American director of well-regarded films and television programs.

The son of Protestant American missionaries, Schaffner lived in the United States after the age of five and attended Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania (A.B., 1942). During World War II he served as a U.S. Navy lieutenant. In 1948 he became a director for CBS television; in all he directed over 150 live television dramas. He won Emmy Awards for his direction of two plays, Twelve Angry Men (1954) and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1955), and of the first six episodes of a weekly series The Defenders (1962).

Schaffner won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for directing the Broadway play Advise and Consent (1960) before he began directing films of many genres. His first completed feature was The Stripper (1963); it was followed by such widely admired films as The Best Man (1964), The War Lord (1965), and The Double Man (1967). His gifts for incorporating majestic scope and historical detail into his films were displayed in the immensely popular The Planet of the Apes (1968) and Patton (1970); his film biography of General George S. Patton, Jr., with its intricate battle scenes, won Schaffner an Academy Award for his direction.

Among Schaffner's notable later works were the opulent Nicholas and Alexandra (1971); Papillon (1973); Islands in the Stream (1977), based on Ernest Hemingway's last, unfinished novel; and Welcome Home, completed shortly before his death.