Trained in the helter-skelter world of live television, director David Lowell Rich made his first theatrical film, the J.D. melodrama No Time to Be Young in 1957. He spent the next two years at Columbia, seemingly doing whatever he was told, be it the Three Stooges' "comeback" feature Have Rocket Will Travel (1959) or the calypso-music quickie Hey Boy! Hey Girl! (1959). He joined the TV-director pool at Universal, occasionally crossing over to the big screen for such productions as Madame X (1966) and The Plainsman (1967). When Universal committed itself to the production of made-for-TV movies in 1966, Rich became one of the most prolific directors in this field. A list of David Lowell Rich's TV films would make a book in itself: among his better small-screen endeavors were Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb (1983), A Family Upside Down (1978), The Hearst and Davies Affair (1984), and The Defection of Simas Kudrika (1978), for which the director won an Emmy.
by Hal Erickson
biography
