The Brooklyn Rail

Bill Bartman (1946-2005)

Born in Chicago, he grew up in Los Angeles, and after having earned a B.A. from Trinity College in Hartford, CT in 1968, William Bartman immediately became involved in stage and film productions throughout the 1970’s and early ‘80s. At the West Coast Theatre Company in LA, he produced and directed several plays. Around the same time, he founded an artists-in-the-schools program, in addition to a theatre program at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, CA, which included the staging of an all-inmate production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” as well as his work as director and co-writer of the ’82 movie “O’Hara’s Wife”—a comedy-drama starring Jodie Foster, Ed Asner, and Mariette Hartley.