Ernest Pintoff

Ernest Pintoff won the Oscar for best animated short for The Critic (1963), a satire on modern art written and narrated by Mel Brooks. Pintoff previously earned an Oscar nomination for his animated short The Violinist (1959), narrated by Carl Reiner. For television Pintoff directed episodes of numerous series, including Hawaii Five-O (1968), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) and Falcon Crest (1981). As part of NBC's "Experiments in Television" in the late 1960s, he directed the documentaries "This Is Marshall McLuhan" and "This Is Sholem Aleichem." Among Pintoff's feature credits as a director are the low-budget Who Killed Mary Whats'ername? (1971), starring Red Buttons, and Dynamite Chicken (1971), a collection of songs, skits, commercial parodies and old movie clips with appearances by Richard Pryor, John Lennon, Andy Warhol and other celebrities. He taught directing at the School of Visual Arts, the American Film Institute, the California Institute of the Arts and UCLA, and received