Bretaigne Windust

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Bretaigne Windust (January 20, 1906 - March 18, 1960) was a theatre, film, and television director.

He was born Ernest Bretaigne Windust in Paris, France, the son of English violin virtuoso Ernest Joseph Windust and singer Elizabeth Amory Day from New York City. The family escaped to London during World War II, and it was there that he developed an interest in theatre. They returned to Paris following the war, but Windust's parents divorced in 1920 and he and his mother moved to the United States. He attended Columbia University and then Princeton, where he became a member and later president of the Theatre Intime players.

Planning to become an actor, Windust co-founded with Joshua Logan the University Players in 1928. The company included later luminaries Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and José Ferrer, and Windust directed more often than acted. In 1929, he joined the Theatre Guild in Manhattan as an assistant stage manager.

Windust's first professional credit as a theatre director was the 1932 West End production of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. He directed Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Taming of the Shrew and Amphitryon 38 (which he translated from the original French) and appeared with them in Idiot's Delight, his last work as an actor.

Windust's first major Broadway hit was Life With Father, the Russel Crouse/Howard Lindsay play based on the memoirs of Clarence Day, Jr., a distant relative on Windust's mother's side. (At 3,224 performances, it held the record for the longest-running Broadway production for many years.) In quick succession he followed this with Arsenic and Old Lace and Strip for Action, giving him three hits running on Broadway at the same time.

In 1947, Windust relocated to Hollywood, where he worked as the dialogue director on Stallion Road starring Ronald Reagan. His film directing career included two 1948 Bette Davis vehicles, the melodramatic Winter Meeting and the screwball comedy June Bride. The latter part of his career was spent toiling in the television division of Universal, directing episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, Leave It to Beaver, and Bachelor Father, in addition to the Thanksgiving 1957 special The Pied Piper of Hamelin, later released as a feature film.