The Directors Guild of America gave out only one award for television directing from 1953, when it began honoring TV directors, through 1970. The Guild expanded and catagorized its TV honors for the 1971 awards, by recognizing achievements in the fields of movies or movie-length productions, documentary/news specials, dramatic series, comedy series and musical/variety shows. But in the 1950s and '60s, the single annual DGA directing award was given to a half-hour show one year, a variety special the next, a feature-length show another time. The first movie-length show to win the DGA's TV award for direction was Phil Karlson's The Untouchables, a two-part, two-hour installment of Desilu Playhouse in 1959.

One of the rotating four stars of the series title, David Niven, co-starred with Carolyn Jones in this romantic mood piece during the Christmas season (12/23/54), which received an Emmy Award nomination for its editing (the other three top-liners were Dick Powell, Charles Boyer and Ida Lupino). The supporting cast included Anthony Caruso and Nestor Paiva. Kellino was a British cinematographer going back to the silent era who was once partnered in England in Gamma Films with actor James Mason. He died two years after winning this DGA Award.

1955
The Little Guy
Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre (NBC)
half-hour drama
Don Weis, director
Jack Corrick, assistant director

The Little Guy was literally and figuratively Dane Clark in this half-hour episode fronted by one of the few women to attain early TV stardom, Jane Wyman, who introduced the episode, which was an Emmy Award nominee for its editing. Lee Marvin, who would later team with director Weis for a number of episodes of the late-1950s tough-cop show M Squad, played one of his first substantial TV roles here. Weis would go on to direct many comedy series and such movies as The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953) and the Bob Hope/Lucille Ball film Critic's Choice (1963).

1956
The Road That Led Afar
General Electric Theatre (CBS)
half-hour drama
Herschel Daugherty, director
Richard Birnie, assistant director

Like many of director Daugherty's installments of Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Road That Led Afar played right into his early career specialty of eerie TV noir with characters facing crises of moral ambiguity and, as the title indicates, wrong choices. Dan Duryea, Piper Laurie and Beverly Washburn starred in this Thanksgiving holiday episode (11/25/56), which was introduced, as all the G.E. dramas were through 1962, by Ronald Reagan. Daugherty would later direct episodes of Hawaii Five-O, Star Trek, Banacek and Cannon.

1957
The Lonely Wizard Steinmetz
Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (CBS)
half-hour drama
Don Weis, director
Willard Sheldon, assistant director

Rod Steiger, in a snow-white beard and spectacles, portrayed the electrical genius Charles Proteus Steinmetz, who developed the mathematical theory of the "alternating current" and made 200 electrical inventions, including the high-voltage generator. The actor's performance as the German-born American scientist drove the production, which co-starred Diane Brewster. With this show, which also received Emmy Award nominations for its teleplay and editing, Weis became the first director to win a second DGA Award for television.

1958
All Our Yesterdays
77 Sunset Strip (ABC)
hour-long drama
Richard Bare, director
Claude Binyon, Jr., assistant director

All Our Yesterdays was the seventh installment on 11/21/58 of the highly successful Roy Huggins production of 77 Sunset Strip, starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith as Hollywood private detectives and Edd Byrnes as their occasional eyes and ears, "Kookie," the parking attendant at Dino's Lodge next door. Bare, who also directed the series pilot, hired inspired performers for this poignant tale of an aging movie star who wants to launch a silent picture so all of her old friends can get jobs again. Doris Kenyon starred with John Carradine and Francis X. Bushman.

1959
The Untouchables - two-part pilot
Desilu Playhouse (CBS)
Phil Karlson, director
Vincent McEveety, assistant director

The pilot for The Untouchables series, which ran on ABC from 1959 to 1963, was this two-part, two-hour Quinn Martin production airing on 4/20/59 and 4/27/59 on Desilu Playhouse. It introduced Robert Stack in the role that later won him the Emmy Award for best actor in a series: rackets-busting U.S. Treasury agent Eliot Ness. It also featured Neville Brand as Chicago mob kingpin Al Capone, Bruce Gordon as Capone henchman Frank Nitti, Keenan Wynn and Barbara Nichols. Considered ultra-violent for 1959 tastes, this opener finds Ness and his minions bent on taking 1920s Chicago back from the grip of racketeers.

