The man who partnered with Paul Newman on the very popular prison drama Cool Hand Luke and directed the seriously scary Amityville Horror (the original) died of a heart attack last Thursday in Beverly Hills. He was 79.

Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg’s first film circa 1967) was nominated for four Academy Awards, with George Kennedy taking home a golden guy for supporting actor. The film also gave birth to one of the original famous movie lines (delivered by Strother Martin as a guard captain) "What we've got here is failure to communicate." (Which was even quoted in the Guns n Roses’ song Civil War.)

Rosenberg was nominated for a Directors Guild Award for the film but lost to Mike Nichols, who made The Graduate the same year. What can we say… sex sells and Mrs. Robinson got her own song, too.

His other movies include Cool Hand Luke, The April Fools, WUSA, Pocket Money, The Drowning Pool, Brubaker, The Pope of Greenwich Villade, of course The Amityville Horror (which ironically wasn’t his biggest money-maker but spawned seven sequels to date… so a success by our reckoning!) and his last film, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1991). He’s also did some TV early on, collecting more than 300 TV directing credits for such dramatic series as The Untouchables, The Defenders, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Thanks for all your great work, Stuart. R.I.P.