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Benson at the 2004 Democratic National Convention with commentator Tavis Smiley. - photos courtesy Terry Benson
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Benson is the 17th person to receive the Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award, which is given to an associate director or stage manager in recognition of their service to the industry and DGA.
“When you do a huge amount of work because you feel it’s the right thing to do, because you think you can make a contribution – and you do – it is very satisfying when unexpectedly you are given recognition for all you’ve done,” says Benson.
Benson had no finer role model than his father, Karl Genus, a director at CBS in the 1950s who played a key role in the Radio Television Directors Guild’s merger with the Screen Directors Guild to form the DGA in 1960. His father also served as shop steward, Guild officer and pension trustee, so Benson grew up hearing about the need to organize, unify directors and strengthen the pension and health plans. More often, the two would talk about theater and television, critiquing movies and assessing the minutest of edits.
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“I wish my dad were here – that’s my great sadness because he would have been so proud,” Benson says of his father, who passed away three years ago. “He was always proud of my stage managing and my involvement with the Guild, and the degree to which I was following, not as a director, but in his footsteps.”
Community is a guiding principle in Benson’s commitment to the DGA. He believes that the Guild must not only represent the best workers in the field, and ensure they have the benefits and security to prosper, but also must move ahead as a group and draw on the resources of all its members. A desire to serve led him to begin attending AD/SM/PA Council meetings soon after he joined the DGA in 1970. He was elected to the Council in 1974 and has remained active to the present in various roles including chair, vice-chair and secretary. At WNET, he was lead negotiator and shop steward from 1976-2003, while separately stage managing many DGA Awards dinners in New York, and serving on local and national DGA committees including Internal Complaints, Work Opportunities, Organizing Waiver, Awards, the 1987 Strike Committee and the New York Building Committee.
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At a PBS Pledge with opera
star Renee Fleming.
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“I think a community works best if people from all of the different areas put their back into making it work,” says Benson. “It can’t be led only from the top, it isn’t just the director. It has to be all the categories and I felt I had something to offer in this area and that I was sort of obligated to do it. My dad said, ‘There’s a reason for you to be here. You’ve got to follow that.’”
Many of the beneficiaries are fellow AD/SMs that Benson has worked to help by addressing changes in technology, production and the employer’s staffing needs. This included fighting to bolster the DGA ranks of workers who straddled the world of broadcast engineering and were threatened by advances in equipment that put their jobs at risk.
Drawing on his political background, Benson was also an early advocate of the DGA’s PAC and its ability to advance the Guild’s mission. “Too much of what happens to us as a Guild, and as a collection of 13,000 professionals in a particular industry, happens through national and local legislation. We have to be in that game, and to be in that game you have to have a voice that you must pay for and support.”
This again reflects Benson’s commitment to community, whether in his private or professional life. “The Guild is very much a part of that commitment but I also believe that public television is a community activity,” says Benson. “It’s trying to make the country better, to educate, to give voice to those who don’t have a voice, and to express the best things about our culture and our country.”
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With Tom Brokaw at Dupont Columbia.
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Growing up, Benson demonstrated a knack for versatility. As a fourth generation theater brat, he’d fill roles well out of his age range. He was fascinated with mathematics in high school, but shifted his attention to political science at Yale University. After his junior year of college, the aspiring diplomat took time off to do “a little television work” and was drawn back into “the business”.
Upon completing college, Benson got his Guild card and the job as second stage manager on Sesame Street in its second season, working with Chet O’Brien, a legendary stage manager who came out of Broadway and was Benson’s mentor.
From 1971 to 2003 Benson was a staff associate at WNET, the PBS affiliate in New York City, as a highly capable stage manager who could handle associate director or master control duties as needed and he continues to freelance there as an SM. This has led to involvement with many notable PBS programs including Theater In America, The Adams Chronicles, Live from the Met and The Metropolitan Opera Presents, The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Carnegie Hall Opening Night, The DuPont Columbia Awards, The Channel 13 Auction, Non-Fiction Television, The Great American Dream Machine, many local documentaries, experimental video at Channel 13’s TV Lab, and live pledge drives.
“I was there at a wonderful time in public television when we were trying a whole lot of new things,” he said. “And it was very secure because it was a Guild position.”
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Benson with record producer Phil Ramon and singer Tony Bennett at Channel 13 Pledge Night.
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As time permitted, he free-lanced outside PBS on soap operas including Dark Shadows, The Edge of Night and Guiding Light, as well as the CBS Thanksgiving Day Parade, music specials and commercials.
Benson finds great satisfaction in contributing to the success of each production and helping the director. The key is to anticipate and prevent problems, not wait for them to happen, he said. “The director designs what we’re going to be doing but I’m the one who has to make it happen, and make sure everyone on the studio floor knows what we’re doing. That’s where I’m really the ring master.”
In 1991, Benson – as chair of the AD/SM/PA Council East - was able to repay part of the apprentices’ debt when he presented the first Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award to Chet O’Brien and his brother, Mortimer “Snooks” O’Brien. “It couldn’t have been a more priceless moment,” Benson remembers. “Here I was able to say thank you in a very real way.”
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