Richard Donner, left, making a cameo in The Giuoco Piano Affair episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Richard Donner, a director who made audiences believe a man could fly with 1978’s Superman, has died, Variety reported. He was 91.
Donner became an A-list movie director as a result. He directed four installments of the Lethal Weapon film series as well as The Goonies, and Conspiracy Theory.
Among the stepping stones to achieving that status was helming episodes of 1960s spy TV shows. He directed four episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., three episodes of The Wild Wild West, and two episodes of Get Smart.
Donner’s U.N.C.L.E. work was all within the show’s first half-season. Two of his episodes, The Quadripartite Affair and The Giuoco Piano Affair, helped establish the character of Illya Kuryakin played by David McCallum.
The Quadripartite Affair was the third episode broadcast and the first with a significant amount of air time for the Kuryakin character. That and The Giuoco Piano Affair were filmed back-to-back. But the latter episode aired four weeks later, presented as a sequel.
Donner, along with other members of the production team, had cameos in a party scene. The director’s character was listed as “Inebriate” in the end titles and was used as comedy relief.
One of Donner’s episodes for The Wild Wild West, The Night of the Murderous Spring, was one of the best episodes involving Dr. Loveless (Michael Dunn) as the arch-foe of U.S. Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon (Robert Conrad and Ross Martin).
Also among Donner’s credits was a 1966 episode of The FBI with an espionage theme titled The Spy Master.
Donner also directed a rare episode of The Twilight Zone, The Jeopardy Room, which had no fantasy or science fiction elements. It was a spy story, essentially a match of wits between two men (Martin Landau and John Van Dreelen).
The director also helmed one of the most famous episodes of the show, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, where an aircraft passenger is the only person aboard who can see a gremlin on the wing of the plane.
After Superman, Donner’s services as a film director were in demand.
Donner was Sean Connery’s first choice to direct Never Say Never Again, the 1983 non-Eon Productions James Bond film. The director, however, had misgivings about the script, according to the book Some Kind of Hero. Irvin Kirschner ended up getting the job.
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Filed under: James Bond Films, The Other Spies | Tagged: Get Smart, Never Say Never Again, Richard Donner, Superman, The FBI, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Twilight Zone, The Wild Wild West |
The Spy Command 
Very sad to hear of hollywood’s iconic film director and television classic shows, the legendary richard donner. He’s probably one of the finest directors of his generation his directing credits were awesome at this present moment i am watching everything that he directed from “the twilight zone” to “the rifleman” ” the omen” “superman the movie” and the ” lethal weapon” films it was rumored that he was determing to direct one last “lethal weapon 5” film however, in the back of my mind i new it would be impossible he will be greatly missed by the hollywood film industry but also by his fans like myself. The late richard donner your television and film work will live on, theres a directors chair waiting in heaven for you r.i.p.
In my opinion, strictly speaking in terms of superhero origin stories, that first Superman film has never been surpassed. That story gave us a flesh and blood being and a myth.