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Richard Quine (November 12, 1920 – June 10, 1989) was an American stage, film, and radio actor and film director.
Quine was born in Detroit, Michigan. He began his acting career at age eleven on Broadway, and appeared in his first film John Ford`s The World Moves On (1934). During the war he served in the United States Coast Guard, marrying the actress Susan Peters in November 1943. After WW II, he tried directing, first as co-producer and co-director on Leather Gloves (1948), with William Asher, before his first solo effort on the musical The Sunny Side of the Street (1951). His most successful films came in the late 1950s, including Operation Mad Ball (1957), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Strangers When We Meet (1960) and The World of Suzie Wong (1960).
He also produced such films as the comedy Paris, When It Sizzles (1964) with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden, How to Murder Your Wife (1965), Synanon (1966), and Hotel (1967).
By the late 1960s, his output fell, and in the 1970s, he made only a few disappointing films. Turning to television, he directed three episodes of Columbo with Peter Falk, including Dagger Of The Mind, an episode set in Britain which most UK fans of that series regard as an embarrassment. He also worked on, another, much less successful NBC Mystery Movie series, McCoy starring Tony Curtis.
His final work was on The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) with Peter Sellers, although he was briefly part of the crew for another Sellers film, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), for which he received no credit.
His first wife, whom he married on 11 July 1943, was actress Susan Peters, who was crippled from the waist down when the shotgun she was using on a hunting trip with Quine in 1945 discharged as she was picking it up. They divorced in 1948, and she died of the effects of anorexia nervosa in 1952, at age 31. On 17 April 1946, the couple adopted an infant, whom they named Timothy Richard Quine.
Quine was later engaged to marry Kim Novak, but the two did not marry. He also married Barbara Bushman (by whom he had two daughters, Katherine and Victoria), Fran Jefferies, and Diana Balfour.
After an extended period of depression and poor health, Quine committed suicide by shooting himself in Los Angeles, California.
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