Abby Singer - photo by Brian Davis

More than 50 years later, it seemed Singer just couldn’t lose a job. “I kept trying to retire and they just wouldn’t let me,” he said of his remarkably long career as 1st AD, unit production manager and producer in which he’d segued from movies (Death of a Salesman, The Wild One) to television series (Gunsmoke, Columbo) and movies for television.

Around some sets, Singer became such an institution that crews named a shot after him—the next to last take of the day is referred to as “the Abby Singer shot.”

It began when he worked as a 1st AD in television at Universal, where as many as 20 shows a day rotated among shared stages. “I’m hyper, and when I saw a location move coming up I used to say to the crew, ‘There’s one more, so let’s start wrapping it up,’ and they’d call transportation and get the jump on it,” he says. “Over the course of the day you could save 50 or 60 minutes, and give those back to the director.

“Now, they only use it for the next to last shot of the day, but it used to be every time we moved,” he recalls. “I get a kick out of it; it’s used all over the world.”

Everywhere from Yugoslavia to Australia, Singer’s shot precedes him. While traveling in Israel, he came upon a crew shooting at a restaurant where he was eating. “I was talking to the cameraman, I said, ‘I’m Abby Singer,’ he said, ‘Stop it!’ He had the crew come over to meet me.”

Now almost 89, Singer got his start when he moved to Los Angeles from New York after Navy service during WW II. After several years at Columbia, Fier got him into the Guild as a 2nd AD in 1949. In the late ’60s, he asked Fier if he could cross over to television so he could stick closer to home to watch his kids grow up. He eventually became executive in charge of production at MTM.

A fast-talker with a gleam in his eye, Singer was honored in 1985 with the Frank Capra Award for service to the Guild. “I gave all I could to the Guild because it gave me a lot,” he says. “When I joined there were 300 members, and the studios kept us busy,” Singer recalls. “Today there are 13,400, and it’s dog eat dog.”

These are things he can mull over with the “Romeos” (Retired Old Men Eating Out), a group of old-timers with whom he breaks bread every Thursday at Art’s Deli. “We rip the whole industry apart,” he says.

But Singer’s memories of the business are mostly fond. “I love it, I just love it,” he admits. “Next to my wife and children, the film business is everything I ever wanted.”

Esperanza "Candy" Martinez photo by Jennifer Altman

That longevity makes her pretty unusual in a fast-changing media culture, but it’s not the only thing that stands out about Martinez—there’s also her long and varied service to the DGA, which won her the Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award in 2003.

A career in broadcasting was never a given for the South Carolina native, but she chose it quickly after a job as an assistant producer at Like It Is, a black public affairs show at WABC in Manhattan, brought her into contact with the world of news directors and ADs. “I realized I liked that aspect of it much better than what I was doing.” The station was looking to make an in-house promotion, and Martinez got the job.

It was 1972, and “there were not many women or minorities in the industry at all,” she recalls, “so some of the petty nonsense I had to go through—I think of it as hazing—I just said to myself that I would not let anybody else go through it. At that time, I didn’t have anybody to look to for help, but over the years I became that person for anybody else who comes through here.”

After years of showing up for work at 3 a.m. for the 5 a.m. morning show, she now arrives at 9:30 each morning to handle associate directing chores for the noon and 5 p.m. editions of Eyewitness News. The job includes coordinating the live shots coming in and constantly re-prioritizing as news breaks and evolves. “You make sure everybody knows what they need to know exactly when they need to know it,” she explains.

Martinez frequently brings in middle school and high school kids for a glimpse of the broadcast world. One day a group arrived just as a plane had crashed. “Instead of showing them around the building, I said, ‘Just come into the control room and I’ll explain what’s going on when we get a break.’” Another time a group arrived just as they were getting a helicopter feed of a dog stranded on an ice floe in a New Jersey river. “So you never know if it’s going to be the horror of a plane crash, or something lighter like a pet rescue,” Martinez marvels. “Every day is different.”

Dick McWhorter - photo by Brian Davis

Dick
McWhorter:
AD to the Rescue

McWhorter developed many lasting relationships, particularly with Vidor, William Dieterle (Love Letters), Daniel Mann (The Rose Tattoo) and producer Hal Wallis, whom he worked with virtually nonstop from 1943 to 1970.

One of the memorable situations he was called upon to handle occurred during the filming of Vidor’s Solomon and Sheba in 1959 in Madrid. The star, Tyrone Power, collapsed two weeks before the shoot was due to wrap, and after being rushed to a hospital, died of a heart attack. McWhorter was the one who had to tell Vidor that his lead actor had died.

“King and I were close, and he said, ‘Let’s go to lunch and figure this out,’” recalls McWhorter. “I said, ‘I think we’d better start looking through all the shots we’ll have to redo, and find someone who can match the costume.’” Eventually, United Artists arranged for Yul Brynner to step in and fill the role, and the picture was saved.

Involved in a series of sword and sandal pictures, among dozens of others, McWhorter spent much of his time in distant locations like Europe, Africa and Mexico. At the London premiere of Anne of a Thousand Days, his favorite production with Wallis, he had the opportunity to meet Queen Elizabeth II, one of many memories he savors.

“The film business is in my blood,” he says. “I love everything about it. One day you’re in Africa with the Masai, the next day you’re with the Queen. I don’t think there’s anything you can do that gives you more of an education on life and people.”