Shakespeare wasn’t an actor?
Rod Serling, as another not-too-recent example.
God
Here’s a poster for the 1940 production of The Grapes of Wrath.
The largest name on the poster is the book author, John Steinbeck.
The second largest is the producer, Dayl F. Zanuck.
The name of the director, John Ford, is in type as large as Henry Fonda, the star.
Of course, they didn’t get their pictures in the poster, like the actors, but those names are that size for a reason.
Here’s a poster for the 1925 version of Ben Hur, wherethe director gets billing above the star.
And the 1959 version, where the director STILL gets top billing, above Charlton Heston!
TV - Norman Lear
Kinda dangerous because after seeing Hitchcock go by on the street it was likely that then people would die left and right of the ones who saw him; and then they would had to be on the run and risk their lives to uncover a conspiracy.
Nah, I can name TV showrunners from the eighties off the top of my head. Stephen Bochco, Donald P Bellisario, Darren Star…
Two words: Gene Roddenberry. 
You may have heard of that Walt Disney guy.
Stephen J. Cannell had his own theme music; you’d watch the end of an A-TEAM episode, or 21 JUMP STREET, or THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, or whatever, and suddenly there he was, typing with gusto before throwing the latest page on the stack.
(Oh, and while it’s a cheat, I gotta ask: can we count Jim Henson?)
Crap, I can’t believe I forgot him.
I would suggest that perhaps the earliest celebrity film producer-director, arguably even earlier than Hal Roach, was Mack Sennett. He pioneered such slapstick comedy traditions as the pie fight and the wild car chase, and (as evidenced by his “Sennett Bathing Beauties”) recognized the cinematic appeal of women in skimpy outfits.
Not the first, but we gotta mention George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
David O. Selznick. David Belasco. Flo Ziegfeld. Max Reinhardt. F. W. Murnau. Darrel F. Zanuck. Louis B. Mayer. Harry Cohn (who had the whole world wired into his ass).
Sure, he was an actor. But he wasn’t famous as an actor, he was famous as a writer/director/producer/dramatist/whatever-they-called-it-in-1599. People didn’t go to see his plays because he was starring in them, as far as we can tell he played small parts in his own plays.
He’s like a live-action Quentin Tarantino!
Fun fact: Stephen was dyslexic. Everything he typed in those trailers was gibberish.
I nit you shot! 
Uhhhhh … yeah, somewhere along the way… :dubious: 
Kind of like inviting Jessica Fletcher to your reception.
Or saying “Sammy Davis Jr” 3 times into a mirror.