Gabrielle Beaumont, who has died of cancer aged 80, was a British television director who blazed a trail for women in Hollywood. She worked on worldwide hits such as M*A*S*H and The Waltons, and was the first woman to direct an episode of a Star Trek series. In the UK her work included the drama Riders (1993), based on the raunchy Jilly Cooper novel.
Beaumont turned up in Los Angeles in 1980 with cans of film from a horror movie she had just directed, The Godsend, and met the producer Aaron Spelling. Not interested in her film, Spelling – with the industry then under pressure to employ more female directors – simply asked her: “Can you goddamn direct?” Her reply came: “Goddamn yes!” Spelling assigned her to an episode in that year’s series of Vega$, set among the desert city’s colourful casinos and starring Robert Urich as a Vietnam veteran-turned-private eye.
