Jack Shea, the director of numerous memorable television shows, has died at the age of 84. A spokesperson for he and his wife, Patt Shea, reported that Jack Shea died Sunday at a personal care facility in Tarzana, California from the effects of Alzheimer's Disease.
Shea was well known for working with the late Bob Hope on many of his television specials, including the Bob Hope Christmas programs, directing ten of the specials featuring the USO favorite. Jack Shea traveled with Hope to many of the foreign bases that Hope performed at, including Vietnam, Cuba, Japan, the Balkans, and Korea.
He was also well known for his work in syndicated television, lending his directing talents to over 100 episodes of "The Jeffersons", starring Sherman Hemsley. Jack Shea also directed John-Boy and the rest of the family in "The Waltons" in addition to Redd Foxx' "Sanford & Son". His first opportunity to direct a popular television program came in the 1950s when he was asked to be an emergency fill-in for an ill director on the game show "Truth or Consequences".
He continued to direct sitcoms into his 60s, working with Bob Saget on "Full House" and concluding his career with Hemsley in 1997's "Goode Behavior".
Likely due in part to his prolific career, Jack Shea was Director's Guild of America president for five years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. "Jack Shea occupied a truly unique position in the history of the modern DGA. As the west coast president of the Radio and Television Directors Guild in 1960, he was at the table sitting across from Frank Capra when the two guilds [merged] to form the modern [DGA]," a statement from current Guild president Taylor Hackford read in-part.
"Jack enjoyed life and shared it with everyone around him," Hackford said. As DGA president, he removed D.W. Griffith's name from the list of life achievement award winners after deeming "Birth of a Nation", a 1915 piece by Griffith, was sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan.
Jack Shea was born John Francis Shea in New York in 1928, attending Regis High School and later Fordham University. He began his television career stage managing for the "Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse".
Shea leaves behind his wife, Patt, four children, and six grandchildren. He was predeceased by his daughter, Elizabeth.
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