Bill Burrud

Bill Burrud
Otto Rothschild / Fox

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Bill Burrud
TV: North side of the 6700 block of Hollywood Boulevard
Actor | Producer | Television Personality
Born William James Burrud on Jan. 12, 1925 in Hollywood, CA
Died July 12, 1990 of heart attack in Sunset Beach, CA

"I love it; I eat it up," Bill Burrud said of his work in a Los Angeles Times interview in 1983. "I won't quit until I go to the great tube in the sky, as they say."

Born Jan. 12, 1925, in Hollywood, the son of an early travelogue filmmaker, Burrud was destined for a life before the camera. He made his stage debut at the age of 7 in the road show "Music in the Air" and acted in 28 movies, ranging from "The Cowboy and the Kid" to "Captains Courageous."

Giving up acting when he entered junior high school, Burrud graduated from Hollywood High School, majored in business administration at USC and served as an officer on the destroyer Coolbaugh during World War II.

His first postwar job was on Santa Ana radio station KVOE where he sold air time to sponsors and created a weekly fishing program, interviewing fishermen at Port Orange, now the site of the Balboa Bay Club.

Burrud edged into television by creating weekly travelogues for KTTV, filming 29 Palms or Death Valley or some other scenic place on his wind-up 16-millimeter movie camera.

In 1954, he formed his production company, going on to produce and host more than 800 half-hour episodes in 14 series about travel, adventure or wildlife.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Burrud hosted and produced up to five live television shows a week — in series such as "True Adventure," "Vagabond," "Wanderlust" "and "Islands in the Sun." He gave Los Angeles' KCOP-TV Channel 13 a reputation as the "travel-adventure station."

He also became known as a champion of endangered animals. In 1974, Burrud produced a one-hour special called "Where Did All the Animals Go?," which he made available free to television stations around the country as a fundraiser for Kenya's Tsavo National Park. Burrud always rated it one of the most rewarding projects of his career.

Burrud's "Animal World" ran from 1968 to 1976, and he narrated "Safari to Adventure" from 1969 to 1975. His "Animal Odyssey" and "New! Animal World" ran on the Discovery Channel.

— Myrna Oliver in the Los Angeles Times July 14, 1990

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