Robert B. Sinclair

Robert Bruce Sinclair was an American director whose multifaceted career spanned theater, film, and television from the late 1920s until the late 1960s. Born on May 24, 1905, in Toledo, Ohio, Sinclair initially pursued a business education, graduating from the prestigious Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania in 1926. However, his professional trajectory shifted dramatically when an English professor introduced him to the world of theater and to the renowned playwright George S. Kaufman, who would become his lifelong mentor and collaborator. Sinclair began his theatrical career humbly as an assistant stage manager at the Greenwich Village Theater in October 1926, though he briefly left to work with a stock company in Cleveland before returning to New York. Despite early professional frustrations that led him to publish an excoriating manifesto titled Why I Am Leaving the Theater, Sinclair persevered and eventually established himself as a prominent Broadway director, helming the original productions of major works including Dodsworth (1934), Pride and Prejudice (1935), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1936), Babes in Arms (1937), and the iconic The Philadelphia Story (1939).

Transitioning to Hollywood, Sinclair directed eight films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer between 1938 and 1941, including Woman Against Woman (1938) and The Captain Is a Lady (1940). His cinematic career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served as a Captain in the Air Force and directed the training film Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After the war, he directed Mr. District Attorney (1947) for Columbia Pictures and That Wonderful Urge (1948) for 20th Century Fox before shifting his focus primarily to television in the late 1950s. Sinclair directed episodes for numerous Warner Bros. Television series including Telephone Time, Johnny Staccato, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and The Deputy. Beyond directing, he was also an accomplished author, publishing his only novel, The Eleventh Hour, in 1951, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. In his personal life, Sinclair was married twice, first to actress Jane Lamont Buchanan from 1934 to 1941, and then to actress Heather Angel in 1944, with whom he had a son named Anthony and gained a stepdaughter, Barbara Benson. Tragically, his life ended violently on January 3, 1970, when he was repeatedly stabbed and murdered by a burglar named Billy McCoy Hunter in his Montecito, California home at the age of 64.