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Leslie Martinson, 101
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freddy
Sep 7, 2016, 11:00:28 AM9/7/16
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H. Martinson, Director Who Left His Mark on TV, Dies at 101
By JOHN OTISSEPT. 6, 2016
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From left, Jack Kelly, Leslie H. Martinson and Roger Moore in 1961 on the set of “Maverick.” Mr. Martinson also directed films. Credit ABC Photo Archives, via Getty Images
Leslie H. Martinson, a ubiquitous director whose long list of credits is a veritable capsule history of prime-time television through the postwar decades and beyond, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 101.
His death was confirmed by his son-in-law, Doug Carner.
Mr. Martinson directed a smattering of feature films, many of them long forgotten. Probably the best known is “PT 109” (1963), about the wartime exploits of John F. Kennedy, played by Cliff Robertson. But from the early 1950s through the 1980s, television was his primary medium.
TV studios recognized his ability to complete in days what other directors would take weeks to accomplish and kept him steadily employed, in both dramas and comedies.
“Long before I had any real awareness of directors and their careers, I knew the name Leslie H. Martinson,” the critic Leonard Maltin said in 2007. “No one who watched television in the 1950s and ’60s could have avoided seeing that name. It was emblazoned on countless TV shows.”
Just a partial list includes, from the 1950s, the live drama series “General Electric Theater” and “Chevron Theater,” the sitcom “Topper,” the drama “The Millionaire” and the westerns “The Roy Rogers Show” and “Tales of Wells Fargo.”
In the ’60s, he directed episodes of “Surfside 6,” “Maverick,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “The Roaring Twenties,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “No Time for Sergeants,” “Run for Your Life,” “Batman,” “Mister Roberts,” “Mission: Impossible” and “The Green Hornet.”
His output in the ’70s included “Ironside,” “Love, American Style,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Room 222,” “Mannix,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Wonder Woman” and “Dallas.”
Photo
Mr. Martinson, in an undated photograph.
He wound up his television career in the ’80s with, among others, “Eight Is Enough,” “Quincy, M.E.,” “CHiPs,” “Fantasy Island” and “Diff’rent Strokes.”
He was in his 80s when he retired.
Leslie Herbert Martinson was born in Boston on Jan. 16, 1915, to Lewis Martinson and the former Gertrude Cohen. He studied advertising at Boston University before becoming a reporter for The Boston Evening Transcript.
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While on a writing assignment in Los Angeles, he decided to remain on the West Coast and jump into an entirely different career.
“I looked at the walls of MGM, and said that’s where I want to go,” Mr. Martinson recounted in a television interview in the 1980s. MGM, one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios at the time, hired him in 1936 to work in its production office as a script clerk. He later became a script supervisor.
With the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the Army and served in the Pacific, at Guadalcanal and Fiji.
Mr. Martinson’s first credit as a director was for the TV series “City Detective” in 1953. His subsequent work on westerns in the 1950s and ’60s was acknowledged in 2006 when he was presented with a Golden Boot Award by the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Mr. Martinson’s feature film directorial debut was “The Atomic Kid,” a fanciful 1954 comedy (with a story by a young Blake Edwards) starring Mickey Rooney as a uranium prospector who becomes radioactive when bomb tests go off in the desert. He then helps the F.B.I. break up a spy ring.
Mr. Martinson was later hired by 20th Century Fox to direct “Batman: The Movie” (1966), a theatrical feature version of the widely popular TV show starring Adam West, which the studio wanted made quickly to cash in on the show’s popularity.
Another of his notable projects was the 1978 thriller “Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident,” starring Peter Graves. (It was retitled “Teheran Incident” when released on DVD.) An international co-production, it was one of the last films shot in Iran by Western producers before the revolution there in 1979.
Mr. Martinson also directed Rosalind Russell in her final film, “Mrs. Pollifax: Spy,” released in 1971, and Ronald Reagan in one of his last acting roles, in a 1964 episode of “Kraft Suspense Theater” titled “A Cruel and Unusual Night.” Two years later, Reagan ran successfully for governor of California.
Mr. Martinson was president emeritus of the board of the West Coast Jewish Theater in Los Angeles, where he had been president for eight years.
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He is survived by his wife of 60 years, the former Constance Frye, the host of the syndicated television show “Connie Martinson Talks Books”; a daughter, Julianna Carner; and a grandson.
By JOHN OTISSEPT. 6, 2016
Continue reading the main story
Share This Page
Share
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Photo
From left, Jack Kelly, Leslie H. Martinson and Roger Moore in 1961 on the set of “Maverick.” Mr. Martinson also directed films. Credit ABC Photo Archives, via Getty Images
Leslie H. Martinson, a ubiquitous director whose long list of credits is a veritable capsule history of prime-time television through the postwar decades and beyond, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 101.
His death was confirmed by his son-in-law, Doug Carner.
Mr. Martinson directed a smattering of feature films, many of them long forgotten. Probably the best known is “PT 109” (1963), about the wartime exploits of John F. Kennedy, played by Cliff Robertson. But from the early 1950s through the 1980s, television was his primary medium.
TV studios recognized his ability to complete in days what other directors would take weeks to accomplish and kept him steadily employed, in both dramas and comedies.
“Long before I had any real awareness of directors and their careers, I knew the name Leslie H. Martinson,” the critic Leonard Maltin said in 2007. “No one who watched television in the 1950s and ’60s could have avoided seeing that name. It was emblazoned on countless TV shows.”
