Richard Donner made his directorial debut with an episode of “Zane Grey Theatre” entitled “So Young the Savage Land,” which aired on 10 November 1960 during the series’ fifth and final season. The show was a western anthology series, with a different cast each week. Dick Powell produced and hosted the show.
In Donner’s episode, “Jim Braydon” (John Dehner) beats a man for cutting his fence to get to water. This puts him at odds with his wife (Claudette Colbert) who believes the country has changed him. She sets out to leave him when a wounded boy (Paul Martin) shows up at her door.
Another dramatic anthology show was “The Loretta Young Show”, which was hosted by (and occasionally starred) Loretta Young. Richard Donner directed 4 episodes of the show in 1961, during the last of its eight seasons.
“Wanted Dead or Alive” was a western television series starring Steve McQueen as the bounty hunter “Josh Randall.” It aired on CBS for three seasons, from 1958 to 1961. Richard Donner directed six episodes of the series during it’s third and final season (1960-61)
"Route 66" was an hour-long adventure series that followed two guys tooling around the country in a 1960 Corvette, and was filmed on location throughout America. Martin Milner starred as “Tod Stiles,” who went to Yale, and George Maharis co-starred as “Buz Murdock,” a street-wise New Yorker. The series ran for four years, and in the spring of 1963, Glenn Corbert succeeded Maharis as Tod’s partner, “Lincoln Case.” Nelson Riddle’s main theme for the show was a minor hit record in 1962.
"Route 66" was the only TV show filmed entirely on location in the early 1960s, moving to new towns and cities for each new episode. But ironically, the action often took place off the highway. "The problem was that once you get into Oklahoma and Texas on the route, the scenery is flat and boring," Milner recounted in a 1997 interview. "Pictorially, it just wasn't very interesting."
Richard Donner directed one second-season episode of the series, “ A Bridge Across Five Days,” in which Tod and Buz befriend a woman (Nina Foch) who has just been released from a mental institute.
Richard Donner directed two episodes during the second and last season of the western series “The Tall Man”. The series told fictionalized stories about Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in New Mexico in the 1870s.
After several dozen guest-starring roles on television series, Mary Tyler Moore appeared in a feature film in a supporting role, with stars David McLean and Charles Bronson, in 1961's X-15. The project originated in 1959 when screenwriter-producer Tony Lazzarino, a former U.S. Air Force radio operator, began researching the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft. Lazzarino wrote a script based on the aircraft, and presented it to Frank Sinatra after the two were introduced by a mutual friend. Sinatra brought the project to United Artists, where he had recently established a $15-million production deal with his new company, Essex Productions. At least two other major Hollywood companies had sought rights to portray the X-15 onscreen, but Lazzarino’s project was chosen by the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lazzarino was also given the opportunity to view Air Force footage of X-15 flights taken in the past two years, although an estimated fee of $100,000 might have been charged to the film company for access. X-15 was Lazzarino’s only film.
Although John Sturges was briefly attached to the project, Richard Donner made his feature film directorial debut with the picture. The unreleased score was by Nathan Scott. The $2 million production merely broke even at the box office.
Going back to directing television westerns, Richard Donner helmed five episodes of “Have Gun – Will Travel” during the fifth (1961-62) of its six seasons. This series followed the adventures of a man calling himself "Paladin" (played by Richard Boone), taking his name from that of the foremost knights in Charlemagne's court. He is a gentleman investigator/gunfighter who travels around the Old West working as a mercenary for people who hire him to solve their problems.
“The Rifleman” originated in a March 1958 episode of “Zane Grey Theatre.” That episode, entitled “The Sharpshooter,” served as the pilot for “The Rifleman.” Written by Sam Peckinpah and directed by Arnold Laven, the episode saw “Lucas McCain” (Chuck Connors) and his young son “Mark” (Johnny Crawford) enter the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory, hoping to buy a small ranch, but encountering trouble from a shady businessman (Leif Erickson) and a young punk gunfighter (Dennis Hopper).
