Bruce Bilson, who directed a veritable panoply of household-name TV shows and won an Emmy for an episode of the spy parody “Get Smart,” has died at 97.
The Brooklyn-born director, grandfather to actress Rachel Bilson, died peacefully at home in Los Angeles, his producer daughter, Julie Bilson-Ahlberg, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Over the course of five decades, Bilson worked on 400 episodes of dozens of beloved series as a director or assistant director. He served as AD on 58 episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show” from 1960-62, followed by 17 episodes of “Route 66” from 1962-63.
He moved up to directing with “The Baileys of Balboa” from 1964-65, before taking on 11 episodes of “The Patty Duke Show,” followed by such classics as “Hogan’s Heroes” (25 episodes), “Get Smart” (22), “Love, American Style” (21), “The Doris Day Show” (12) and “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” (10), among legions of others.
Bilson directorially dipped into six episodes of “The Odd Couple,” three each of “Dynasty,” “Spenser: For Hire” and “Dallas,” and single episodes of hits like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Bonanza,” “Green Acres,” “That Girl,” “Bewitched” and more. He worked extensively with Desilu, the production company of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and directed the final episode of “Life With Lucy,” the last sitcom starring Ball.
Navigating this peripatetic path meant building rapport with casts and crews, who had already melded into family by the time he walked on set, Bilson explained in a 2008 interview. Their collective if-it’s-not-broke-don’t-fix-it attitude meant “you had to prove yourself every time you went to a new show,” he said.
Bilson was born on May 19, 1928, in Brooklyn and grew up in Los Angeles after his father, George Bilson, relocated the family for a job at Warner Bros. He started working as an extra when he was 14, then studied theater, editing and camerawork at UCLA. He dove into Hollywood in earnest after two years in the U.S. Air Force.
Besides Rachel Bilson, his survivors include wife Renne Jarrett, his screenwriter son (and father of Rachel) Danny Bilson, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
