[Deathwatch] William Witney, Serial Director, 86

[Deathwatch Central]

March 18, 2002 Posted: 12:18 PM EST (1718 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/03/18/showbuzz/index.html#5

Pioneer director Witney dies
PIONEER, California (AP) -- William Witney, an influential director of
dozens of Westerns, movie serials and TV shows, has died. He was 86. 

Witney died Sunday at a nursing facility near his home here in the
Sierra Nevada foothills from complications following a series of
strokes, according to friend Dave Holland. 

During a 40-year career, Witney worked on two dozen serials, including
the popular Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy and Captain Marvel shows. He
directed more than 60 feature films, many of them 1940s and 1950s
B-Westerns, along with hundreds of episodes of TV shows such as
"Lassie," "Wagon Train" and "Bonanza." 

He also came up with the idea to choreograph screen fights. His last
movie was "Darktown Strutters" in 1975. 

"I've found directors I like, but William Witney is ahead of them all,"
director Quentin Tarantino told the New York Times in 2000. "I think
it's so cool that he began as the king of cowboy serials and ended with
a black exploitation film. That's a career, man." 

Born in 1915 in Lawton, Oklahoma, Witney broke into the movie business
in 1933 as a messenger boy and four years later became a director at
the ripe age of 21. He was pressed into service on a Republic Pictures
serial after the director was fired. 

Asked the secret of making Westerns, he once replied: "Make sure you
have good headlights on your car. Because you go to work in the dark
and you come home in the dark." 

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.