The “Zane Grey” episode was originally written for “Gunsmoke” but turned down for that show. Chuck Connors' character was named John McCain, not Lucas McCain, and he didn't have a son. It was producer-director Arnold Laven's idea to make McCain a widower with a son, one of the first single parents to be shown on television. Also, McCain was originally supposed to have been a dead shot with a pistol. Laven had the idea to use a customized Winchester rifle as McCain's weapon of choice.
Richard Donner directed seven episodes of the series in early 1962, during the fourth of its five seasons on the air.
Seasons 2 – 4 opening for “The Rifleman”
Season 4 (1961-62) saw ABC move “The Rifleman” to Monday nights at 8:30 PM, following “The Cheyenne Show.” “The Rifleman” maintained its #27 position in the ratings for the season.
Each season of “The Rifleman” had seen fewer new episodes produced than the previous one. Starting out with 40 episodes in its first season, the number had dropped to 36 in season 2, then 34, and 32.
The iconic theme music for “The Rifleman” was by Herschel Burke Gilbert. The theme was included on a 1962 Dot LP—“Dick Powell Presents”—of themes from the television shows of Four Star Productions, of which Powell was a major owner. That LP, which has never been re-issued on CD, was all we had for 55 years, until Gilbert’s Laurel Records released a 2-CD set of the show’s music in 2017.
Johnny Crawford and Chuck Connors in “The Rifleman”
“Combat!” covered the grim lives of a squad of American soldiers fighting the Germans in France during World War II. The program starred Rick Jason as platoon leader Second Lieutenant “Gil Hanley” and Vic Morrow as Sergeant “‘Chip’ Saunders.” Jason and Morrow would play the lead in alternating episodes in “Combat!”.
Richard Donner directed one episode of the show, “No Trumpets, No Drums,” the final episode of the first season. Before his death, Donner had been the last living director of any of the series’ 152 shows.
The “Combat!” theme was written by Leonard Rosenman.
During the fifth and final season (1963-64) of “The Twilight Zone”, Richard Donner directed six episodes of the series. The first of these, broadcast on 11 October 1963, was the famous “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The story found “Bob Wilson” (William Shatner), a man newly recovered from a nervous breakdown, becoming convinced that a monster only he sees is damaging the plane he's flying in.
Rod Serling introduced the episode as follows: “Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home—the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.”
Asa Maynor and William Shatner in “The Twilight Zone” – “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
According to Donner, due to scheduling constraints and technical issues with the simulated weather, airplane engines, and a multitude of other special effect challenges, this episode was one the show's most difficult shoots. Filming crammed three days of work into two and demanded extraordinarily long hours from the cast and crew. The episode did not have an original score, using stock music from Fred Steiner and others.
Writer Richard Matheson said he was mostly pleased with “The Twilight Zone's” version of his short story - except for the gremlin. He'd conceived it as a dark, creepy and nearly-invisible humanoid figure. "But this thing," he complained, "looked more like a panda bear." This episode was one of four from the series to be remade for TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983). The relevant segment was directed by George Miller. In the movie, John Lithgow played the William Shatner role.
William Shatner played an elaborate prank on set when he conspired with a friend who was visiting the filming, actor Edd Byrnes, to trick director Richard Donner into thinking Shatner died. During a filming break, and when Donner was off set, Shatner and Byrnes staged a fake fight on the set, which was suspended some 30 feet above the studio floor. When Donner ran back into the studio to see what was happening, the two men chased each other around the back of the airplane set and wound up atop the plane wing. Donner saw a body falling off the wing and Byrnes yelling in terror as it impacted the concrete floor. Donner said when he ran to the fallen, motionless figure, thinking it was a dead or grievously injured Shatner, he was greeted with laughter the moment he realized it was just an articulated human dummy the two men had found in another part of the studio and threw off the wing. Donner later joked, "Honestly, my first reaction was, 'Don't tell me I have to shoot the whole show over again.'"
