Robert Day

Over the course of a 50-year career, prolific British filmmaker Robert Day shot movies for more than a decade before stepping into the director's chair for features and television, including such comedies as "The Green Man" and "Two Way Stretch." Born in Sheen, England, he joined the camera department in his late teens, serving as assistant cameraman and focus puller before running the camera by the late '40s, doing so for a wealth of films including the first adaptation of the George Orwell classic "1984." In the mid '50s he began directing for both features and TV series, first with the Launder-Gilliat comedy featuring Alastair Sim, "The Green Man," and the swashbuckling adventures of former pirate Robert Shaw, "The Buccaneers." Day worked his way through a range of genre fare, including Boris Karloff horror flicks ("The Haunted Strangler"), science fiction pictures ("First Man into Space"), and adventure yarns ("Tarzan the Magnificent"). Other notable British productions included the Peter Sellers caper comedy "Two Way Stretch" and several episodes of the celebrated superspy series "The Avengers." In the '60s, Day moved to the United States, where he directed mostly for the small screen on series ranging from the "The Streets of San Francisco" to "Dallas" and for TV movies such as the third installment in the beloved Disney franchise "Beyond Witch Mountain."