David Swift, 82; Director, Scriptwriter in TV, Film

David Swift, a writer-director-producer who created Wally Cox’s popular “Mr. Peepers” television series in the early 1950s and made his debut as a movie director in 1960 guiding a young Hayley Mills in “Pollyanna,” has died. He was 82.

Swift, whose career included stints as an animator at Walt Disney Studios and writing comedy for radio, died of heart failure Monday at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.

Swift wrote and directed “Pollyanna” (for which the 14-year-old Mills received a special Oscar) and Mills’ next Disney hit, “The Parent Trap,” in 1961.

“He was a very big influence in my life,” Mills told The Times this week. “I think they were the two best movies I did for Disney. He was always relaxed and patient and gentle and sweet. It was extremely fortunate for me that he was in charge of those two films.”

Swift scripted and directed a number of other popular films in the 1960s, including “The Interns,” starring Cliff Robertson, “Love Is a Ball,” starring Glenn Ford, “Under the Yum-Yum Tree” and “Good Neighbor Sam,” both starring Jack Lemmon, and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” starring Robert Morse.

Beginning in 1948, Swift worked extensively in television as a writer and director.

In association with producer Fred Coe, he created “Mr. Peepers” specifically for Wally Cox after seeing him in a “Philco Television Playhouse” drama. The NBC show, in which the low-key actor played a mild-mannered science teacher named Robinson J. Peepers, was broadcast live from New York from 1952 to 1955.

Among the handful of other TV series Swift created are “Grindl,” a 1963 NBC comedy starring Imogene Coca; “Camp Runamuck,” a 1965 comedy; and “Arnie,” a 1970 comedy starring Herschel Bernardi, which ran for two years.

Swift was born in 1919 in Minneapolis, where his father owned a company that made sausage casings. When the Depression hit, his family lost all of its money. Swift, who was always drawing, dropped out of school at 15 and rode freight cars to California with the goal of working for Walt Disney.

Once he arrived in Los Angeles, he worked a variety of odd jobs, including ushering at the Warner Bros. movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard. He began attending art school and going to night school at Hollywood High to learn to type.

Initially hired at the Walt Disney Studio as a $15-a-week traffic boy, he became a $20-a-week assistant animator in 1938. By 1942, he had been promoted to animator and worked on such Disney classics as “Dumbo,” “Fantasia,” “Peter Pan,” “Pinocchio” and “Snow White.”

“His career with Disney was unique because there were two distinct phases,” said film historian Leonard Maltin, author of “The Disney Films.”

“In the early portion of his career in the ‘30s, he aspired to be an animator and worked with some of the best. Then he left in the ‘40s and went on and carved a whole different kind of career and wound up back at Disney, writing and directing two of the best-loved live-action films in the studio’s history.”

After flying bomber missions over Germany during World War II as an Air Force pilot, Swift began working as a radio comedy writer for Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Danny Thomas and others.

In 1948, he became a dramatist, writing original teleplays for “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” “Kraft Theater,” “Philco Television Playhouse,” “Playhouse 90” and “Studio One.” He later wrote and directed episodes of series such as “The Rifleman” and “Wagon Train.”

After launching “Mr. Peepers,” Swift had mild luck with another situation comedy series, “Jamie,” starring Brandon de Wilde. Throughout the 1970s, he directed such shows as “Barney Miller,” “Eight Is Enough” and “The Love Boat.” His last television directing assignment was in 1997, but his family said he never stopped writing.

In July, Swift flew to London for a reunion with Mills to record the commentary tracks for the upcoming DVD releases of “Pollyanna” and “The Parent Trap.”

“It was just so lovely to rediscover somebody that I was very, very fond of and who I always looked upon as an old friend,” Mills said. Swift was a member of the board of directors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He is survived by his wife of 44 years, former model Micheline Swift; two daughters, Michele Chodos and Wendon Swift, both of Los Angeles; and two grandchildren.

Memorial services will be private.