Emmy-winning TV director Bruce Bilson has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, aged 97. His daughter, producer Julie Bilson Ahlberg, said her father died peacefully on Friday. In 1968, Bilson won an Emmy for directing an episode of the hit TV show Get Smart. His CV also included a string of iconic shows, including M*A*S*H, The Brady Bunch, Gidget, Hogan’s Heroes, Bewitched, The Doris Day Show, The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, and Hawaii Five-O. His son Danny Bilson is a screenwriter who worked on The Rocketeer, while his granddaughter Rachel Bilson starred in The O.C, Hart of Dixie, and Nashville. Bilson graduated from UCLA in 1946, and was part of the institution’s first film-school graduating class. Speaking about his craft in a 2008 interview with The Television Academy Foundation, Bilson said he quickly learned to put emotion above technical precision as a director. “When I was starting out, I thought my camera work was awful, and I tried to make it more interesting,” he said. “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.”
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