Hollywood Reporter and several news outlets overseas have published the news that director Robert Mulligan died at his home in Connecticut on Friday from heart disease.
Mulligan started out as a TV director, but moved over to film with great ease. After two Rock Hudson movies and some other films, Mulligan hit the big time with his direction of To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he received his only Oscar nomination.
In fact, a lot can be said for the fact that during the course of his career, Mulligan directed five Oscar nominated performances (Gregory Peck and Mary Badham in Mockingbird, Natalie Wood for Love with the Proper Stranger, Ruth Gordon in Inside Daisy Clover (which also starred Wood), and Ellen Burtsyn in Same Time, Next Year). His last film was 1991’s The Man in the Moon, a coming of age story that helped launch Reese Witherspoon’s career.
The fact that Mulligan was able to work with such dramatic material with ease and a sense of heart is something that’s missing from a lot of today’s directors, I think, who are more concerned with either making bank, blowing things up, or making statements.
I wish more directors worked the way Mulligan did.