Just a partial list includes, from the 1950s, the live drama series “General Electric Theater” and “Chevron Theater,” the sitcom “Topper,” the drama “The Millionaire” and the westerns “The Roy Rogers Show” and “Tales of Wells Fargo.”
In the ’60s, he directed episodes of “Surfside 6,” “Maverick,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “The Roaring Twenties,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “No Time for Sergeants,” “Run for Your Life,” “Batman,” “Mister Roberts,” “Mission: Impossible” and “The Green Hornet.”
His output in the ’70s included “Ironside,” “Love, American Style,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Room 222,” “Mannix,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Wonder Woman” and “Dallas.”
Photo
Mr. Martinson, in an undated photograph.
He wound up his television career in the ’80s with, among others, “Eight Is Enough,” “Quincy, M.E.,” “CHiPs,” “Fantasy Island” and “Diff’rent Strokes.”
He was in his 80s when he retired.
Leslie Herbert Martinson was born in Boston on Jan. 16, 1915, to Lewis Martinson and the former Gertrude Cohen. He studied advertising at Boston University before becoming a reporter for The Boston Evening Transcript.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
While on a writing assignment in Los Angeles, he decided to remain on the West Coast and jump into an entirely different career.
“I looked at the walls of MGM, and said that’s where I want to go,” Mr. Martinson recounted in a television interview in the 1980s. MGM, one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios at the time, hired him in 1936 to work in its production office as a script clerk. He later became a script supervisor.
With the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the Army and served in the Pacific, at Guadalcanal and Fiji.
Mr. Martinson’s first credit as a director was for the TV series “City Detective” in 1953. His subsequent work on westerns in the 1950s and ’60s was acknowledged in 2006 when he was presented with a Golden Boot Award by the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Mr. Martinson’s feature film directorial debut was “The Atomic Kid,” a fanciful 1954 comedy (with a story by a young Blake Edwards) starring Mickey Rooney as a uranium prospector who becomes radioactive when bomb tests go off in the desert. He then helps the F.B.I. break up a spy ring.
Mr. Martinson was later hired by 20th Century Fox to direct “Batman: The Movie” (1966), a theatrical feature version of the widely popular TV show starring Adam West, which the studio wanted made quickly to cash in on the show’s popularity.
Another of his notable projects was the 1978 thriller “Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident,” starring Peter Graves. (It was retitled “Teheran Incident” when released on DVD.) An international co-production, it was one of the last films shot in Iran by Western producers before the revolution there in 1979.
Mr. Martinson also directed Rosalind Russell in her final film, “Mrs. Pollifax: Spy,” released in 1971, and Ronald Reagan in one of his last acting roles, in a 1964 episode of “Kraft Suspense Theater” titled “A Cruel and Unusual Night.” Two years later, Reagan ran successfully for governor of California.
Mr. Martinson was president emeritus of the board of the West Coast Jewish Theater in Los Angeles, where he had been president for eight years.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
He is survived by his wife of 60 years, the former Constance Frye, the host of the syndicated television show “Connie Martinson Talks Books”; a daughter, Julianna Carner; and a grandson.
freddy
Sep 7, 2016, 11:02:35 AM9/7/16
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Adam H. Kerman
Sep 7, 2016, 12:39:10 PM9/7/16
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freddy <rcato...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 11:00:28 AM UTC-4, freddy wrote:
>>H. Martinson, Director Who Left His Mark on TV, Dies at 101
>>By JOHN OTISSEPT. 6, 2016
>On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 11:00:28 AM UTC-4, freddy wrote:
>>H. Martinson, Director Who Left His Mark on TV, Dies at 101
>>By JOHN OTISSEPT. 6, 2016
>>Leslie H. Martinson, a ubiquitous director whose long list of credits
>>is a veritable capsule history of prime-time television through the
>>postwar decades and beyond, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly
>>Hills, Calif. He was 101. . . .
>>is a veritable capsule history of prime-time television through the
>>postwar decades and beyond, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly
>>In the '60s, he directed episodes of "Surfside 6," "Maverick,"
>>"Hawaiian Eye," "The Roaring Twenties," "77 Sunset Strip,"
>>"No Time for Sergeants," "Run for Your Life," "Batman,"
>>"Mister Roberts," "Mission: Impossible" and "The Green
>God bless him. Apparently a well regarded man but maybe the WORST
>director in town. Thought he died 20 years ago. Garner wouldn't say a
>word against him-in public.
Can you explain your criticism, please? IMDb credits him for directing
18 episodes of Maverick, including one of the best regarded episodes
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres". Garner was in 14 of these episodes. They
have no other joint credits on other tv series.
Garner almost never said anything bad about directors, especially on
Maverick when he was entirely unsure of his acting ability. In fact,
one of the earliest falling outs he had with Roy Huggins was about
a director--I forget which one. Huggins wouldn't use him for additional
episodes, but Garner tried to fight for him as Garner felt he needed
him for performance cues. Huggins, being a writer-producer, didn't
think directors brought much value to a television episode, and of
course thought Garner was enough of a natural talent that he didn't
need to rely on any director's help.
It was in one of the earlier Garner biographies that I read a long
time ago and don't recall which director it was, but it clearly
wasn't Martinson.
freddy
Sep 11, 2016, 12:21:11 PM9/11/16
to
On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 11:00:28 AM UTC-4, freddy wrote:
Garner, either in his autobiography or his interview with the Academy of American Television (free online) makes reference to an unnamed useless director who kept getting hired because he worked cheap. That was Les.
You notice the Times, as they often do, gave a wink to his awful reputation with its reference to his work being "long forgotten."
He had the last laugh though; outlived everybody and died in a Beverly Hills mansion!
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