Introduction
Daniel Mannix Petrie (November 26, 1920 – August 22, 2004) was a Canadian television and film director.
Life and career
Petrie was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, the son of Mary Anne (née Campbell) and William Mark Petrie, a soft-drink manufacturer. He moved to the United States in 1945. His signature film A Raisin in the Sun (1961), was nominated for the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed Buster and Billie (1974); the Academy Award-nominated Resurrection (1980); Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981); and Cocoon: The Return (1988).
Petrie also directed television movies, such as Sybil, Eleanor and Franklin, Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, The Dollmaker, My Name Is Bill W., Mark Twain and Me, Kissinger and Nixon, Inherit the Wind, and Wild Iris.
Petrie's theatrical films were rarely box-office successes, but they often featured large, well-known casts, such as The Betsy (1978), starring Laurence Olivier, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall. His films feature the earliest screen appearances by such stars as Winona Ryder (Square Dance) and Kiefer Sutherland (The Bay Boy). As a television director he won multiple Emmy and Directors Guild of America Awards.
He died of cancer in 2004 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 83.
The Petrie Family
Petrie was married for 57 years to Dorothea Grundy Petrie, an Emmy-winning film and television producer. Their sons were Daniel and Donald, both successful directors and screenwriters. Their twin daughters were former MGM executive June , and actor/writer Mary. In 2002, the family as a whole was awarded the American Film Institute's Platinum Circle Award to recognise their collective creative contributions.