NBC.

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Born Patricia Marie Quinn in Los Angeles, Finnegan she set off traveling after high and worked odd jobs — in Yosemite, Nantucket and Manhattan. In the late 1940s she met Bill Finnegan, a colleague at the Hollywood Citizen-News. They married in New York in 1952 and raised their children in Los Angeles and Honolulu.

In 1977 they founded Finnegan Associates — later, with former CAA agent Pinchuk, the Finnegan-Pinchuk Co. — which became a leading supplier of TV movies.

In the 1990s the Finnegans moved back to Manhattan.

Bill Finnegan died in 2008.

Finnegan’s survivors include sons William, a staff writer at the New Yorker, Michael, a Los Angeles Times reporter, and Kevin; a daughter, Colleen; a sister; and three granddaughters.

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