Biography
Boston born and bred, onetime newspaper journalist Leslie H. Martinson settled down in Hollywood in 1936, accepting a long-term job as an MGM script clerk. He eased into directing with a handful of inexpensive TV western series in the early 1950s, then made his big-screen directorial bow in Republic's
The Atomic Kid, a lumpy
Mickey Rooney vehicle. Most of Martinson's subsequent features were equally second-rate, though not all were treated as such by distributors. The director's
PT 109 (1963),
Batman (1966) and
Fathom (1967), low-budgeters all, were promoted as "A" features on the basis of their topicality (John F. Kennedy was still in the White House when
PT 109 was released), trendiness (
Batman was the hottest TV series of 1966) and star power (
Fathom had
Raquel Welch; enough said). Martinson's final theatrical film was Mrs. Pollifax: Spy (1971), which also served as the cinematic swan song of
Rosalind Russell. Thereafter, Leslie H. Martinson became one of the busiest TV-movie purveyors, directing such small-screen esoterica as
Rescue From Gilligan's Island (1978) and the
Gary Coleman vehicles
The Kid With the Broken Halo (1982) and The Kid With the 200 IQ (1983). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide