Michael Schultz

Schultz was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Katherine Frances Leslie (1917-1995), a factory worker, and German American Leo Albert Schultz (1913-2001), an insurance salesman.[1][2][3] His parents married in Iowa, shortly before his birth where both were listed as black on their marriage license. Mr. Schultz's occupation was listed as a musician at the time of his marriage.[4]

Senior class high school photo of director Michael Schultz (1957)

Michael Schultz, who was known as "Mike" growing up, attended Riverside High School in Milwaukee, where he was a very active student. He played baseball, football and participated in student theater productions.[5]

After his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Marquette University, he attended Princeton University, where in 1966 he directed his first play, a production of Waiting for Godot. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1968, which brought him to Broadway in 1969. His breakthrough was directing Lorraine Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which he restaged for television in 1972.

Schultz' earliest film projects combined low comedy with profound social comment (Honeybaby, Honeybaby and Cooley High), reaching a peak with the ensemble comedy Car Wash (1976) and Which Way Is Up? (1977), starring Richard Pryor.

In 1978, Schultz took the reins of the musical Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with the largest budget ever entrusted to an African-American film director to that date. However, upon its release, the project was a commercial and critical failure. Schultz made the ensemble comedy Scavenger Hunt (1979), Denzel Washington's film debut Carbon Copy (1981), and the screwball comedy Disorderlies (1987).

More recently, Schultz has worked in television, piloting episodes of such style-conscious series as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Picket Fences, as well as an abundance of TV movies.

In 1991, Schultz was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.[6]

Schultz married Gloria Jones in Brooklyn, New York in 1965.[7] As an actress his wife is known professionally as Lauren Jones. In non-acting capacities, she is known as Gloria Schultz. The couple have two children.

• Michael Schultz at the Internet Broadway Database
• Michael Schultz at IMDb