Robert Butler (director)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Butler (born November 17, 1927) was a very influential and highly demanded film director from the mid 1960s all the way through the 1980s. He helped launch actor Kurt Russell's career through four Walt Disney movies (including The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive), but his strongest and most fondly remembered contributions have been to the small screen.
Butler began his career as a stage manager and an assistant, before launching his directing career on such classic shows as The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Fugitive or The Twilight Zone.
For over three decades, Butler was then hired to shoot pilots for many popular TV series, thus helping create their specific identity. In this sense, he must be given some credit for the success and/or popularity of such diverse shows as the original Star Trek, the war parody sitcom Hogan's Heroes, the colorful and visually innovative Batman, the violent and forgotten The Blue Knight, the 1980s revolutionary cop show Hill Street Blues, the mysterious and humorous detective Remington Steele (a show which he also co-created), the deliciously delirious and romantic Moonlighting, the family drama Sisters and the highly popular character-driven Superman adaptation of the early 1990s, Lois & Clark.
In addition to the above, Butler has also directed episodes for many other shows, including I Spy, The Invaders, Gunsmoke, The Outcasts, Mission: Impossible, Kung Fu, Hawaii Five-O, Columbo and Midnight Caller.
Butler has won two Emmy Awards for outstanding directing, the first in 1973 for the The Blue Knight pilot, and the second in 1981 for his tight and intense Hill Street Blues premiere.
[edit] External links
- Robert Butler article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.
- Robert Butler (director) at the Internet Movie Database
