Biography
Richard A. Colla attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and studied acting as a member of the famed Marquette University Players. Although Colla began his career in Hollywood playing Tony Merritt on the soap opera Days of Our Lives (1965-66), he quickly transitioned from acting to directing.
Colla's first directing credit was The Soldier (1962), a short starring a young William Shatner. After directing episodes of The Legend of Jessie James, Gunsmoke, Judd for the Defense, and other TV series, he directed the feature film Zig Zag (1970). The twisty mystery starred George Kennedy as a man dying from a brain tumor who frames himself for murder so his family can claim a ransom reward. Colla earned good reviews for his unique camera angles and cinematic touches, and Paul Newman hired him to direct an adaptation of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion (1971). However, Colla's counterculture sensibilities and his pension for continuous takes and extreme long shots did not go over well with Newman and co-star Henry Fonda. Within weeks of the start of production, the young director was fired. This was understandably a huge disappointment, and Colla would go on to direct only two other exclusively theatrical films during his career: Fuzz (1972) starring Burt Reynolds, and Olly, Olly, Oxen Free (1978) with Katherine Hepburn.
Returning to television, Colla soon became known as a successful director of pilots that went to series, including McCloud (1970) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). He also directed The Questor Tapes (1974), producer Gene Roddenberry's follow-up to Star Trek. Although the pilot starring Robert Foxworth and Mike Farrell was well received, NBC decided not to buy Questor as a series in part because the similar-themed Six Million Dollar Man (1974) was already on the air. Perhaps Colla's greatest success during the 1970s was The UFO Incident (1975), starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons as a married couple who believe they were abducted by extraterrestrials. Based on a true story, the TV movie garnered high ratings and was credited with spurring a rash of UFO sighting reports in the mid-Seventies.
During the 1980s and 90s, Colla switched back and forth between episodic television, TV movies and four-hour miniseries. His work included episodes of Miami Vice (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Spenser: For Hire (1985), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987); and miniseries such as the sci-fi thriller Something is Out There (1988) and the historical romance Zoya (1995), based on a novel by Danielle Steel. His final directing credit was Growing Up Brady (2000), a docudrama based on the memoir written by Barry Williams (aka, Greg Brady).
Colla once summed up his approach to directing by saying, "I like to keep my options open until the last possible second."
A life-long environmentalist, Colla owned the 600-acre Matilija Canyon Wildlife Refuge near Ojai, and he supported the California Forest Improvement Project (CFIP). To encourage others to join CFIP's efforts to preserve private forest lands, Colla directed and executive produced the educational video Reforestation (1987), narrated by his old friend William Shatner. Colla also appeared in the video as himself.
Colla was married to actress Denise Alexander. He died on December 24, 2021, in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 85.