1960
Macbeth
Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC)
George Schaefer, director
Adrienne Luraschi, associate director

In two departures for TV, William Shakespeare's classic play about a politically devious Scottish nobleman and his power-lusting wife, was shot on color film–by renowned cinematographer Freddie Young–and mostly on European locations, primarily at Scotland's Hermitage Castle. The two-hour presentation on 11/20/60 is regarded by some as the first made-for-TV movie. It swept the Emmy Awards, winning for best program of the year, best drama, best director, best actor (Maurice Evans) and best actress (Dame Judith Anderson). This elegant production featured Michael Hordern as Banquo, Ian Bannen as MacDuff, Malcolm Keen as Duncan, George Rose as the Porter and Felix Aylmer.

1962
The Price Of Tomatoes
Dick Powell Theatre (NBC)
hour-long drama
David Friedkin, director
Edward Denault, assistant director
Ken Herman, associate director

Peter Falk received an Emmy Award for his performance as Aristede Fresco, a Greek truck driver whose tomato-delivery schedule is interrupted when he picks up a pregnant hitchhiker. Richard Alan Simmons' teleplay on 1/16/62 was given an urgency by Friedkin's perceptive direction, and Falk's performance was one of his high-water marks. Simmons and Inger Stevens, as the woman, also received Emmy nominations. Alejandro Rey co-starred. Friedkin was later, along with Mort Fine and Sheldon Leonard, one of the architects of the hugely successful I Spy.

1963
Pygmalion
Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC)
George Schaefer, director
Adrienne Luraschi, associate director

George Bernard Shaw's classic tale of the vulgar, cockney flower girl plucked from the streets by an arrogant professor bent on winning a bet that he can transform her into a model of social graces found its place in the Hallmark rotation of classics. Schaefer returned to a collaboration with one of his favorite actresses, Julie Harris, who he had previously directed to Emmy Award-winning performances in the Hallmark presentations of Little Moon of Alban (1958) and Victoria Regina (1961). Airing on 2/6/63, Pygmalion co-starred James Donald as the pompous Professor Henry Higgins, and the cast included Gladys Cooper, John Williams, George Rose, Valerie Cossart and Mildred Trares.

1964
The Oscar W. Underwood Story
Profiles in Courage (NBC)
hour-long drama
Lamont Johnson, director
Mickey Mccardle, Assistant Director

The Oscar W. Underwood Story was the debut installment of Profiles in Courage, which was developed from President John F. Kennedy's 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about actual political figures who faced extraordinary challenges. The first U.S. senator to be officially designated as floor leader—as distinct from conference chairman—was Oscar Underwood of Alabama, chosen by the Democratic senators in 1920. Sidney Blakmer portrayed Underwood and Victor Jory co-starred in the production that brought director Johnson his first DGA award.

1966
Death of a Salesman
CBS Special
Alex Segal, director
James H. Clark, associate director

Perhaps the quintessential American play, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the tragedy of Willy Loman, a longtime salesman who has been fired at the age of 63 by his young boss, then realizes that his two well-liked sons have turned out to be mediocrities at best. The meaninglessness of his glad-handing life and foolish wishful thinking eventually shroud him in a grim, suicidal mood. Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock repeated their 1949 Broadway triumphs as Willy and his long-suffering wife, Linda, and received Emmy nominations. The show won Emmy Awards as the outstanding dramatic program and for Segal best drama directing. George Segal and James Farentino played the sons.

