Inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Maurice Kanbar, 93, died peacefully of natural causes in San Francisco on August 20, 2022, surrounded by family and loved ones.
Raised in Brooklyn, Maurice attended Yeshiva Etz Chaim in Boro Park, New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, and Philadelphia Textile Institute, later renamed Philadelphia University where he studied materials science and engineering.
Maurice lived in New York until 1984, when he moved to San Francisco, a city he referred to as "paradise" and where he often could be found zipping around on his signature red Argo scooter.
Indefatigable, charming and beloved, Maurice was a man of strong opinions, great intelligence and a razor wit. Maurice's impish smile lit up a room and his presence will be sorely missed by all who ever had the pleasure of meeting him.
A natural born inventor, Maurice had an insatiable intellectual curiosity and an incessant desire to make things better, safer and easier to use. Maurice's first entrepreneurial spark was seen at age 10 when he took a job as a delivery boy at the local pharmacy, hoping to earn a nickel tip with each delivery. At 12, he and his best friend started a photography business selling baby portraits. At 21, he invented D-Fuzz-It, a lint remover, which earned him $200,000 in its first year on the market. Maurice holds more than 50 patents on products ranging from sophisticated medical devices to reimagined and modernized ancient children's games.
Expanding on his love of the arts and particularly film, Maurice is credited with building the first multiplex theater, the Quad Cinema, in Greenwich Village in 1972. The Quad was known for promoting independent filmmakers and Maurice went on to produce the animated feature film Hoodwinked! and its sequel to great success.
Maurice's most successful achievement was creating SKYY vodka in 1992. Motivated by a desire to reduce the headaches he suffered when enjoying a martini, he devised a unique distillation and filtration process to remove congeners (impurities) from alcohol, which he had discovered were the cause of his discomfort.
Maurice came up with the name SKYY when looking out the window at a perfect San Francisco sky and he also designed the distinctive cobalt blue bottles. After much success, he sold SKYY to Campari in 2001.
Eager to share his wisdom and experience, Maurice wrote a best-selling book, Secrets from an Inventor's Notebook (Council Oak Books), a how-to guide for novice inventors.
Maurice was equally focused on philanthropy, often quoting Andrew Carnegie that it was much easier making the money than giving it away intelligently.
Through his generosity, Maurice established the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at NYU, the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering, and Commerce at Philadelphia University, the Maurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering at Cooper Union, and the Kanbar Cardiac Care Center at CPMC in San Francisco. Maurice also made substantial donations to the American Heart Association of San Francisco, University of Haifa, Bar-Ilan University, Bowdoin College, the Exploratorium, KQED, Salvation Army, S.F. Symphony, SF Girls Chorus, SF Film Society, UCLA School of Theater and Television, the JCC of San Francisco, Hebrew Immigration Aid Society and many other worthy organizations.
Maurice received honorary degrees from Philadelphia University, Yeshiva University, Bar-Ilan University, and Kenyon College.
Maurice's generosity reached beyond these charitable institutions. He was always quick to help a needy friend or relative, mentioning his desire to make life easier for others and recognizing - as he often said - "you can't take it with you." Maurice's legacy can be summarized in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
Maurice is survived by his brother Elliott (Barbara), nephews David (Stacey), Jeffrey (Adrienne), and Michael (Dara), his niece Lisa (Marc), and his four grandnieces and grandnephews Hannah, Benji, Gabriel and Hanna.
In lieu of flowers, the Kanbar family requests that donations be made in his memory to a hospice organization of your choice or to the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.