Jennifer Alward, 53; Producer of TV Movies, Miniseries

Jennifer Alward, 53, a television executive and producer who developed movies and miniseries, died Friday in Los Angeles. She had heart disease and diabetes and died of an apparent heart attack, said her husband, Paul Faulstich.

Alward was a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she studied film and communications.

She began her career as press coordinator for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition, or Filmex then landed a position at CBS, where she spent a decade working in the network’s standards and practices department and later in programming.

She started her own production company, Morgan Hill Films, in 1986.

As a producer, she shepherded projects with challenging themes, such as the 1994 television movie “David’s Mother,” which concerned the struggles of an autistic teenager and his mother.

The movie, which aired on CBS, earned Emmy awards for actors Kirstie Alley and Michael Goorjian and was nominated for a Golden Globe award.

It also was honored with a Humanitas Award for television long-form dramatic writing.

Among her other producing credits are “Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story,” a 1995 movie about family-planning advocate Margaret Sanger that starred Rod Steiger and Dana Delaney, and “Hearts of Fire,” a 1987 release in which Bob Dylan plays a washed-up rock star.