1967
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
CBS Playhouse
George Schaefer, director
Rowland Vance and Adrienne Luraschi, associate directors

In one of TV's most memorable paeans to the fortitude of senior citizens, this Loring Mandel teleplay followed a 70-year-old widower carpenter as he tried out nursing homes at the behest of his adult children. This thoughtful production won an Emmy Award for Melvyn Douglas, who replaced Fredric March at the 11th hour, as the old man, Peter Sherman, and for Mandel and the camera work, and was nominated for best dramatic program, director and supporting actor (Lawrence Dobkin). The show, which aired on 10/17/67, also featured Shirley Booth, Claudia McNeil, Lois Smith and Warren Stevens.

1968
My Father and My Mother
CBS Playhouse
George Schaefer, director
Rowland Vance and Adrienne Luraschi, associate directors

Ned, a New York magazine editor, tries to escape the responsibilities of his rocky marriage, the neediness of his two teen daughters and especially the agony of putting his autistic son into an institution by thinking back on his boyhood in Massachusetts. As he returns to that life as an adult—walking into scenes of the 1940s with his parents as an adult—he realizes that life always was a challenging proposition. The boomeranging back and forth in time presented Schaefer and Gene Hackman, in his most outstanding TV performance, with enormous demands. Co-starring were Ralph Bellamy, Jane Wyatt, Inga Swenson and Bonnie Bedelia.

1969
Teacher, Teacher
Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC)
Fielder Cook, director
Steve Barnett, assistant director

Billy Schulman, an actual mentally challenged teen, plays a mentally challenged teen whose presence affects, among others, a burnt-out prep-school teacher, played by David McCallum, and a retired Air Force pilot settling for work as a handyman, played by Ossie Davis. The production was one of the first in TV history to employ mentally challenged persons, and it raised ethical questions regarding their exploitation and well-being in such work capacities. The production won the Emmy Award for outstanding dramatic program and captured seven nominations, including for Cook and teleplay writer Allan E. Sloan under the nom de plume Ellison Carroll and actors Davis, McCallum and Schulman.

1970
My Sweet Charlie
NBC movie
Lamont Johnson, director
Ralph Ferrin, assistant director

Patty Duke plays a Southern pregnant runaway and Al Freeman, Jr. is a black New York attorney wanted for murder. Out of necessity, the two spend a night together in an abandoned Texas house, forging an unlikely and strong bond that could see both of them through their adversities. The adaptation of David Westheimer's novel by William Levinson and William Link won the scripters Emmy Awards and Duke took home the first best actress Emmy won by anyone for a TV-movie performance. The show received eight nominations, including one for outstanding dramatic program.

1971
Brian's Song
ABC movie
Buzz Kulik, director
Eddie Saeta, unit production manager & first assistant director
Richard Learman, second assistant director

Critically acclaimed across the nation, and one of the most watched TV shows in history, Brian's Song was a fact-based story of professional football that reached an audience way beyond sports fans. Kulik's sensitive handling of this tragic story struck a national chord. The telefilm won three Emmys, including for best dramatic program and Jack Warden's performance as Chicago Bears Coach George Halas. The story concerns the friendship between two Bears, superstar Gale Sayers and fullback Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer at age 26. Billy Dee Williams played Sayers and James Caan enacted Piccolo and both reaped Emmy nominations in career-boosting parts. Also starring were Judy Pace and Shelley Fabares.

1972
That Certain Summer
ABC movie
Lamont Johnson, director
Jack Terry, unit production manager
Warren Smith, first assistant director
Harvey Laidman, second assistant director

Hal Holbrook as a divorced gay man who attempts to explain about his lover (Martin Sheen) and lifestyle to his teen-age son. A daring movie-of-the-week subject in its time, this movie became a much-discussed medium landmark for handling the subject with sensitivity and frankness, and has remained a significant cultural event in the public illumination of alternative lifestyles. Johnson and scripters William Link and William Levinson received Emmy nominations. The telefilm also won an Emmy for Scott Jacoby's performance as the son and reaped other nominations for outstanding dramatic program and for the performances of Holbrook and Hope Lange.

