Passages

William Asher, who died on July 16 at 90, was a prolific writer/director of TV shows –a founding member, if you will, of multi-camera sitcoms. He helmed 110 episodes of I Love Lucy, and would go on to create the classic series Bewitched. Asher was married the star of that series, Elizabeth Montgomery, in 1963, a year before it began airing. His visual stamp was vital to the show, which explored the shifting roles of women in the United States and expressed some of the uneasiness men had with the changing times. Asher directed multiple episodes of all eight seasons of Bewitched. Other comedy shows he was associated with included The Danny Thomas Show, Alice, The Patty Duke Show, and Gidget. He also helmed dramas such as episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Dukes Of Hazzard, and Marcus Welby, M.D. While working on Bewitched, he also helmed such of low-budget beach blanket comedies such as Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, and Beach Blanket Bingo. Still, while TV sitcoms have moved away from the style he helped create, his influence remains on some of the biggest sitcoms TV has ever created. One of the last surviving members of the I Love Lucy brain trust, Asher was there at the beginning when the medium of TV was seen as gnat to most people in Hollywood. So as much as Lucille Ball was influential in front of the camera, Asher was the same behind the curtain.

Here is one I missed from April. George Murdock, the gravelly voiced character actor that seemed to always land him a steady stream of "heavy" parts in theater, film and television productions, died April 30 at the age of 81. With his craggy facial features, Murdock guest starred on a wide variety of TV shows, from the Twilight Zone to Torchwood: Miracle Day. He played heavies, cops and judges but had memorable recurring roles as Lt. Scanlon, the oily Internal Affairs officer on Barney Miller and Doctor Salik on the original Battlestar Galactica. He started in episodic TV with the Twilight Zone and followed that with 77 Sunset Strip, Combat!, I Spy, The Untouchables, Ben Casey, Wild Wild West, Tarzan and continuing through the rest of 60s the 70’s –Streets of San Francisco, Rockford Files, Lou Grant- through the 80’s – T.J. Hooker, Night Court, Benson, LA Law, Dynasty, Fame, Murder, She Wrote, through the 1990s –Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Seinfeld, The Nanny, Law & Order, Chicago Hope, ER, The X Files, Just Shoot Me to the 2000’s in The Dead Zone, CSI, Smallville and his last project, Torchwood: Miracle Day. He also spent time in the Star Trek universe, appearing in the two-part classic The Best of Both Worlds, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s most popular episode. He also played God in the William Shatner directed feature Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, where Kirk asks the best line in the movie: “What does God need with a Starship?”