PROLIFIC TV DIRECTOR WILLIAM ASHER DEAD AT 90

William Asher, who has 52 credits as a director on his IMDb profile, 15 credits as a producer and 10 as a writer, has died in Palm Desert, CA of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. His credits list may be a bit misleading inasmuch as in several instances they include entire series or numerous episodes. For example, he directed at least 100 episodes of I Love Lucy, 105 episodes of The Patty Duke Show and a whopping 254 episodes of Bewitched, which starred his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery. He also directed the series of “beach” movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in the 1960s. For a time in the early ’50s, he was directing two sitcoms simultaneously, Lucy and Our Miss Brooks, starring Eve Arden. He told Palm Springs Life magazine in 1999, “I was in my mid-twenties, unmarried, working on Our Miss Brooks and I Love Lucy, making $1,000 a week from both shows combined. I lived like a drunken sailor! … You can believe I spent the money.”