Ted Post, Primetime Emmy-Nominated Director

Ted Post, a director who worked widely in both film and television, died August 20, 2013, in Santa Monica, California. He was 95.

Post began his career in the entertainment business with a job as an usher at Loew's Pitkin Theater in the Brownsville section of his native Brooklyn, New York. He later studied acting, which led to directing plays in Manhattan. While serving in the Army during World War II he directed plays and musicals for his fellow service personnel.

He began directing for television in the early years of the medium with episodes of series such as Danger, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Schlitz Playhouse and Waterfront, for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1955.

In the ’50s and ’60s he worked on such shows as The Ford Television Theatre, Zane Grey Theater, Perry Mason, Tombstone Territory, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Rifleman, Route 66, Wagon Train, Thriller, The Virginian, Gunsmoke, Alcoa Premiere, Combat!, The Defenders, Peyton Place and Rawhide — which sparked a friendship with Clint Eastwood, one of its stars.

He went on to direct Eastwood in Hang ’Em High and Magnum Force, as well as several other features, including Beneath the Planet of the Apes, The Harrad Experiment, Whiffs, Go Tell the Spartans and Good Guys Wear Black.

Post continued to work in television, and directed many other series and miniseries, including Columbo, Baretta, Ark II, Rich Man, Poor Man - Book II and Cagney & Lacey, and many made-for-TV movies, including The Girls in the Office, Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker and Stagecoach.