William T. Orr

William T. Orr

Known For

Production

Born

September 27, 1917

Died

December 25, 2002 (aged 85)

Birthplace

New York City, New York, USA

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William T. Orr (September 27, 1917 – December 25, 2002) was an American television producer associated with a series of western and detective programs of the 1950s-1970s. On most of his Warner Bros. series, he was billed as "Wm. T. Orr". Orr began his career as an actor; his film credits include The Mortal Storm, The Gay Sisters, and The Big Street. As the first head of Warner Bros. Television department, Orr forged a fruitful alliance with ABC, which resulted in the network having a number of prime time hits, such as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and F Troop. At the height of this relationship in the early 1960s, Orr had nine programs in prime time simultaneously. Of these, no program was more significant than one of his earliest, Cheyenne. It was a groundbreaking series that was both the first hour-long western and the first series of any kind made by a major Hollywood film studio consisting entirely of content wholly exclusive to television. A ...