Breakfast Club director Hughes dies in New York

Published on Friday 7 August 2009 01:17

JOHN Hughes, the man behind the hit movies Home Alone, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has died at the age of 59.

It is believed the writer-director died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan. He had been in New York to visit family.

A native of Lansing, Michigan, who later moved to suburban Chicago, he set much of his work there. Hughes rose from ad writer to comedy writer to silver screen champ with his affectionate and idealised portraits of teenagers, whether they be the romantic and sexual insecurity of Sixteen Candles, or the JD Salinger-esque rebellion against conformity in The Breakfast Club.

Hughes' ensemble comedies helped make stars out of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and many other young performers.

He also scripted the hugely popular Home Alone, which made Macaulay Culkin a sensation as the eight-year-old accidentally abandoned by his family, and wrote or directed such hits as National Lampoon's Vacation, Pretty in Pink, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Uncle Buck.

As Hughes advanced into middle age, his commercial touch faded and, in Salinger style, he increasingly withdrew from public life. His last directing credit was in 1991, for Curly Sue, and he wrote just a handful of scripts over the past decade. He was rarely interviewed or photographed.