Wally Burr was an actor and producer but mostly he was a voice director for animated cartoons. He directed thousands of them over the years and for just about every studio in Hollywood. Here's a very partial list of shows on which he directed actors: Akira, Bucky O'Hare, The Transformers, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Clue Club, Valley of the Dinosaurs, Conan the Adventurer, Dino-Riders, Dynomutt, G.I. Joe, Godzilla, Wheelies and the Chopper Bunch, Exosquad, Hong Kong Phooey, Inhumanoids, Inspector Gadget, Jem, Mumbly, My Little Pony Tales, Rainbow Brite, The Skatebirds and a couple of the many Spider-Man shows.
That's maybe a sixteenth of all the programs he did. He was also occasionally heard as an actor on them…and I wouldn't want to venture a guess on how many commercials he directed. He started out in the business as a writer, producer, performer and director for the Leo Burnett ad agency.
I knew Wally and had him on a few convention panels. I think we got along well though there were times when I wasn't certain. He was a strange man, viewed by some as a stern taskmaster because he would make actors do lines over and over and over. There are voice directors in this business who figure that the actors are being paid for a four-hour session so you keep them there for the full time, no matter what. If you get the show done in three hours, you spend that last hour doing lines again and again, just in case it's possible to improve upon the performances.
Then there are directors who think that shows are better when they're recorded with more spontaneity and that you reach a point of diminishing returns; that after so many takes, the actors can only get worse. Wally was unabashedly of the first school and he sometimes clashed with actors who objected to doing Take #25 of a scene when they knew Take #2 was better. His long career and the success of so many shows he worked on would suggest that he was not wrong.
He died earlier today at the age of 93. I liked the guy and I think most of the folks who worked with him did, too.