Robert Day obit

Robert Day Dies: Prolific Film & TV Director Was 94

 

He was not on the list.

Robert Day, the British director whose long list of credits includes multiple 1960s Tarzan movies and dozens of TV series and telefilms, has died. He was 94. His family said Day passed away March 17 on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.

Born on September 11, 1922, in Sheen, England, his first film was the dark comedy The Green Man (1956), and from there Day would helm movies starring the likes of Boris Karloff (1958’s The Haunted Strangler and Corridors of Blood), Shirley Jones (Bobbkins, 1961), Peter Sellers (Two Way Stretch, 1960), George Sanders (Operation Snatch, 1962) and Ursula Andress (She, 1965) In 1960, Day directed the first of his four Tarzan pics that decade, two of which he also wrote, along with an episode of TV’s Tarzan. He also produced 1968’s Tarzan and the Jungle Boy.

By the late 1960s, Day mostly segued to TV, helming multiple episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Avengers, The F.B.I., The Name of the Game, Cade’s County and earning a DGA nom for 1970’s The Bold Ones: The Senator. He continued to direct TV dramas throughout the ’70s, including episodes of such classics as Police Story, The Streets of San Francisco, McCloud, Kojak and Dallas.

By the late-’70s, Day was directing mostly telefilms, and worked steadily throughout the ’80s, retiring after 1991’s TV movie Fire: Trapped on the 37th Floor.

Day was married to actress Dorothy Provine from 1969 until her death in 2010, and his brother was Oscar-nominated A Passage to India cinematographer Ernest Day. Survivors include his son, Rob; his daughter, Roberta; and grandsons Nicholas and Philip Simons.

 

Selected filmography

 

The Green Man (1956)

The Haunted Strangler (1958)

Corridors of Blood (1958)

First Man into Space (1959)

Life in Emergency Ward 10 (1959)

Two-Way Stretch (1960)

Tarzan the Magnificent (1960)

The Rebel (1961)

Operation Snatch (1962)

Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963)

She (1965)

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)

Tarzan and the Great River (1967)

The Reluctant Heroes (TV film, 1971)

The Initiation of Sarah (1978)

The Man with Bogart's Face (1980)

Peter and Paul (1981)

The Lady from Yesterday (1985)

Celebration Family (1987)

The Quick and the Dead (1987)