Richard A. Colla
American actor and film director
Richard Anthony Colla (April 18, 1936 – December 24, 2021), sometimes credited as Dick Colla, was an American film and television director and actor.
Life and career
Richard Anthony Colla was born on April 18, 1936.
On screen he played Tony Merritt on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. His directorial credits include The Virginian, Battlestar Galactica, McCloud, Miami Vice, MacGyver, Hunter; Murder, She Wrote; Gunsmoke, Ironside; Trapper John, M.D.; and other series.
Colla directed the feature films Olly Olly Oxen Free (1978) starring Katharine Hepburn, Fuzz (1972) starring Burt Reynolds, and Zig Zag (1970) starring George Kennedy. He was originally under consideration to direct the film Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) but was replaced by the film's star Paul Newman.
For much of the 1990s, he directed a number of television films his last credit being Growing Up Brady (2000).
Colla died in Beverly Hills, California on December 24, 2021, at the age of 85.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3430649. VIAF identifies the subject as 56809395. The Library of Congress control number is no00021166. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2021, 1978 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard A. Colla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.