Married… With Children star Katey Sagal landed her first acting gig in 1971, with the help of her father, director Boris Sagal.
“He used to always tell me, ‘You should be an actress,’” Sagal recalled during an interview with Elle in 2012. “When I was 17, he gave me a job so that I’d be in the union,” she continued. However, Sagal would only end up being in the industry for a decade before losing her dad in a tragic accident.
On May 22, 1981, the elder Sagal was three days into a location shoot for the miniseries World War III, a Cold War drama about an attack on the Alaskan oil pipeline, starring Rock Hudson and David Soul. The veteran director, whose career began in the 1950s, was expecting to wrap up production for the day at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, which was famously used for exterior shots of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Boris and his crew arrived at the hotel by helicopter, but not everyone disembarked safely.
The Tragic Story of How Katey Sagal’s Father Died While Directing a TV Show
After exiting the vehicle, Boris made a wrong turn and inadvertently walked into its still-spinning rotor blades. The accident reportedly left him partially decapitated and severely wounded his right shoulder. Somehow, Boris lived for another five hours until he finally succumbed to his injuries, with his new wife, Marge Champion (Katey’s stepmother), by his side. He was 57 years old at the time of his death.
Strangely, production on World War III resumed just one day later, with Roots director David Greene eventually taking over for Boris. “The show must go on,” a spokesman for the Timberline Lodge told the press of the odd decision. For her part, Katey remembered her father’s passing being especially shocking because she’d just spoken to him the day before.
Another eerie coincidence worth noting is that Boris Sagal once directed actor Vic Morrow in an episode of the 1960s World War II series Combat! Morrow was killed in a helicopter accident on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982.
The post 45 Years Ago, This Famous Actress’s Father Was Killed at the Hotel From ‘The Shining’ appeared first on VICE.