1973
The Marcus-Nelson Murders
CBS movie
Joseph Sargent, director
Ben Bishop, unit production manager
Alan Crosland Jr., first assistant director
Charles Walker, second assistant director

"Who loves ya', baby?" Telly Savalas' familiar, lollipop-loving homicide detective Theo Kojak was introduced in this two-part movie based on the grisly Wylie-Hoffert murders in 1963 New York City, in which two girls were brutally killed. A ghetto teen was wrongfully pursued as the main suspect in the case by corrupt detectives, and Kojak worked in the youth's behalf. Gene Woodbury played the teen, and the cast included Marjoe Gortner, Jose Ferrer, Lorraine Gary, Ned Beatty and Allen Garfield. Judgment at Nuremberg scenarist Abby Mann won the Emmy Award for his teleplay and Sargent and Savalas were nominated.

1974
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
CBS movie
John Korty, director
Ted Swanson, unit production manager
Ric Rondell, first assistant director
Nate Haggard, second assistant director

In one of the most ambitious and successful shows in TV history, Cicely Tyson plays what became her signature role, the 110-year-old black woman of the title. Miss Pittman was an ex-slave whose span of experiences includes both the Civil War in the 1860s and the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Tyson's performance, Korty's superb direction across a myriad of time-specific settings and eras, and the teleplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn, adapted from Ernest J. Gaines' novel, accounted for three of nine total Emmy Awards, including for outstanding special. Barbara Chaney, Richard Dysart, Thalmus Rasulala and Michael Murphy co-starred.

1975
Queen of the Stardust Ballroom
CBS movie
Sam O'Steen, director
Chris Seitz, unit production manager
Ken Swor, first assistant director
Henry Lange Jr., second assistant director

M aureen Stapleton plays a lonely New York City widow who finds love a belated second time around with a portly married postman (Charles Durning) in a dance hall, shuffling to the 1930s oldies in this superbly realized period piece. O'Steen, the accomplished editor of many Woody Allen movies, crafts his own idiosyncratic gem this time around with this evocative mood drama. Michael Brandon and Michael Strong co-starred. The show, O'Steen, writer Jerome Kass and the two leads were also nominated for Emmy Awards.

1976
Eleanor and Franklin
ABC miniseries
Daniel Petrie, director
Edward Teets, unit production manager
Lynn Guthrie, first assistant director
Jack Frost Sanders, second assistant director

Joseph P. Lash's Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller about the Roosevelts from their teen years through FDR's unprecedented presidency was remarkably realized in this outstanding production, relying on the perceptive and uncanny performances by Edward Herrmann and Jane Alexander in the leads. The film won Emmy Awards for outstanding special, Petrie's direction, James Costigan's telepay and Rosemary Murphy's performance as Sara Delano Roosevelt, and Herrmann and Alexander were nominated. The production also featured Ed Flanders, Pamela Franklin, Linda Purl and Mackenzie Phillips.

1977
Eleanor and Franklin - The White House Years
ABC miniseries
Daniel Petrie, director
Edward Teets, unit production manager
Wolfgang Glattes, first assistant director
Jack Frost Sanders, second assistant director

The second time around was just as good as the first as Petrie and the same production team and largely the same cast from the previous year's original took the nation's midcentury first couple in more detail through the Depression years and into the World War II years. Petrie and the show, presented as a David Susskind production on ABC Theatre, again won Emmy Awards, and Edward Herrmann and Jane Alexander again received nominations for their work as FDR and Eleanor. Rosemary Murphy, Mark Harmon and Walter McGinn were also nominated, and the cast included Blair Brown, Anna Lee and Donald Moffat.

