Otto Lang, "true pioneer" in Northwest skiing equally at home in film studios

Otto Lang brought a gift of grace and European refinement to the unruly ski slopes of the Northwest, an influence that resonates with skiers seven decades after his arrival here.

The Bosnian-born émigré, founder of ski schools on Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Mount Hood, ski instructor to the stars, movie director, author, photographer and guiding light for later generations of skiers, died Monday at his West Seattle home. He was 98 and had been suffering from heart disease.

"It's the absolute end of an era. He was the last of that generation. No one else is left," said Warren Miller, a legendary ski-film producer who first met Mr. Lang in 1946 in Sun Valley, Idaho, where Mr. Lang then ran the ski school.

Mr. Lang came to the Northwest in 1936 looking for a place to film a ski-instruction movie. What he found was a lot of snow and mayhem.

He watched the running of the Silver Skis Race, an annual race from Camp Muir, high on the flank of Mount Rainier, to Paradise Lodge.

"I tell you, it was like something I'd never seen," Mr. Lang recalled in a Seattle Times interview in 2003. "People flying through the air, crossing their skis, falling, somersaulting. It was just unbelievable the mayhem and danger — twisted knees and ankles and everything. So I said, well, this is a place they need a ski school very badly!"

It was the antithesis to the controlled, graceful skiing style Mr. Lang had honed in the Austrian Alps. He was born in 1908 in a small town outside Sarajevo and raised in Austria, where he was schooled in the latest downhill-skiing technique.

Recruited to the United States in 1935 to bring sophistication to the slopes of America, Mr. Lang quickly set his sights on the Northwest as a place badly in need.

In 1936, he opened the ski school at Mount Rainier, and the next year he added ones at Mount Baker and Mount Hood.

Mr. Lang's work with ski instruction makes him "a true pioneer," said Franz Gabl, an Olympic skier who knew Mr. Lang for seven decades and now lives in Bellingham. "He contributed a lot to Northwest skiing."

But his time here was short during the height of his career. In 1939, Mr. Lang left for the ski school at Sun Valley, a resort created by railroad magnate Averell Harriman. There, Mr. Lang ran the school with a firm hand, said Miller, who worked for him in 1948.

"He told me, 'Go get your hair cut and take a shower,' " Miller recalled. "He was a very strict disciplinarian."

Mr. Lang also met movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox. Zanuck put the skier in charge of the ski sequences of the movie "Sun Valley Serenade" starring Sonja Henie.

Mr. Lang proved equally at home in the mountains and film studios.

He eventually produced several Fox movies, including "Call Northside 777," a 1948 thriller with Jimmy Stewart; "Five Fingers," a 1952 spy film nominated for an Oscar; and the Cinerama film, "Search for Paradise." In the 1950s and '60s, he directed episodes in a number of TV shows, including "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "Daktari" and "Cheyenne."

He returned to the Northwest in 1987 and turned his seemingly boundless energy to books. He wrote a memoir, "Bird of Passage," and later published a collection of photographs from his travels, "Around the World in 90 Years."

Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Seattle Symphony, described Mr. Lang as "a great photographer, a great writer, a great director in television and movies, a brilliant intellect and in some ways most importantly, a very positive caring and loving human being."

Thursday's Seattle Symphony performance will be dedicated to Mr. Lang.

Still, throughout all of his travels and careers, skiing remained his polestar, he said in a 2005 Seattle Times interview.

"I know it is a broad statement, but it is true: Skiing is responsible for everything in my life. It connected everything."

Mr. Lang is survived by his longtime companion, June Campbell of Seattle; and sons Mark Lang of Coronado, Calif., and Peter Lang of Santa Rosa, Calif.

Information on services for Mr. Lang was unavailable.

Seattle Times staff reporters Craig Welch and Ron Judd contributed to this report. Warren Cornwall: wcornwall@seattletimes.com