James Burrows, the 11-time Emmy Award winner and prolific tv director recognized for his Midas contact when it got here to sitcoms, has died. He was 85.
Burrows, who co-created Cheers and helmed all 246 episodes of Will & Grace throughout its two runs, died Friday, his household introduced in an announcement to People: “We celebrate the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of James ‘Jimmy’ Burrows, who passed away peacefully today surrounded by his loving family. For more than five decades, Burrows was one of the most influential and beloved directors in television history. As a legendary director, mentor, and creative force, he helped shape generations of comedy and brought immeasurable joy to audiences around the world.”
A grasp of comedian timing, Burrows was an skilled at getting huge laughs out of his performers and the fabric on the web page. For greater than 40 years, his abilities made him one of the vital in-demand administrators in Hollywood. In the event you had been making a half-hour comedy for tv, you wished Jim Burrows calling the pictures.
“My mind is never a blank,” Burrows told The New York Instances in a 1995 interview. “If something isn’t funny, I’ll try nine ways to make it funny. I won’t just quit on it. I’ll change the straight line to get more ideas or find a funny position for the actors.”
Producers sought to work with Burrows proper at the beginning. He’s credited with directing greater than 50 sitcom pilots, getting such eventual hits as Associates, The Large Bang Principle, Frasier, Taxi, Night time Court docket, Wings, Two and a Half Males, Caroline within the Metropolis, Third Rock From the Solar, Mike & Molly and Two Broke Ladies off on the correct foot.
“Jimmy was the greatest comedic television director in the history of the medium,” mentioned his longtime agent, Rick Rosen of WME. “He directed the most iconic, defining shows of generations. Always a gentleman, it was an absolute honor to represent him.”
In a 2016 interview with Kate Stanhope of The Hollywood Reporter, Burrows mused in regards to the secret of his success.
“I’m not a martinet or a dictator,” he mentioned. “I don’t come in for the day of rehearsal knowing where my actors are going to be on the stage. I sit with my cast, and I talk to them about their characters. And I try to get them to like one another, because if they do, that’s going to come across onscreen. So I’ll try to do lunch together. Sometimes I’ll bring them here for a party, which I did with Mike & Molly. With the Friends kids, I took them to Vegas.”
He added that he discovered kindness from his father, the Tony Award-winning humorist and playwright Abe Burrows, greatest recognized for Guys and Dolls.
Directing pilots was only one side within the profession of the multitalented Burrows. Along with creating Cheers with brothers Glen Charles and Les Charles (and directing the lion’s share of its 278 episodes), he was an govt producer on Will & Grace and helmed all 198 installments of its authentic eight-season run. When the sequence returned in September 2017 after 11 years away, he was again, too.
Burrows additionally took a producing credit score on Mike & Molly, Gary Single, Man With a Plan and Superior Donuts, helming a number of episodes for them as effectively.
Getting his begin on a 1974 installment of The Mary Tyler Moore Present titled “Neighbors” — the one the place Lou strikes into Rhoda’s previous residence in Mary’s constructing — Burrows went on to helm greater than a thousand episodes of reveals. Within the Nineteen Seventies, he labored repeatedly for MTM Enterprises whereas additionally directing for Laverne & Shirley, The Tony Randall Present, Fay and Busting Free.
Along with Cheers, the Eighties discovered him behind the digital camera for The Associates, Taxi and Pricey John. He directed for NewsRadio, Companions, Males Behaving Badly and Fired Up within the ’90s, Academics, The Class and Again to You within the 2000s, and Romantically Challenged, Man With a Plan and The Millers within the decade that adopted.
He amassed greater than 40 Emmy nominations and acquired 4 DGA Awards. The guild honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
Not the whole lot Burrows touched struck comedian gold, nevertheless. Scattered amongst his credit are the pilots for such forgotten efforts as The Fanelli Boys, Pacific Station, Chicago Sons, The Secret Lives of Males, Stark Raving Mad, Bram and Alice and 4 Kings.
James Edward Burrows was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, 1940, to Ruth and Abe Burrows. When he was younger, the household relocated to Manhattan’s West Aspect. He grew up hanging backstage in theaters, watching the casts of Guys and Dolls, Can-Can and Easy methods to Reach Enterprise With out Actually Making an attempt put together for his or her Broadway debuts.
In grade faculty, Burrows was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Boys Choir, spending his Saturdays studying “Carmen” and “Tosca.” “We used to run around the old Met playing hide-and-seek in the stalls,” he mentioned within the Instances interview.
Burrows attended the town’s Excessive Faculty of Music & Artwork, however he was studying simply as a lot engaged on his father’s reveals. “I used to suggest jokes all the time,” he mentioned. “Abe would be very nice and say, ‘I’ll think about it.’”
Burrows mentioned he initially resisted the plain alternative of a present enterprise profession, afraid he can be misplaced in his dad’s shadow. However after incomes his undergraduate diploma at Oberlin School in Ohio, he went on to get his graduate diploma on the Yale Faculty of Drama. He did that as a favor to his father.
He then began to direct and realized he was a pure at it. It didn’t damage that when he started doing summer time inventory, his father’s works had grow to be staples. “Abe came and saw a production of Guys and Dolls I did with two pianos, and he really liked it,” he recalled.
Considered one of his first Broadway jobs was as an assistant supervisor for a 1966 musical model of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Known as Holly Golightly throughout its pre-Broadway tryouts, it was scrapped by producer David Merrick throughout previews and by no means formally opened. Nevertheless, the younger Burrows received to fulfill the star of the present, Mary Tyler Moore.
A number of years later, Burrows was watching an episode of Moore’s sequence and mentioned he got here to 2 conclusions. The primary was that, in essence, a sitcom is a 22-minute play. The second was that if he may direct two-hour performs in summer time inventory, he may deal with a TV comedy.
Burrows wrote Moore and landed a job at MTM, and it was solely a matter of time earlier than he received a shot at directing her present. He went on to do three extra. The corporate additionally preserve him busy with assignments on Paul Sands in Associates and Lovers, Phyllis, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Present, The Betty White Present and Lou Grant.
Throughout his profession, Burrows additionally helmed greater than 20 telefilms however only one function, the comedy Companions (1982), starring Ryan O’Neal and John Hurt.
Sometimes, the bearded Burrows would step in entrance of the digital camera, taking over cameo bits in Rhoda, Phyllis, The Bob Newhart Present and Cheers. He performed the director in “The One With the Butt,” the basic 1994 episode of Associates through which Joey will get a job as Al Pacino‘s derriere double. And he appeared as himself on episodes of The Comeback, which starred Associates alum Lisa Kudrow.
In 2023, he returned to Frasier to direct the primary episode of the Paramount+ reboot, then dealt with different installments.
Burrows was married to Linda Solomon, an affiliate producer on The Associates, from 1981-93, and so they had three daughters. In 1997, he wed Debbie Easton, a hairstylist who labored on Roseanne, Caroline within the Metropolis and Associates.
