James Burrows, the 11-time Emmy Award winner and prolific television director known for his Midas touch when it came to sitcoms, has died. He was 85.
Burrows, who co-created Cheers and helmed all 246 episodes of Will & Grace during its two runs, died on Friday, his family confirmed in a statement 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 master of comic timing, Burrows was an expert at getting big laughs out of his performers and the material on the page. For more than 40 years, his talents made him one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood. If you were making a half-hour comedy for television, you wanted Jim Burrows calling the shots.
“My mind is never a blank,” Burrows told The New York Times 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 right at the start. He is credited with directing more than 50 sitcom pilots, getting such eventual hits as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Frasier, Taxi, Night Court, Wings, Two and a Half Men, Caroline in the City, Third Rock From the Sun, Mike & Molly and Two Broke Girls off on the right foot.
In a 2016 interview with Kate Stanhope of The Hollywood Reporter, Burrows mused about the secret of his success.
“I’m not a martinet or a dictator,” he said. “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 learned kindness from his father, the Tony Award-winning humorist and playwright Abe Burrows, best known for Guys and Dolls.
Directing pilots was just one facet in the career of the multitalented Burrows. In addition to creating Cheers with brothers Glen Charles and Les Charles (and directing the lion’s share of its 278 episodes), he was an executive producer on Will & Grace and helmed all 198 installments of its original eight-season run. When the series returned in September 2017 after 11 years away, he was back too.
Burrows also took a producing credit on Mike & Molly, Gary Unmarried, Man With a Plan and Superior Donuts, helming multiple episodes for them as well.
Getting his start on a 1974 installment of The Mary Tyler Moore Show titled “Neighbors” — the one where Lou moves into Rhoda’s old apartment in Mary’s building — Burrows went on to helm more than a thousand episodes of shows. In the 1970s, he worked continuously for MTM Enterprises while also directing for Laverne & Shirley, The Tony Randall Show, Fay and Busting Loose.
In addition to Cheers, the 1980s found him behind the camera for The Associates, Taxi and Dear John. He directed for NewsRadio, Partners, Men Behaving Badly and Fired Up in the ’90s, Teachers, The Class and Back to You in the 2000s, and Romantically Challenged, Man With a Plan and The Millers in the decade that followed.
He amassed more than 40 Emmy nominations and received four DGA Awards. The guild honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
Not everything Burrows touched struck comic gold, however. Scattered among his credits are the pilots for such forgotten efforts as The Fanelli Boys, Pacific Station, Chicago Sons, The Secret Lives of Men, Stark Raving Mad, Bram and Alice and Four Kings.
James Edward Burrows was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, 1940, to Ruth and Abe Burrows. When he was young, the family relocated to Manhattan’s West Side. He grew up hanging backstage in theaters, watching the casts of Guys and Dolls, Can-Can and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying prepare for their Broadway debuts.
In grade school, Burrows was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Boys Choir, spending his Saturdays learning “Carmen” and “Tosca.” “We used to run around the old Met playing hide-and-seek in the stalls,” he said in the Times interview.
Burrows attended the city’s High School of Music & Art, but he was learning just as much working on his father’s shows. “I used to suggest jokes all the time,” he said. “Abe would be very nice and say, ‘I’ll think about it.’”
Burrows said he initially resisted the obvious choice of a show business career, afraid he would be lost in his dad’s shadow. But after earning his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College in Ohio, he went on to get his graduate degree at the Yale School of Drama. He did that as a favor to his father.
He then started to direct and realized he was a natural at it. It didn’t hurt that when he began doing summer stock, his father’s works had become staples. “Abe came and saw a production of Guys and Dolls I did with two pianos, and he really liked it,” he recalled.
One of his first Broadway jobs was as an assistant manager for a 1966 musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Called Holly Golightly during its pre-Broadway tryouts, it was scrapped by producer David Merrick during previews and never officially opened. However, the young Burrows got to meet the star of the show, Mary Tyler Moore.
Several years later, Burrows was watching an episode of Moore’s series and said he came to two conclusions. The first was that, in essence, a sitcom is a 22-minute play. The second was that if he could direct two-hour plays in summer stock, he could handle a TV comedy.
Burrows wrote Moore and landed a job at MTM, and it was only a matter of time before he got a shot at directing her show. He went on to do three more. The company also keep him busy with assignments on Paul Sands in Friends and Lovers, Phyllis, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show, The Betty White Show and Lou Grant.
During his career, Burrows also helmed more than 20 telefilms but just one feature, the comedy Partners (1982), starring Ryan O’Neal and John Hurt.
Occasionally, the bearded Burrows would step in front of the camera, taking on cameo bits in Rhoda, Phyllis, The Bob Newhart Show and Cheers. He played the director in “The One With the Butt,” the classic 1994 episode of Friends in which Joey gets a job as Al Pacino‘s derriere double. And he appeared as himself on six episodes of The Comeback, which starred Friends alum Lisa Kudrow.
In 2023, he returned to Frasier to direct the first episode of the Paramount+ reboot, then handled other installments.
Burrows was married to Linda Solomon, an associate producer on The Associates, from 1981-93, and they had three daughters. In 1997, he wed Debbie Easton, a hairstylist who worked on Roseanne, Caroline in the City and Friends.
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