Film producer David Brown and his wife, Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, shown in May 1974, were a New York power couple. (Associated Press)

Veteran U.S. film producer David Brown, a four-time Oscar nominee whose credits include Jaws and The Sting, has died, aged 93.

Brown died at his Manhattan home on Monday after a long illness, according to the Hearst Corp. Brown was the husband of Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, a magazine owned by Hearst.

Brown was nominated four times for a best picture Oscar, for Jaws, The Verdict, A Few Good Men and Chocolat. He never won an Oscar, but he and former partner Richard D. Zanuck won the Irving G. Thalberg award, given by the academy to filmmakers for a producing career of consistent high quality.

"It's a tough business. It has a lot of heartbreak in it," he said after receiving the honour in 1991.

Brown is credited with bringing Elvis Presley to the screen for the first time and for giving a start to Steven Spielberg, who created The Sugarland Express for the Zanuck-Brown company before directing Jaws.

Brown had worked as a journalist, magazine editor and short story writer before joining 20th Century Fox in 1951. He was managing editor at Cosmopolitan before heading to Hollywood.

While at Fox, he produced Love Me Tender, Presley's first screen role, and talked George C. Scott into starring in Patton.

He became friends with Richard D. Zanuck, son of Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. In the early 1970s, when tastes were changing, he backed the younger Zanuck's efforts to change the kind of movies Fox made.

Fired from 20th Century Fox

Zanuck fired his son in 1970 and Brown also lost his job.

"We were fired from Fox and had to dictate from the back of our cars because they wouldn't let us in our offices," Brown said in a 2006 interview.

The first movie they produced from their partnership was The Sting (1973) and their success was cemented in 1975 with the blockbuster Jaws.

Their partnership also produced MacArthur, The Verdict and Cocoon and lasted until 1988, when they split amicably.

Brown was executive producer on the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy, produced by Zanuck and his wife, Lili Fini Zanuck, but as executive producer did not share in its Oscar credits.

In the 1990s, Brown produced The Player, The Saint, Angela's Ashes, Chocolat and Deep Impact.

Brown strikes a pose in September 2006 at his New York office. (Tina Fineberg/Associated Press)

Brown was also involved with Broadway production, including Tony-nominated musicals The Sweet Smell of Success and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and the drama A Few Good Men, which later became a film.

In 1959, at age 43, he married Gurley, then a top ad copywriter in Los Angeles.

He encouraged her to write Sex and the Single Girl, the 1962 bestseller that eventually brought her to the helm of Cosmopolitan.

Under her guidance Cosmo became the world's bestselling women's magazine. She stepped aside in 1987.

At 90, Brown wrote Brown's Guide to the Good Life Without Tears, Fears or Boredom, which included a chapter called The Care and Feeding of a Famous Wife.

A public funeral is planned for Thursday in Manhattan.

With files from The Associated Press