Larry Michie, Former Variety TV Editor, Dies at 77

By Margeaux Sippell

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Larry Michie, a former television editor at Variety, died Nov. 7 at an assisted living facility in Hadley, Mass., after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77.

Born in Chicago, he was raised by two aunts in Racine, Wis. He met his wife of 56 years at Valparaiso University.

Michie began his journalism career in Washington D.C. as a reporter for trade journal Broadcasting Magazine. He later came to cover Washington news for Variety exclusively in the late 1960s. He went on to succeed Les Brown as Variety’s television editor. Then based in New York, Michie was one of a triumvirate of television editors who had great influence over the burgeoning broadcast market, in an era when Variety was often the main source of information about the inner workings of the entertainment industry. After leaving his post as television editor, he continued to freelance for Variety, covering foreign show businesses in Korea, China, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.

During this time, he and his wife Virginia also bought a Massachusetts weekly publication, the Shelburne Falls & West County News, which they ran together for a decade beginning in the mid 1980s. They later moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where Michie served as editor of the Vineyard Gazette from 1993 to 2000. In 2013, he published a science fiction novel, “Chasers,” about a futuristic Russian invasion of Mass., as well as “The Wars of Warren Temple” about a Union officer who works to fulfill a promise to a dying Confederate.

Michie is survived by his wife Virginia.