1978
Holocaust
NBC miniseries
Marvin J. Chomsky, director
Bruce S. Pustin, assistant director

Of all of the poignant memorials to this miniseries' namesake, documentary or otherwise, few had the lasting impact of this production, about two German families between 1935 and 1945. The Jewish family fights to survive the injustices of the Nazis while a non-Jewish family friend rises in the Third Reich's hierarchy. Chomsky's forceful telling of Gerald Green's teleplay won them both Emmy Awards as well as the Emmy for outstanding limited series. Michael Moriarty, Meryl Streep and Blanche Baker also won Emmys from 16 nominations, including supporting nods for actors David Warner, Sam Wanamaker, Tovah Feldshuh, Fritz Weaver and Rosemary Harris.

1979
The Jericho Mile
ABC movie
Michael Mann, director
Penelope Foster, unit production manager
Frank Beetson, first assistant director

Peter Strauss starred as Rain Murphy, an inmate serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison, who works to earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic running team. The actor and the writing team of director Mann and Patrick Nolan won two of three Emmy Awards for this ambitious movie, which transcends the usual Rocky-styled sports-movie themes with unusual twists and remains a telling predecessor to Mann's filmography of muscular action pictures. Richard Lawson, Roger E. Mosely, Brian Dennehy, Ed Lauter, Billy Green Bush and William Prince co-star.

1980
Shogun
NBC miniseries
Jerry London, director
Wallace Worsley and Ben Chapman, unit production managers
Phil Cook and Charles Ziarko, first assistant directors

James Clavell's novel about a shipwrecked British navigator who becomes involved in a conflict between two Japanese warlords in the 19th century became one of the most watched events of the miniseries era. Richard Chamberlain made a lasting impression as John Blackthorne and mainstream American audiences were more formally introduced to Toshiro Mifune in this 12-hour epic. Yoko Shimada played Blackthorne's lover. All three leads plus John Rhys-Davies and Yuki Meguro received Emmy nominations and the production won the Emmy as best miniseries. Michael Hordern and Alan Badel co-starred.

1981
Skokie
CBS movie
Herbert Wise, director
Bruce S. Pustin, unit production manager
Ron Bozman, first assistant director
Penny Finkleman, first assistant director

This fact-based drama centers on street demonstrations attempted by neo-Nazis in 1977 in the largely Jewish community of Skokie, IL., where a high percentage of World War II concentration camp survivors lived. Wise superbly realized Ernest Kinoy's teleplay with a strong cast, led by Danny Kaye in his only TV movie, as well as Kim Hunter, Eli Wallach, John Rubenstein, Carl Reiner, Ed Flanders, Brian Dennehy, George Dzundza and Lee Strasberg in his final role. Wise and Kinoy received Emmy nominations as did the production for this outstanding special.

1982
Inside the Third Reich
ABC miniseries
Marvin J. Chomsky, director
John C. Chulay, first assistant director

The autobiography of Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's personal architect, supplied Chomsky with his World War II follow-up to Holocaust (1978) with another look at the intimacies behind the war machine that turned the world upside-down at midcentury. Again, Chomsky received the best director Emmy, guiding a sterling cast in this five-hour epic headed by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer as Speer and featuring John Gieldgud, Trevor Howard, Blythe Danner, Maria Schell, Ian Holm, Derek Jacobi, Robert Vaughn, Elke Sommer, Randy Quaid and Viveca Lindfors.

1983
Special Bulletin
NBC movie
Edward Zwick, director
John Rogers, unit production manager
Tony Brand, associate director
Irwin Marcus, stage manager

As this production aired, special disclaimers on the bottom of the screen spelled out that this newscast-styled, videotaped production wasn't the real thing, even as it simulated actuality in the story about radical protestors against nuclear weaponry who threaten to blow up Charleston, SC, unless the government de-activates warheads that are stored there. Zwick won Emmy Awards for writing the story with Marshall Herskovitz and for his direction. The large cast included Ed Flanders, Kathryn Walker, Rosalind Cash, Roxanne Hart and Lane Smith.

