Robert Mulligan; directed 'To Kill a Mockingbird'; 83

Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images/fileRobert Mulligan with actress Annette Bening and ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' author Harper Lee at a 2005 event honoring Lee. (Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images/file)

LOS ANGELES - Robert Mulligan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for directing the 1962 film "To Kill a Mockingbird," died Saturday at his home in Lyme, Conn. He was 83.

Mr. Mulligan had heart disease, his nephew Robert Rosenthal said.

The director began working in live television in New York in the early 1950s and won an Emmy Award for the TV movie "The Moon and Sixpence" in 1960. His first film, "Fear Strikes Out," was released in 1957 and told the story of mentally ill baseball player Jimmy Piersall, played by Anthony Perkins. Mr. Mulligan directed 19 more films, including "Summer of '42," "The Other," and "Same Time, Next Year," before capping his career in 1991 with "Man in the Moon," featuring actress Reese Witherspoon in her movie debut.

The highlight of Mr. Mulligan's career was "To Kill a Mockingbird," a courtroom drama adapted from Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and centered on Southern attorney Atticus Finch and his children, Scout and Jem. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best picture, and won three: best actor (Gregory Peck), best screenplay (Horton Foote), and art direction (Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead, and Oliver Emert).

"Mockingbird" was one of seven films Mr. Mulligan made in collaboration with producer Alan J. Pakula between 1957 and 1969, among them "Love With the Proper Stranger" (1963), starring Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen, and "Up the Down Staircase" (1967) with Sandy Dennis.

As a director, Mr. Mulligan became known for his sensitive treatment of the emotional highs and lows experienced by children and adolescents when confronting traumatic circumstances.

"Ordinarily they say that cliche, a 'coming-of-age movie,' and I reject that term," Mr. Mulligan said in a 1991 interview with the Dallas Morning News. "I think it's 'coming to life.' I felt, when I looked back on it, that I really didn't know what life was about until I was somewhere in my teens, when you become aware that sooner or later you're going to have to walk out the front door."

Born in 1925 in New York City, Mr. Mulligan described his upbringing as "Bronx Irish." He attended Fordham University and for a time studied to become a priest. He found his future in the early days of television and told his family in reminiscences that "nobody knew what they were doing," according to his nephew.

Mr. Mulligan directed segments for the ambitious live dramatic anthologies "Goodyear TV Playhouse" and "Philco TV Playhouse" on NBC, and the CBS programs "Suspense," "DuPont Show of the Month," "Studio One," and "Playhouse 90."