The Emmy award-winning TV director and actor Peter Baldwin died on November 19 in Pebble Beach, California at the age of 86.
Baldwin won a Primetime Emmy Award for directing The Wonder Years and a Cable ACE Award for Dream On. His death was announced on the Facebook pages of his daughter Eleonora Baldwin and his son Drew Baldwin.
Born in Winnetka, Illinois, Baldwin was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout in his senior year at Stanford. He became one of Paramount’s “Golden Circle of Newcomers” and appeared in films including Stalag 17, Little Boy Lost and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.
He served three years in the Navy and returned to Paramount, where he appeared in The Tin Star and Teacher’s Pet with Clark Gable and Doris Day. After touring with Julie Harris in The Warm Peninsula play, Baldwin moved to Italy.
In 1964, he won first prize at the Venice Film Festival for Some Sort of Cage, a docudrama about Synanon House, which he wrote, produced and directed.
He went on to direct hundreds of episodes of popular shows including The Andy Griffith Show, The Partridge Family, Mary Tyler Moore, The Brady Bunch, Sanford and Son, The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days, Chico and the Man, The Love Boat, Family Ties, ALF, Full House, WKRP In Cincinnati, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Even Stevens.
He also directed comedy feature film Meet Wally Sparks starring Rodney Dangerfield and produced the HBO movie As Summers Die starring Bette Davis, Jamie Leigh Curtis, and Scott Glenn.
After retiring to Pebble Beach, he served on the board of the Pacific Repertory Theater in Carmel-By-The-Sea. He is survived by his wife, Terry, son, daughters Amy Anderson and Eleonora, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
