Andrew V. McLaglen
Date of Birth
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Andrew V. McLaglen was a film and television director best known for his work in the western genre. His body of work included memorable cowboy fare on both the large and small screens, including the TV series Rawhide, Have Gun—Will Travel and Gunsmoke and such movies as Shenandoah, The Way West and Chisum.
McLaglen was born in London, but moved to California as a child when his father, actor Victor McLaglen, began working in American films. A major star for a time, the senior McLaglen won a best actor Oscar for his performance in the 1935 drama The Informer, directed by John Ford.
Andrew V. McLaglen was a film and television director best known for his work in the western genre. His body of work included memorable cowboy fare on both the large and small screens, including the TV series Rawhide, Have Gun—Will Travel and Gunsmoke and such movies as Shenandoah, The Way West and Chisum.
McLaglen was born in London, but moved to California as a child when his father, actor Victor McLaglen, began working in American films. A major star for a time, the senior McLaglen won a best actor Oscar for his performance in the 1935 drama The Informer, directed by John Ford.
He went to high school in Santa Barbara and spent a year at the University of Virginia. When his 6' 7" height disqualified him from military service during World War II, he went to work at the Lockheed aircraft company.
After the war, he found low-level work at Republic Pictures, and eventually bcame an assistant director on the 1945 release Dakota, with whom he would work many times in the years that followed. One of those occasions occirred when John Ford hired him as assistant director on the classic drama The Quiet Man, which costarred his father.
He directed his first features in 1956 — the crime drama Man in the Vault and the western Gun the Man Down, which starred James Arness. Over the next several years he worked most frequently in television, begining with episodes of a short-lived western Hotel de Paree and the courtroom classic Perry Mason. He established himself as go-to guy for westerns with Rawhide, followed by lengthy stints with Have Gun—Will Travel (116 episodes) and Gunsmoke (96 episodes).
In the 1960s and early ’70s, he directed more than a dozen films, most of them westerns, including four with James Stewart (Shenandoah, The Rare Breed, Bandolero! and Fools Parade) and five with John Wayne (McClintock!, Chisum, Hellfighters, The Undefeated and Cahill, U.S. Marshall).
From the mid-’70s onward, he returned to televisoin frequrntly, directing such series as Bancek, Hec Ramsey and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color.
He later retired to Washington State, where he directed plays at a community theater.
McLaglen died August 30, 2014, in Friday Harbor, Washington. He was 94.
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