Leo Penn, 77, an actor and veteran television director who earned an Emmy for directing a two-hour episode of "Columbo" and who also was the father of actor Sean Penn, died of cancer Sept. 5 in Los Angeles.

Mr. Penn, patriarch of a performing family, was best known for directing more than 400 hours of prime-time television ranging from "Ben Casey" and "I Spy" to "Matlock." He appeared with his wife, Eileen Ryan, in the 1995 film "Crossing Guard," directed by their son Sean.

The couple met when they appeared in leading roles in a late 1950s Broadway production of "The Iceman Cometh."

Mr. Penn also appeared in such plays as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Of Mice and Men" and "School for Scandal."

He studied drama at the University of California at Los Angeles and expected to teach. But when he was seen acting in a campus play, Hollywood came calling, and he soon had a contract with Paramount Studios.

Mr. Penn spent a decade from the late 1940s to the late 1950s on the blacklist, the result of attending meetings of actors sympathetic to Hollywood trade union members and occasionally speaking out at meetings in support of the "Hollywood Ten."

He survived by working in television. When he returned to films in 1959, performing in "The Story on Page One," Mr. Penn decided he was tired of acting. He got a job on the new "Ben Casey" television series, where he could learn directing.

He directed a couple of motion pictures, notably "A Man Called Adam," starring Sammy Davis Jr., in 1966 and "Judgment in Berlin" in 1988.

That movie starred Martin Sheen and included a cameo by Sean Penn. But Mr. Penn primarily stuck to the small screen, directing myriad movies for television and series episodes.

Among the series for which he served as a director were "Cannon," "Barnaby Jones," "Little House on the Prairie," "The Bionic Woman," "Hart to Hart," "Trapper John, M.D.," "Magnum, P.I.," "Cagney and Lacey," "Remington Steele," "In the Heat of the Night" and "Diagnosis Murder."

Mr. Penn won his Emmy for directing the 1973 episode "Columbo, Any Port in a Storm."

In addition to his wife and son Sean, survivors include two other sons, Michael, a singer and songwriter, and Chris, an actor; and three grandchildren.