Paul Casella Jr., a pioneering transportation coordinator in Hollywood who launched the mobile studio company Transcord Enterprises and handled logistics for Sony Pictures Studios for 25 years, died Feb. 15 in Glendale, his family announced. He was 86.
Casella, who started his 60-year career in show business as a caterer, became the first person to receive a transportation coordinator credit when Paul Newman insisted he be recognized for his work on The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972).
Then, aided by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale on Used Cars (1980), Casella made history as the first transportation coordinator to get a single-card screen credit.
A longtime SAG member, Casella also appeared in several films as a performer and stuntman; he doubled for actor Jack Weston and leaped into the open window of a moving car in Burt Reynolds’ Gator (1976).
In the mid-’70s, Casella and his second wife, Connie, launched Transcord Enterprises, and it would be known as having the largest fleet of mobile studio production vans west of the Mississippi. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1989 that his company did about $1.4 million a year in sales.
Born in Burbank in 1935, Paul Andrew Casella Jr. worked in his parents’ Glendale produce market as a teenager.
He drove a catering truck to film locations in 1955 while in college and wound up feeding the likes of Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret on Viva Las Vegas (1964), then was Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s private chef on The Sandpipers (1965).
He drove a truck in the mid-1960s and early ’70s for Fox, eventually becoming assistant head of transportation for the studio and then a freelance transportation captain and coordinator.
Along the way, he managed transportation on such films as Planet of the Apes (1968), Kansas City Bomber (1972), Hickey and Boggs (1972), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Dillinger (1973), White Lightning (1973), Futureworld (1976), Foxy Brown (1974), The Drowning Pool (1975), High Anxiety (1977), Movie Movie (1978), Hardcore (1979), 1941 (1979), Frances (1982) and History of the World: Part I (1981).
After freelancing, Casella spent a decade at The Burbank Studios as head of transportation, then became vp logistics at Sony Pictures Studios, where he helped out on films including A League of Their Own (1992), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Lost In Yonkers (1993), Poetic Justice (1993), Stepmom (1998) and the Men in Black movies.
He also created Sony’s set, costume and prop recycling programs and in 2004 testified before Congress to help pass legislation that would improve safety conditions for labor.
After retiring from Sony at age 80, Casella helped run the lakeside Big Cove Resort in Lake Almanor, California, with his wife, brothers Don and Gary and nephews Kyle and A.J.
In addition to his wife, brother Don and his nephews and nieces, survivors include his children, Martin, Matt, Melinda and Michelle; grandsons Ryan and Garrett; and his first wife, Shirley.
Donations in his memory may be made to St. Lawrence of Brindisi School, a co-educational Catholic elementary school in Watts run by a family friend, Father Matt Elshoff.
Source: Hollywood
