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Paul directing Illinois Sings in 1968 - photos courtesy George Paul
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He’s traveled the world, calling the cameras on dozens of historic broadcasts for Tom Brokaw, David Brinkley, Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Diane Sawyer and others. At 78, Paul continues to direct for ABC’s 20/20 and Primetime. “I love doing live television,” he says. “Taping takes out all the spontaneity.”
Paul is only the fifth DGA member to receive the award for news direction, and several of the others are friends, including 1999 recipient Richard B. Armstrong and 1996 recipient Max A. Schindler, or respected colleagues, like the late Arthur Bloom, who was the inaugural recipient in 1995.
“I never thought I’d be standing in front of my peers, I can’t believe it,” says Paul, who is equally proud of having served on the DGA National Board, representing Midwestern members, and briefly as Midwest Executive Secretary. “There are so many unsung heroes doing this night in and night out, most people don’t understand the complexities of what we do.”
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George Paul on location with reporter Bryant Gumbel and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1981.
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To Paul, a major part of the job is promoting teamwork in studio and or location. “Everybody is so important,” he said. “It’s important to make everybody feel part of the team.” It also helps to keep things upbeat and humorous to lessen the pressures of doing live television.
The Chicago native was studying accounting at Northwestern University when he answered a want ad in The Chicago Tribune for an auditor’s job at ABC. It was a fateful decision, since what Paul jokingly calls the “bean-counter” job set him off on an unexpected career that proved deeply fulfilling. “I never ever dreamed of getting into television as a production person, that was the farthest thing from my mind,” he recalled. “But when I became part of the accounting department, I kept seeing people who seemed quite happy in what they did. I wondered what their involvement was and I found out it was in something called ‘production,’ and that seemed like a great idea.” In the first in a series of pivotal breaks, his boss helped him become a “floor manager,” as the stage manager’s role was called in 1954, at WBKB-TV (now WLS-TV) in Chicago, and subsequently joined the Radio and Television Directors Guild. He worked on local and ABC network programs, including Super Circus and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. In 1957, he became a local staff director and directed various news, entertainment and variety shows for the next decade, including Polka Go-Round, which he produced and directed for the ABC-TV network from 1959-61.
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Paul left his beloved Chicago in 1969 to work as a local staff director at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. He directed news with Tom Brokaw and Tom Snyder, sports with Bryant Gumbel, and numerous community series and variety specials, including The Nancy Wilson Show, the Emmy-winning specials El Teatro Campesino and A Man and His Movies (about cinematographer James Wong Howe), and the duPont-Columbia Award-winning documentary The Slow Guillotine with Jack Lemmon.
His next, and biggest, break came in 1976 when Snyder invited Paul to become his network director on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder for NBC in New York. “There are many people who are great local directors who’ve never had the opportunity that was afforded to me,” Paul says. “Tom was the one guy who said, ‘you’re the guy,’ and after that it was up to me to make it so.”
In 1982, Paul started directing The Today Show with Gumbel and Jane Pauley for NBC News. In this role, he took the show to five continents, broadcasting live from China, Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere. In Russia, this meant airing The Today Show at 3 p.m. owing to the time change, a welcome relief from the usual pre-dawn call time in the states. “With all of these shows, we’d get to a location and it would be done live from Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China and Shanghai. One time we did The Today Show from the Orient Express, traveling to five countries in five days, with the control room on the train,” he says. “As I look back on it, it’s like did that really happen? To me? To live it is something else.”
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On 20/20 with Barbara Walters.
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It was during those years at NBC News that Paul directed the Space Shuttle Challenger launch that took Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, Brokaw’s coverage of the 1988 Democratic and Republican conventions, and NBC Magazine with David Brinkley. “David was a great person to work with. He would arrive long before the broadcast would begin and would require no special treatment. He was just there in case you needed anything.” Paul also has great respect for Barbara Walters, who he worked with after joining ABC News in 1989 and directing 20/20 with Walters and Hugh Downs. That job has lasted a mere 17 years and more than 850 episodes, including more than 75 interviews in which Paul directed U.S. presidents, their wives, newsmakers, entertainers and athletes.
At ABC News, Paul has also directed Primetime with Diane Sawyer for more than 10 years, Good Morning America, This Week with David Brinkley and 20/20 Downtown. He additionally handled numerous specials including Peter Jennings Answering Children’s Questions (at the White House), Millennium 2000 from the Eiffel Tower, and the 1992 Presidential Debate between then-President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. The latter proved an especially challenging production, as Paul suffered a detached retina. “This happened about a half hour before I was to do the broadcast with eight cameras,” he says. “Suddenly, it went all blurry and black and I couldn’t see out of it. I remember turning around to the producer and telling him as much and I remember the look on his face. I said, ‘Everything will be O.K.” and so I did it with one eye.” Paul had surgery a few days later and fully recovered, but the incident is telling of his work ethic and skill. “Whatever happens, you have to adapt to that particular moment. Live television has no safety net.”
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Directing the NBC Nightly News.
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Paul is understandably nostalgic for the pioneering days of live television, where you learned by trial and error. “That era has passed by and will never ever happen again,” he says. “They don’t do shows like they used to. The industry has changed and you have to change with it.”
That ability to adapt may explain why Paul has no intention of slowing down. “I can’t even imagine retiring. Directing live television has been an exhilarating experience: ‘Sitting on the edge of a chair’ has been my way of life. You just keep answering the bell. The next day it rings, and it’s another round.”
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