While watching an episode of LITB, you’ll frequently see David Butler’s name listed as that episode’s director. In all, Mr. Butler directed 58 episodes of LITB. Mr. Butler also directed several episodes of “Wagon Train” and was also a prolific film director. David Butler directed Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in “Road To Morocco” and Doris Day in several films, including “Calamity Jane.”

David Butler had a reputation for being very friendly with and supportive of the actors he directed in both films and television. I would have liked to have learned about Mr. Butler’s reminiscences of his days as a director on LITB. Did he enjoy working with Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow and all the other child actors on the show?

Today, I saw the famous LITB episode, where Wally and Eddie get even with Lumpy for sabotaging their cars with smoke bombs by tying Ward’s heavy work chain to the rear axle of Lumpy’s car resulting in decidedly extremely destructive
results to the “Lumpster’s” car. This classic episode was directed by David Butler. It would be great to have learned Mr. Butler’s comments on the handling of this episode: how he set up the scene where Lumpy sabotaged Eddie and Wally’s cars with the smoke bombs and how Mr. Butler choreographed the chaining of Lumpy’s car by the vengeful Eddie and Wally?

Has anyone ever read or heard about Mr. Butler’s experiences as a frequent director on LITB?

I got lucky after a little poking around in "...And Jerry Mathers as 'The Beaver' ".

On page 67 he talks extensively about Norman Tokar, the director of most of the early episodes. Here's what he briefly said about David Butler:

"And we had other outstanding directors as well. One of my favorites was David Butler. [He mentions a few hit movies, including the Shirley Temple films.] He would tell me stories about Bing Crosby and Bob Hope."

The he goes on to talk about Norman Abbott. With the other directors, he mostly just did what the adults told him to do. But Abbott did some directing on the New Beaver in the 1980s, so he got to know him on an adult level:

"I had missed so much [as a kid] because these guys were such great talents. They were pillars in their fields, yet as a kid I knew them only qs directors...When Abbott directed the new show, we talked about...all the shows he had directed."