Is ‘Delta Force’ the greatest movie ever made?

No.

But while everyone is eulogizing Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, spare a thought for Menahem Golan, who produced that film, and many other “B-pictures,” and who died on August 10.

At the annual Cannes Film Festival in France, Mr. Golan became a celebrity. Working with Yoram Globus, his cousin and business partner in Cannon Films, he promoted his high-minded films and his less lofty action titles with equal fervor.

Perhaps the oddest deal he made at the festival was an agreement with Jean-Luc Godard, said to have been signed on a napkin at a hotel bar, to direct a version of “King Lear.”

The cast of that film, which when released in 1987 ended up being a science-fiction comedy about post-Chernobyl culture, included Norman Mailer, Woody Allen and the director Peter Sellars.

Mr. Golan was born Menahem Globus on May 31, 1929, in Tiberias, a city on the Sea of Galilee, in what was then Palestine and is now Israel. (…)

He served as a pilot and bombardier in the Israeli war of independence; in 1948, when the state of Israel was established, he changed his surname to Golan. (…)

Mr. Golan directed and helped write “Mivtsa Yonatan” (“Operation Thunderbolt”), about the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which was nominated for a 1978 Oscar as best foreign-language film. (…)

A documentary, “The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films,” is scheduled for the fall.

We’re often informed that this or that old-ish film would make for particularly appropriate viewing during trying times.

So, here ya go: