INT: Actors are half of the director's blessing and curse, the other half are the producer, producer writers, how have you felt [HC: neither one has to be a curse] no, but in those cases when they are a curse, do you have any point of view, any particular way of dealing with that producer who just will not be easy to get along with, will not be satisfied.
HC: Well, we come back to what I just said before in that it depends on who the producer and the writers are, who the actors are. Writers who are now mostly producer writers and in television by and large have been, more so now have been. They work alone. They do not work in concert with actors, lighting people, make up people, costume people. The director does. That's a community. The writer is by himself in a room or with a partner. When he writes a line 'get out of here', and in his mind the actor is screaming that at the top of his lungs, when he sees the actor in the run-through say 'get out of here' {low raspy voice} it's not the way... that's the enemy, the actor becomes the enemy the director becomes the enemy because it's not the way he envisioned it but it's the way the director and the actor have decided to play that moment because they feel it has more impact than the usual, than what they feel is the usual delivery of that particular line. I just, I'm ad-libbing. The writer always has a problem because when he writes a line he cannot help but hear it as it should be done in his mind and the same goes for the line, the paragraph, the dialogue, the speech, the play. It's the way he sees it and it's never going to be that way when the other people contribute their talents to it. So people are contributing in different ways. If you can reach that person, the producer and or writer and explain, say, 'leave yourself open to it lets us see what an audience', you know if they don't respond to that and they are the power force you know, in other words do it my way or else, you only have two alternatives, you do it their way or you leave. The problem is not a problem. I mean it can be a constant irritant and then you have to decide, you know, do I have to fight this battle all the time, is it worth it and sometimes it is worth it. Maybe the words on the paper are great and they're a great vehicle for doing what you want to do but the only way is to say to the writer, you know what, you direct this episode.

INT: GIMME A BREAK!, then A FINE ROMANCE, pilot NEVER AGAIN a pilot, MELBA, more pilot. [HC: All not on the air pilots] BUDDY EBSEN pilot.
HC: That one should've gone, BUDDY'S pilot should've gone. He was a marvelous man. Delightful to work with, complete professional, just like harking back to the old pros back to DEATH VALLEY DAYS, ROBERT TAYLOR. We were out in the middle of the desert outside TUCSON and it was 120 degrees and we're shooting. They had an umbrella over the camera because the metal got hot and my prop man filled a Turkish towel full of ice cubes and put it under my hat so it would drip down, and we would do a take and everybody would run, there was an air-conditioned saloon, fake saloon, and they would run and I'd go for the next set up and I'd look around and there's BOB TAYLOR standing there watching me and pouring sweat and I said, BOB get air. He said, I just want to see where you're going to be and from off camera it could just be a glance from somebody he'd stand next to the camera, insist on standing next to the camera, out in the middle of that heat when the script clerk could've stood there for the off camera. The old pros knew what their business obligations were.

INT: BOB NEWHART?
HC: BOB, the most delightful man to work with. He has one fault, he will not be confrontational with anybody so he needs protection all the time. Things that trouble him, somehow he buries and you got to sense it. He doesn't like to rehearse, as everybody knows, but that was fine. I would just remind him of his marks. you just had to say it once and he would do it. He was a delight to work for and the show that PARAMOUNT called me in to "save" had a couple of producers who had come from the last year of CHEERS and my initial meeting with them they told me how a character that they had created and nurtured was being destroyed in a new pilot that FRASIER was going to be in and it was just terrible what they were doing with that character that they had created and nurtured. That gave me a tip. In any case, that was the other show that I could not stay with and I told BOB. They signed me for the season and I was really unhappy because they could not visualize anything. They literally did the scene that I mentioned earlier on, the scene in the kitchen. They sent down an entirely new act, whole day's work gone. And that went on and another thing they did, speaking of BOB NEWHART, is they tightened the show so BOB, whose wonderful persona was adjusting to the world around him... they lost BOB NEWHART. So I left. Great cast though. CYNTHIA STEVENSON, I don't know why she isn't a big star. Great talent. You just need the right part in the right show.

INT: SOMETHING SO RIGHT
HC: SOMETHING SO RIGHT, oh that was JERE BURNS, I did two episodes of that, just two episodes of a show, and the last one on there was forgettable.

INT: Let's talk about the Directors Guild a bit, JOHN RICH got you involved?
HC: JOHN RICH got me involved. I went to my first negotiations for a new contract and we had it down in San Diego and I can't tell you the year except it was during the negotiations when JOE NAMATH won the Super Bowl as the underdog, [INT: '67] that was the year, that was the negotiation. It was a very strong, hard negotiation. We won a lot of new things, extending residuals and stuff like that and it was a lot of fun, hard work and fun. I don't know what else to say about it. My birthday happened during negotiations and they surprised me with a birthday cake and a party around the negotiating table, the producers. [INT: It was actually '69 now that I think about it] Whatever it was.

INT: Now how many years did you spend on the negotiating committee?
HC: From I think around '65 or '66 through when I got just too busy beginning with MAUDE and I just hadn't the time to be on the council, it was the director's council, I was on the national board. I couldn't make meetings so I kind of dropped by the wayside and stayed with for a while with a pension and welfare board and stayed to this day to the health... the DGA.... benefit plan, the fund, that we contribute to help out needy people, I'm still on that.

INT: It's quite a guild?
HC: It's amazing and to have sat around the table with some of the giants that formed it was a thrill. I will never forget one of my gods was GEORGE STEVENS and to be sitting around the table with him and I remember one day at a break in the meeting and we went out to have a cup of coffee and sat down and he said 'Isn't directing the loneliest goddamn profession in the world?' and I thought, my god GEORGE STEVENS, he said, 'You know what I mean. You come to the set in the morning, and you haven't the faintest damn idea of how to stage the scene and you're praying that the prop man or the cinematographer, somebody's going to come up to you and say 'Hey Mr. Stevens how about if... ', something to get the motor started, you don't know where to put the camera, you're waiting for somebody to say'... and I said, 'Wait a second, do you realize you're GEORGE STEVENS!', and he said, 'yeah, happens to all of us all the time'. But it was a great comfort to realize everyone puts on his pants one leg at a time. Everyone gets up and goes to work. You don't go to work to do something wonderful, you go to work like everyone goes to work. You try to the job that you love to the best of your ability, that's all you can do. If you just try to go in and do your best, you can't be angry with yourself, or disappointed with yourself, you can be angry with the end result but you can't be disappointed with yourself if you do that.

INT: What occupies your time these day?
HC: I've been a workaholic all my life. Started working in the business when I was ten years old. Lucky enough to never stop. I had a bad period when television in New York started to die, THE MAGIC COTTAGE was cancelled and KITTY FOYLE was cancelled. I was out of work, in the middle of a production of a play in London, very successful but lost money and lost my money because I put the money into it. Rave reviews, I don't want to go in to the whole story of why it failed, it was manipulated out of the theater we were in and suddenly we're sitting in a very expensive apartment with depleted funds and no work. I got a couple of jobs acting in soap operas. It was a bad year from '57 to '58 and we finally subletted and took a cheaper apartment. That's how bad it got and then CHARLIE called about the West Coast. I came out in '58 and things started picking up again. But outside of that I worked all my life and I thought I would go nuts when I stopped and I find instead that I'm having the best time of my life. I play tennis three days a week, I go to the gym the other three days. I read all the books I've always wanted to read and didn't have time to real. l travel. Once a year we go somewhere three or four weeks. There are a million chores around the house to do and I never finish in a day what I plan to do that day and it's oh and the best thing, I started out with this in mind, the best thing I like about not working anymore is I don't make decisions. If its a restaurant or a movie or a theater, or a vacation 'you decide' I say to my wife and to the kids. Point me and I'll go there. No more 'Mr. Cooper do you want the green glass or the red glass...' No more decisions. It's lovely. I really enjoy that.

INT: Do you watch television?
HC: Yes but not much network television. There are some shows that I admire and like, I love RAYMOND and I love FRASIER and some of them you get tired of them after a while because every show has a limited run of its own. I enjoy mystery shows but I watch a lot of PBS sports, DISCOVERY, HISTORY CHANNEL stuff like that.

INT: In the comedies do you watch, how you think they stack up to VAN DYKE and MAUDE and that stuff?
HC: I don’t think they do. Some of them do. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND does. I think FRASIER does. There are some but they're very few. They're really sausage factory. As a matter of fact, on one of the last few show I did, nameless. Oh and by the way, ROD and I this should be part of it, after the JOHN FORSYTH show with NORMAN, ROD and I had a pilot that we presented at the network and were told that maybe if we put a nice dog and a kid in it that would appeal to a certain part of the whatever the charts read and we had a discussion and we came out of the presentation and ROD looked at me and I looked at him and he said, 'you don't want to do this anymore do you?' And I said, no. I didn't want to bring it up, but I was comfortable, he was comfortable. He said he really want to write plays. And I said I would do an occasional show. If a friend calls and says he needs a director this week I'll go in and do a show. That's fine, just keep my motor running. And that's what we did. And that's how I wound up doing individual episodes of individual shows. So, I was doing this show and there was a script problem and some kid came down from the office with a loose-leaf folder and he said, 'I looked it up and when THE BRADY BUNCH had this problem' and then read off this solution. I realized that aside from the gifted few, so many of the people in situation comedy now, their reality of comedy is what they saw on the tube that we did many years ago. Our reality came from restaurants and theater and people that we saw on the street and what happened with Aunt Rhoda last week with Uncle Jack. We found the comedy in the life around us and they found the comedy only on that box. Literally its nota made up story, its a true story. And he had a book of plot problems, indexed, and the shows that were in that plot problem and how they solved it, and you had a choice of two or three ways to do it. I knew that the dinosaur had passed and it was time for me to make my exit, happily.

INT: You don't miss it?
HC: No I don't, I do not miss it, However, if he were alive and called SHELDON LEONARD said I got a show, I would run, if NORMAN LEAR called and said can you come down, I would run to do it. The ambience, the womb would be there. You know the place to work that allowed you to work, and it still may be in various places as I say, but I don't know of them and all the horror stories I hear would not tolerate in the days that I was directing, a producer, NORMAN LEAR would knock on the door and open the door, 'Is it alright if I come in for a moment/' Literally get permission to come on the set. Because it was not his territory at that point, it was our territory. That kind of place has ceased to exist because of the insatiable maw that television has become and because the need for the scripts pouring out and the size of the writing staffs and each guy can contribute one thought one joke and piecing it together, the wrong people are in charge and it has to be down on time and this goes further up beyond them to the executives... So it's all actuarial tables now and we need a dog and a kid to fulfill that need in that time slot which has its value, it sells the sausage but not conducive to fun creativity.

INT: Well, I think when you look at the schedules that the networks and the comedies particularly, because I think that essentially dramatic shows as a result of being out on the street and being away from the studios, things have changed certainly in the way that the networks and the studios interact with those shooting companies, but because the comedies are so available and the run-throughs because so many people will come that has deluded the quality of comedy considerably.
HC: On GIMME A BREAK! especially, and LOVE, SIDNEY we had a variety of locations. We'd go various places and shoot, which hadn't been done with tape, with film shows, but not with tape. That was freeing, but in those days we didn't have the problem with the networks so.

INT: Any interest in teaching ever?
HC: I have taught on occasion. I feel pompous teaching. I don’t come across as pompous but there's a pomposity. To teach one must feel that one knows, and I don't know, I just have done, but I can answer a question out of what resides here [points at head] but to say this is how you do it, is difficult because I don't think there is such a thing. You do have to learn, every director, just as anybody in any job, has to learn the mechanical requirements of the job, so that's the difference between directing on stage where stage right and left is different from camera right and left, you have to learn the mechanics of the job. When I first started for example, I'm a good student, when I first start directing I DREAM OF JEANNIE I used to become impatient with how long it was between rehearsal and when I could get the set back. To get the actors on and do it. Just put some lights on! I didn't understand, and then I learned the difference in look and the difference in the show that was properly lit. I don't think there is any way to teach how to direct except to say ask a lot of questions. If you can as anybody can to a certain extent, read a script and as you read it you see the people in your mind's eye moving about confronting one another and when the guy says get out, you go on a close up in your mind, you are directing a script. You have to be able to translate that into knowing the required mechanics of it, how to translate that picture in your head so the actors do what you visualized. Or you accommodate your vision to what they are doing, etcetera. When I say I feel pompous I mean just that I don't know how you teach someone to direct. You can teach someone what is camera right, what is camera left, you can teach on what lens to use to give the effect from a given distance. You can't even teach someone how to visualize a picture, a composition, that's got to be in a person those talents have to be there. so I don't know how you teach that. But there are film schools and they do teach them and I think they just teach the mechanics or properly encourage and allowed to grow the talents that one can see, because that is teaching as well. That is acting teaching. I can teach acting much more easily and I did I taught acting in New York out of than group I talked about before. Because when your teaching acting you're not really teaching acting you're teaching a person to utilize, how to call upon the talents that they already have. That you can teach. There are various methods, the STANISLAVSKI that starts from the inside, or the CHEKHOV that starts from the outside. Everybody has his own method, it doesn't make any difference. Whatever works well for you, but it has to be nurtured and encouraged and given confidence to learn how to allow that to grow. [INT: I would offer that anybody who would be lucky enough to have you as a teacher would be in very good shape] if any body asked I might do it. [INT: Just in this short period of time you've said a dozen things that should be somewhere down on the wall in the DIRECTORS GUILD, stuff that we should all remember everyday when we walk on to a set].

INT: Is there anything that you feel that we didn't talk about that you want to talk about?
HC: Not that I can think of except it's been a great ride, I've had a wonderful career, for me, I’m not talking about the product, that's just the work I did, whatever it is, good, bad or indifferent, I've enjoyed it. And hopefully some people have as well. And it all started because of my mother really. The whole career started with my trick . Every afternoon when I was two and a half, three years old, my mother would stop her work before my nap, and she would say 'It's loving up time' and she would put me in her lap and sing my favorite song, then we would sing it together. One time she sang a song and I listened to it and for some reason she said now you, and not quite three years old I sang the song back to her note for note word for word. It was like a tape recorder, I just did it. And she said where did you hear that song and I said you just sang it mommy, and she sang another song, and I sang it back to her. Those songs were quite simple in those days of course, eight bars and a repeat and the lyrics were vey simple. And that evening she said, 'sing Harold a song' to my father, So he sang me and 'Me and My Shadow' and I sang it back. Well then I became the star of the family. At family gatherings they would put me up on the table and it was my trick. I got love, I got admiration, I got hugs and I knew I was going to be in show business. And that was it, really was. I mean you take a child it's a sponge, it's malleable, that reaction to get such approval. It is that pat on the head and the cookie to the dog, and he's gonna sit up on his hind legs from then on. I think that is what started me in show business. [Did that pass along to your children?] I have a son who is a very fine actor and singer. And out of work. As a matter of fact he is opening the first week of August in San Diego as the lead in HOW TO SUCCEED. He's very good.