Busy TV director Bruce Bilson, 97, died on Jan. 16. Starting as assistant director on The Andy Griffith Show, he went on to helm episodes of Life with Lucy, Get Smart (for which he won an Emmy), The Patty Duke Show, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Gidget, That Girl, Bewitched, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Sanford and Son, Hogan’s Heroes, The Brady Bunch, The Doris Day Show, The Odd Couple, Love American Style, B.J. and the Bear, Barney Miller, The Fall Guy, Hotel, Dallas, and The Love Boat, among many others. "When I was starting out, I thought my camera work was awful,” Bilson said, “and I tried to make it more interesting. As I got older and more experienced, I learned to tell the story with the actors first, cameras second. Sometimes you can just do something with the camera that's just so good and you see you love it, but it's the actors and the script." Among his survivors is actress Rachel Bilson, his granddaughter.
