TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. -- Film director Boris Sagal, 58, was fatally injured fatally Friday when he walked into the spinning rear rotor blades of a helicopter at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood where he was filming for the NBC-TV movie 'World War III.'
He had just finished a third day of filming for a TV movie, starring Rock Hudson and David Soul, about a Russian attack on the Alaskan oil pipeline.
George Brady, a spokesman for Timberline Lodge, said the helicopter, which had been used for the filming, landed in a parking lot.
Sagal walked toward the rear of the helicopter and turned into the blades. He was taken to a Portland hospital where he died five hours later. His wife, Marge Champion, was at the hospital with him.
Sagal directed the recently aired ABC-TV miniseries 'Masada.' He began directing films in 1963 with 'Dime with a Halo.' Other theatrical films he directed included 'Twilight of Honor,' 'Made in Paris,' 'The Thousand Plane Raid' and 'The Omega Man,' the last starring Charlton Heston.
Most of his work had been for television. Credits included 'A Case of Rape,' 'Indic and Convict,' 'The Oregon Trail,' 'The Dream Makers' and 'Ike.'
Sagal had been directing second unit -- action sequence -- photography for the four-hour television miniseries being produced by Finnegan Associates.
Miss Champion, formerly the wife and dancing partner of the late Gower Champion, was en route to Oregon to join her husband when the accident occurred.
She returned to Hollywood to discuss funeral arrangements with Sagal's grown children, Joseph and Katherine, by a former marriage,
Filming is to continue and a new director is to be named, a spokesman for Finnegan said.
