Andrew V. McLaglen, a prolific veteran of westerns, action films and television shows who directed many of classic Hollywood’s most enduring stars — including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and William Holden — died Aug. 30 at his home in Friday Harbor, Wash. He was 94.
His daughter Mary McLaglen confirmed the death but did not cite a specific cause.
Apprenticing under directors John Ford and William Wellman, Mr. McLaglen was one of the last to specialize in the western.
His best-known work includes “McClintock!” (1963), “Hellfighters” (1968), “The Undefeated” (1969), “Chisum” (1970) and “Cahill U.S. Marshal” (1973), all starring Wayne; “Shenandoah” (1965), starring James Stewart; and 96 episodes of “Gunsmoke,” the TV western starring James Arness that ran on CBS from 1955 to 1975.
Although he said he never intended to concentrate on the western, he brought old-fashioned star power, solid craft and a certain tough-guy humor to the genre well past its heyday.
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“As westerns, through directors like Anthony Mann, Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, became more harsh, McLaglen retained an optimism about his characters and their goals,” said author C. Courtney Joyner, who interviewed Mr. McLaglen for his book “The Westerners.” “For all its brutalities, the dream-promise of the American West was something he believed in, even when it was out of fashion.”
Andrew Victor McLaglen was the son of British actor Victor McLaglen, who won an Oscar as an Irish rebel in Ford’s “The Informer” (1935). Born in London on July 28, 1920, Andrew was 5 when his father moved the family to Hollywood.
He attended the Cate School in Carpinteria and the University of Virginia, dropping out after a year to pursue film directing. After working as a gofer at Republic Pictures, he became an assistant director for Ford on “The Quiet Man,” a 1952 romantic comedy starring Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
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Through Wayne, Mr. McLaglen directed his first feature, the noir-ish crime movie “Man in the Vault” (1956), which starred William Campbell and Anita Ekberg. Wayne guaranteed the financing.
Share this articleShareMr. McLaglen directed his first western with his next film, “Gun the Man Down” (1956), which starred Arness and Angie Dickinson.
It was Arness who recommended Mr. McLaglen to CBS to direct a couple of episodes of “Gunsmoke.” Over the next decade, Mr. McLaglen was behind more wagon trains, cattle drives and shootouts than he ever dreamed of, directing not only the 96 episodes of “Gunsmoke” but also 116 episodes of “Have Gun — Will Travel,” starring Richard Boone as the gentlemanly gunslinger Paladin. He also helmed half a dozen episodes of “Rawhide” starring the then-little-known Clint Eastwood.
Directing westerns, Mr. McLaglen once said, happened “totally by mistake.”
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It began “because first I did ‘Man in the Vault.’ Then I got a western, ‘Gun the Man Down,’ because I knew Jim Arness. Then ... I wound up doing a whole bunch of ‘Gunsmoke’ episodes,” he said in a 2009 interview in Scenes of Cinema magazine. “I then became the ‘Western Director,’ the star over at CBS. Then everybody thinks, ‘Jesus, that’s his big specialty.’ ”
He directed several war movies, including “The Devil’s Brigade” (1968), featuring Holden as the head of a commando unit charged with capturing a Nazi stronghold. One of the director’s last major projects was the 1982 miniseries “The Blue and the Gray,” a Civil War saga with an all-star cast that included Gregory Peck as Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. McLaglen retired in the early 1990s and moved full time to San Juan Island in Washington, where he satisfied some of his creative yearnings by directing a variety of local theater productions, including comedies by Neil Simon.
He was married four times. Survivors include three children, a stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
— Los Angeles TimesncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLKvwMSrq5qhnqKyr8COmqWdqpWseq6vy5qepZ2eYrGqvsScq6iqXaSzbsPErKueqp6oeqW1xKxkmqxdboFwfo9qa2hoaWR9d3uVbZqem5OYhW5%2FlG2cZmlhmoFuhMVpaWZoY5iDdYDBa5twnGCUwLW70bJloaydoQ%3D%3D