Michael Preece, the script supervisor turned director who called the shots on multiple episodes of series including Hunter, Dallas and Walker, Texas Ranger, died Thursday. He was 88.
Preece died of heart failure at his Brentwood home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Gretchen Preece-Newman — wife of two-time Oscar-winning singer-songwriter Randy Newman — told The Hollywood Reporter.
Preece directed 19 episodes of NBC’s Hunter from 1984-90 during the show’s first six seasons; 62 installments of CBS’ Dallas from 1981-91 (seasons four through 14), plus the 1997 reunion telefilm War of the Ewings; and 70 episodes of CBS’ Walker, Texas Ranger during its nine-season, 1993-2001 run.
Preece also worked on The Bionic Woman, Barnaby Jones, Fantasy Island, Flamingo Road, T.J. Hooker, The New Mike Hammer, Riptide, Knots Landing, Falcon Crest, MacGyver, 7th Heaven and many other series before calling it a career in 2007.
Michael Conway Preece was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 1936. His mother, Thelma, founded the Script Clerks Guild (later IATSE’s Script Supervisor Local 871), and his father, Harold, was a cigarette and cigar salesman.
Preece graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School and while a freshman at Santa Monica City College during the summer of 1955 landed a job in set continuity on the syndicated series Waterfront, starring Preston Foster.
He then worked as a script supervisor for all three seasons of NBC’s I Spy (1965-68) and on films including The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), True Grit (1969), The Hawaiians (1970), The Getaway (1972), The Paper Chase (1973) and Breakheart Pass (1975).
Preece graduated to director in ’75 on an episode of ABC’s The Streets of San Francisco and went on to helm two features, The Prize Fighter (1979) and Beretta’s Island (1993).
Preece by far directed the most Walker, Texas Ranger episodes, and on Dallas, only Leonard Katzman helmed more (only five more, in fact).
In a 2012 interview, Preece said there was a saying on the set of Dallas that the show was “director proof,” meaning no director could screw it up.
“Larry [Hagman] knew his character. He had a tendency to go a little bigger than was needed, so you’d try to curb him a little bit,” he noted. “Or if he didn’t know his lines well, sometimes he would have them written on cue cards and I’d say, ‘Larry, you sound like you’re reading it.’ But basically, he needed very little direction — and that was true of much of the cast. They made it easy.”
Preece was a longtime employee of Lorimar Productions, and before he would ever a direct on Dallas, he filmed each castmember firing a gun in order to ensure that no one would know who really shot Hagman’s J.R. Ewing in the show’s iconic third-season cliff-hanger that aired in March 1980.
In addition to his daughter — she said her dad was especially proud to have such an accomplished musician as Newman as his son-in-law — survivors include his son, Gary; grandchildren Jason, Ariana, Molly, Patrick, Alice and Adrian; great-grandchildren Jason and Emma; and great-great-grandson Julian.
He met his first wife, Paula, at Hamilton, and they were married from 1953 until their 1968 divorce. He was then married to Hollywood hairstylist Evelyn Preece from 1969 until her 2017 death.
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