Robert Stanton Butler

November 16, 1927 - November 3, 2023 Robert Stanton Butler, revered television director, loving husband, devoted father and doting grandfather, passed away on November 3, 2023 in Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife Adri, his son and daughter, and his grandsons Rainer and Liam.
Robert Butler was born in Hollywood on November 16, 1927 to Edward Butler and Bea Olson, an insurance salesman and elementary school teacher. Robert ("Bob") became a trombone player and dance band leader while still a student at University High School, playing on Hoagy Carmichael's live variety show at NBC radio in 1945. He went on to study at UCLA, joined the Army Ground Forces Band at the end of World War II, and graduated from UCLA with a degree in English in 1951.
Butler started his illustrious career in film and TV as an usher at CBS in the early 1950s. He moved up to production clerk, stage manager, and then associate director, working closely with mentor directors John Frankenheimer, Franklin Schaffer, and Arthur Penn. While working at CBS Television City he met Adrienne Hepburn, a "script girl" working on Playhouse 90. The two married in 1957 and remained a devoted couple for 66 years.
Butler's first credit as director was in 1959 for Hennesey. Over the next forty years he directed many of the most popular television series, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Hogan's Heroes, I Spy, Batman, Star Trek, Gunsmoke, The Waltons, Hawaii Five-O, Kung Fu and Colombo.
Studios hired Butler to direct numerous pilots, and he established the look and feel of seminal television series including Hogan's Heroes (1965), Star Trek (1966), Batman (1966), The Blue Knight (1973, TV's first mini-series), Hill Street Blues (1978), Moonlighting (1985), Sisters (1991) and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993). Butler won Emmy Awards for The Blue Knight and Hill Street Blues, for which he is widely credited with changing the face of police procedural shows, innovating a hand held camera style that offered a grittier look to the dramatic narratives. He was also honored with Emmy nominations for Lois & Clark, Hill Street Blues and the pilot episodes of Sirens, Moonlighting, and Remington Steele, which he co-created.
Butler also directed several feature films and movies for television, including Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969); The Barefoot Executive (1971); Scandalous John (1971); Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972); and other features Night of the Juggler (1980) and Turbulence (1997).
Dedicated to the craft of directing, Butler served many leadership roles at the Directors Guild of America, which he joined in 1959. In 2001 the DGA honored Butler with the Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award in recognition of his decades of service. In 2015 the DGA awarded Butler with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in Television Direction. Upon receiving this honor, he said about directing: "I believe that what we storytellers do IS rocket science. In the working corners of our madhouse…I always saw how I had somehow landed in the most rewarding rat-race of them all."
Robert Butler was an adoring father, grandfather, uncle, friend and teacher, who shared his zeal for film, jazz, books, tennis, and model rockets. Annual family vacations to La Jolla and the California desert were an important family tradition. He never went anywhere without his Pentax camera loaded with Kodak Tri-X film.
The family will hold a private memorial. Gifts in Robert Butler's honor may be made to the Directors Guild Foundation: www.dga.org/Resources/Directors-Guild-Foundation/Donations (photo courtesy of DGA).