1984
The Dollmaker
ABC movie
Daniel Petrie, director
John Wilson, unit production manager
Gary Daigler, first assistant director
Katterli Frauenfelder, second assistant director

Harriette Arnow's novel about a Kentucky mountain woman who moves to Detroit with her husband during World War II and tries to make extra money with her gift as a wood-carver was adapted by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn into this three-hour production, which won Jane Fonda the Emmy Award for best actress in her TV-movie debut. Geraldine Page co-starred and the supporting cast included Levon Helm, Amanda Plummer, Dan Hedaya, Studs Terkel and Sheb Woolley. This was Petrie's third DGA Award for TV direction.

1985
An Early Frost
NBC movie
John Erman, director
Art Seidel, unit production manager
Steve McEveety, first assistant director
Mike Schilz, second assistant director

This watershed production about the AIDS epidemic posed dual shocks to the American family system: The son is homosexual, and he's dying from AIDS. Aidan Quinn delivered one of his finest performances as attorney Michael Pierson, who returns from Chicago to rural Pennsylvania to announce his fate to the family. Erman directed a superb cast in Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Sylvia Sidney, John Glover, Bill Paxton, Terry O'Quinn and D.W. Moffett. Fourteen Emmy Award nominations were bestowed on this movie.

1986
Nobody's Child
CBS movie
Lee Grant, director

This fact-based story of Marie Balter almost defied credibility. Diagnosed as mentally deficient from an early age, she eventually rehabilitated herself through an arduous youth and adulthood, then graduated with honors from Harvard University and became a mental health administrator. Marlo Thomas gave the performance of her career as Balter and won the Emmy Award for best actress. Sven Nykvist was the cinematographer for only Grant's second made-for-TV movie. Caroline Kava, Kathy Baker and Madeleine Sherwood co-starred.

1987
Foxfire
Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC)
Jud Taylor, director
Murray Schwartz, unit production manager
Fred Blankfein, first assistant director

Two subjects that have often gotten short shrift from films and TV—the elderly and Appalachia—are the combined subjects of this adaptation of the play by Susan Cooper and co-star Hume Cronyn. It's the story of the life of farm wife Annie Nations (Jessica Tandy), a widow who's visited by her country-western singing son, Dillard (John Denver). Her flashbacks combine with Dillard's complex notoriety as a "hillbilly" figure to flesh out issues of heritage and regional identity. Tandy won the Emmy Award as best actress and Cronyn and the show were nominated.

1988
Gore Vidal's Lincoln
NBC miniseries
Lamont Johnson, director
Bruce Shurley, unit production manager
Jerry Grandey, first assistant director
Eric Wall, second assistant director

The personal intimacies behind presidential stories became another of director Johnson's specialties with the epic miniseries Gore Vidal's Lincoln (1988) starring Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and, later, The Kennedys of Massachusetts (1990). Lincoln covers events from the couple's first days in the White House until the President's assassination by John Wilkes Booth. Johnson also won the Emmy Award for best direction of a miniseries and the production received Emmy nominations for best miniseries, actress (Moore) and supporting actress (Ruby Dee).

1989
War and Remembrance
ABC miniseries
Dan Curtis, director
Ephraim "Red" Schaffer, unit production manager
Branko Lustig, first assistant director
Sergio Mimica, second assistant director

This sequel miniseries to The Winds of War (1983) became the costliest and grandest single-story undertaking in medium history at a cost of $104 million and totalling 30 prime-time hours. It received 15 Emmy Award nominations and won for best miniseries, special effects and single-camera production editing. Starring Robert Mitchum as source novelist Herman Wouk's globetrotting attache, Navy Captain Victor "Pug' Henry, during the events closing World War II, this huge show included battles, liberations, momentous decisions, detente and reflection. The miniseries was nominated for Emmy Awards for best actor (John Gielgud), actress (Jane Seymour) and supporting actress (Polly Bergen).

