Robert Mulligan wasn't the flashiest director, or the most proficient, with only 19 movies to his credit and none since 1991. But he was a solid craftsman whose movies typically focused on real people in extraordinary situations, most notably his 1962 classic To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mulligan died over the weekend at his Connecticut home, succumbing to longtime heart disease.

Acknowledged as one of the best films ever, with an Oscar winning performance by Gregory Peck ranked as one of the screen's greatest heroes of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird was Mulligan's calling card but by no means his only honorable movie.

I'm partial to Summer of '42, a 1971 release that remains one of the finest coming of age tales ever. It's a movie that I mentioned in a review today for The Reader, which addresses the older-woman fantasy of horny teenage boys in more explicit detail. Anyone who hit puberty in the 70s knows what Jennifer O'Neill meant to our social development.

There's also Up the Down Staircase starring Sandy Dennis as a new teacher in a tough school, a movie that along with To Sir with Love inspired me to become a public school teacher for 16 years.

There was The Nickel Ride, one of the toughest, most underrated crime flicks of the 1970s, named for its antihero's penchant for subbing 5-cent pieces for buckshot in his shotgun loads.

Before that, Mulligan had a nice working relationship with Natalie Wood, directing two of her most affecting, defining performances in Inside Daisy Clover and Love with the Proper Stranger (co-starring Steve McQueen) and Baby, the Rain Must Fall (also with McQueen, making Mulligan one of the rare directors -- Norman Jewison and Sam Peckinpah included -- who'd put up with his shenanigans more than once).

And, in a remarkable change of pace, you won't find a creepier yarn than 1972's The Other ("Holland, where is the baby?")

Like many of his peers, Mulligan found himself on the outs when the blockbuster imperative took over Hollywood. But he did leave one nice postscript: His final film, 1991's The Man in the Moon,
is a terrific coming of age flick in the 1950s Deep South that shows up on cable TV fairly often. The little girl stealing the show grew up to be Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon. Mulligan always had an eye for talent, as well as a good story.

(Photo above from www.filmreference.com)