1990
Murder in Mississippi
NBC movie
Roger Young, director
Richard Prince, unit production manager
Craig Huston, first assistant director
Frank Davis, second assistant director

Two years after director Alan Parker's fictionalized and explosive theatrical film, Mississippi Burning (1988), about the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964 Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan, this four-hour movie sought to stick as close to the facts of those murders as possible. Young directed this version of the '64 "Freedom Summer" to portray the events from the victims' standpoints. Tom Hulce, Blair Underwood and Josh Charles played the trio, co-starring with Jennifer Grey, CCH Pounder, Greg Kinnear and Andre Braugher. This David L. Wolper production was Emmy-nominated for outstanding special.

1991
Paris Trout
Showtime movie
Stephen Gyllenhaal, director
Tom Luse, unit production manager
David Womark, first assistant director
Brenda Kalosh, second assistant director

In one of TV's more oblique portraits of Southern racism, Dennis Hopper portrays the title character, a storekeeper and loanshark in 1949 rural Georgia, who shoots and kills a 12-year-old black girl and then asserts that it was nothing. His long-suffering wife, Hannah (Barbara Hershey), is affected by this latest, heinous act of violence, which triggers the abusive-by-rote Paris into a downward mental spiral. His lawyer, Harry (Ed Harris), finally meets Hannah, and the two find solace in each other while Paris becomes more uncontrollable. Pete Dexter adapted his own novel, and Gyllenhaal elicites one of Hopper's best performances.

1992
Picket Fences
CBS pilot
Ron Lagomarsino, director
Ron Mitchell, unit production manager
Jack Philbrick, first assistant director
John Isabeau, second assistant director

Peyton Place for the 1990s turned out to be Rome, WI, where the dramatics came covered in some suds, but also as if they were filtered through the land of Twin Peaks. Anything could happen in small-town America, and Picket Fences was the new standard. Lagomarsino crafted the pilot to Emmy Award-collecting series around the Brock family, where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) is a bit full of himself and his wife, Jill (Kathy Baker) is the town medico. The supporting cast included Costas Mandylor, Lauren Holly and Ray Walston.

1993
The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom
HBO movie
Michael Ritchie, director
Arthur Schaefer, unit production manager
David Sosna, first assistant director
Thomas A. Smith, second assistant director

Holly Hunter won her second Emmy Award for best actress as a Houston mother who conspires with her sleazy brother (Beau Bridges) to hire a hit man to kill her daughter's rival for a spot on the cheerleading team. Full of gall, jealousy, domineering arrogance and creepy sexuality, the actress enlarges on Jane Robinson's teleplay, which was based on the court transcripts and bugged conversations. Ritchie guided this production with such a deft seriocomic hand that the outlandish actual details mesh into one of TV's great examples of the truth being stranger than fiction. Swoosie Kurtz and Matt Frewer co-star.

1994
E.R.
NBC pilot
Rod Holcomb, director
Dennis Murphy, unit production manager
T.R. Babu Subramaniam, first assistant director
Joyce Mayeda-Jones, second assistant director

The pilot to one of the most succcessful series of the 1990s was written by the perpetually gold-spinning Michael Crichton to depict another event-filled day in the life of a Chicago hospital's emergency room. Holcomb's interweaving of storylines through the day's sometimes hectic actions was a job akin to a maestro conducting a philharmonic. The pilot film was a launching pad for the star career of George Clooney and also featured Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle, Sherry Stringfield, Julianna Margulies and Vanessa Marquez.

1995
Indictment: The McMartin Trial
HBO movie
Mick Jackson, director
Diana B. Pokorny, unit production manager
Aaron Barsky, first assistant director
Barbara Ravis, second assistant director

Jackson and scripters Abby and Myra Mann pose provocative questions in this docu-drama about the nationally aired accusations of epidemic child molestation that rocked a Manhattan Beach, Calif., day-care center in the 1980s. Seven defendents were accused, lurid video-taped testimony was aired in the media as public hysteria mounted and the trial lasted a record six years. Eventually everyone was dismissed while reputations were ruined. James Woods plays defense lawyer Danny Davis and the support includes Mercedes Reuhl, Sada Thompson, Shirley Knight, Lolita Davidovich, Henry Thomas and Alison Elliott.

1996
The Late Shift
HBO movie
Betty Thomas, director
Jake Jacobson, unit production manager
Richard Graves, first assistant director
Robert Lorenz, second assistant director

This famous look at the politicking behind the scenes of a major network power play examines what went on at NBC after Johnny Carson left the late-night airwaves and Jay Leno and David Letterman squared off as the two most likely replacements. Helen Kushnick, Leno's tough-as-nails manager, played a huge role in him eventually getting the job, then found her hardball style alienating network executives. Thomas created an absorbing inside-out look at the network from Bill Carter's book and teleplay. John Michael Higgins (Letterman), Daniel Roebuck (Leno) and Kathy Bates (Kushnick) starred with Bob Balaban, Ed Begley Jr., Treat Williams and Sandra Bernhard as herself.

1997
Don King: Only in America
HBO movie
John Herzfeld, director
Charles Skouras, unit production manager
James Freitag, first assistant director
Martin Jedlicka, second assistant director

The fight promoter with the towering white hair and run of gaudy patter is hyper-enlivened via a powerhouse performance by Ving Rhames in this made-for-cable triumph. Based on Jack Newfield's biography, this film takes King from a probable career in street crime to the heights of heavyweight boxing promotion to the management of the careers of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and other ring greats. Vondie Curtis Hall, Keith David, Darius McCrary, Lou Rawls, Ron Liebman and Jeremy Pivan co-star in Herzfeld's provocative biopic. Rhames famously won the Golden Globe Award for best actor and gave the trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon at the Golden Globes show.

1998
Gia
HBO movie
Michael Cristofer, director
James D. Brubaker, unit production manager
Mary Ellen Woods, first assistant director
David Larson, second assistant director

Cristofer, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright of The Shadow Box, won the DGA's honor for his first directing attempt, this fact-based piece about supermodel Gia Marie Curangi from her employment in her father's Philadelphia diner at age 17 to her death from AIDS 10 years later as the first known American woman to die from the disease. The movie concentrates on her failed relationships, drug use and the peculiarities of the New York modeling scene. Angelina Jolie made her first big showing with an exceptional performance with excellent support from Faye Dunaway, Mercedes Ruehl and John Considine. Cristofer shared teleplay credt with Bright Lights, Big City author Jay McInerney.

1999
Tuesdays With Morrie
ABC movie
Mick Jackson, director
Jennifer Ogden, unit production manager
Matthew Carlisle, first assistant director
Tom Snyder, second assistant director

Self-absorbed sports columnist and commentator Mitch Albom found out that one of his college professors was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, and decided to visit his old mentor. By spending time with Morrie, Mitch came to understand better the values in life and the meaning of personal relationships. Mitch then began retooling his life as Morrie was losing his. This inspirational adaptation of Albom's book starred Jack Lemmon in one of his final roles as Morrie and Hank Azaria as Mitch. Jackson won his second DGA award, following Indictment: The McMartin Story.

2000
The Beach Boys: An American Family
ABC movie
Jeff Bleckner, director
John Whitman, unit production manager
Yudi Bennett, second assistant director
Jules Kovisars, second assistant director
Franklyn Gottbetter, second second assistant director
Tim Price, DGA trainee

The lives of Brian and Dennis Wilson and their parents' influence on them mark the focal point of this two-part special. The other band members are well etched in from Kirk Ellis' teleplay, which Bleckner weaves through the events of the 1950s onward. Fred Weller turned in an exceptional performance as the often problematic Brian Wilson, with Nick Stabile as Dennis, Matt Letscher as Mike Love, Ned Vaughn as Al Jardine and Ryan Northcutt as Carl Wilson.

2001
Conspiracy
HBO movie
Frank Pierson, director

This powerful film is a historical recreation of the1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," and reached a decision that would come to be known as the Holocaust. With Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, and Kenneth Branagh as General Reinhard Heydrich SS Chief of Reich Security, chief architect of the meeting.