INT: Good afternoon. Today we are interviewing Director Arthur Hiller for the Directors Guild of America Visual History Program. It is Thursday, December 6th, 2001, and we are on set at the DGA.

INT: Mr. Hiller, can you tell us a little about your growing up in Canada and your early childhood?

AH: When you ask me about growing up, you assume I've grown up. And I think there's something of being a child that always sort of stays with you when you're, what shall I say, in show business, and whether it be directing or acting or whatever. Anyway, I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta [Canada] and my parents loved culture. They loved music. They loved theatre. They loved literature. And they started a Yiddish theater up in Edmonton, Alberta in about 1929 or 1930, and not because they were professional but just to keep that culture alive, to do a play once or twice a year for the community. And so when I was seven, eight years old I was helping to build the sets and paint the sets and when I was 11, I was acting with the long beard and the hair hanging down kind of thing. And I loved it. I just always loved it. I did a lot of that, and then at high school I had a wonderful drama teacher, Eva Howard, who just was so good at teaching us. But what my parents and what Eva Howard did, also was, they taught us moral values. My parents were too good almost. They really... I wish I could live up to the values that they tried. I'm still trying, but whatever good values I have come from them. And Eva Howard was much the same way. The plays selected had certain values about them, and we learned from that. I was just thinking, when I finished high school through a whole series of circumstances... Well, I'll tell you the story. There was a professor, a drama professor from Ohio State [Ohio State University] came to the University of Alberta, where I lived, and did a summer course teaching teachers how to teach drama. And he taught them by putting on a play. And they had to build the sets, and paint the sets, and find the props, and make the costumes or find them. They had to act in it. They had to do everything. That's how he taught them, by doing everything. And he was short two Actors, and he went to the high school drama teacher, to Eva Howard, and he said, "Who are the best kid Actors?" And I ended up playing Donald, the black servant in "You Can't Take It With You," and from that, I was offered a drama scholarship to Ohio State. And I turned it down, because I thought, "Well that's not how you earn your living, in the theater. I mean that's what you do on weekends."

AH: And I went off... I was in the Canadian Air Force [Royal Canadian Air Force] overseas in World War II and came back and went to the University of Toronto and took my arts degree. And of course was involved in all the theater projects and worked on the producing and directing on the UC Follies [UC Follies Theatre Company] as we called it, the sort of variety takeoff show each year. And just so my love of theater always stayed with me, and summertime I worked as an announcer, operator for 75 dollars at CKUA [CKUA Radio Network] in Edmonton. And when I completed my arts degree, I took a year of law, and I thought, "No, that's not for me." Just… It's funny, when I look back I think, "Yes, if I could have been in litigation all the time, I would have been happy." It's funny; I guess the theatrical part, in a sense, being in court, but I didn't want to get involved in all the areas. I went back to the University of Toronto and took my masters degree in psychology. And just as I was completing it, I thought, "It's a social part I like, the communications part of psychology. Why am I not doing what I really want to do?" And I took really the first big step of my life. I walked into the headquarters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC], which was the Canadian radio network. And I went up to the front desk, and I said, "Who do I see about a job?" And she said, "What kind of a job?" I said, "Oh. Well, I want to be a Director." And I don't know where it came from. It just sort of came out, "I want to be a Director." And she said, "Well you speak to Mr. Doyle who's the manager of the network." And I said, "Thank you," you know. I went home and I phoned Doyle's office and the secretary said, "The name is Boyle [Harry Boyle], not Doyle. And what did you want to see him about?" And I told her. And she said, "Well you can't see him. But you can see his associate, Mr. Palmer [Hugh Palmer]." And I went to see Palmer, and I said, "I don't know whether you start at a transmitter in the prairies and work your way up," but fortunately, I mentioned that I was completing my masters. I needed another month's residence, and would prefer a job in Toronto. And he asked me what I was studying, and I said, "Psychology," you know, he said, "Just a moment." And he went away, came back and took me to the supervisor of public affairs broadcasting. And we had what I thought was a very pleasant hour and a half conversation, and later, of course, I realized he was pumping me. What do I read? What do I feel about this civic problem or this social issue? And he suggested I apply for a job he had available in Toronto. And I joined 64 other people applying. Three weeks later, I got the job. Now, I found out later of course he was looking for somebody with a social science background and some experience in radio. And as I said, I worked summertime announcer operating just for fun and the little bit of money to help me through school. And I started in public affairs radio, and actually the first film--not film--the first program I did was called PRO OR CON, and you had to pick a topic and find a person on one side of the question and one on the other side. And what was the first topic I picked? Should Canada have a national theater? So my love of drama showed with that.

AH: I'm just thinking how, also how you need luck. What if at the information desk [at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation], when I walked up and said I was looking for a job, what if she'd [referring to receptionist] sent me to the personnel office? You know, I might still be sitting there waiting my turn, or when I'm speaking to Palmer [Hugh Palmer], what if I hadn't mentioned I was finishing my masters in psychology? He wouldn't have thought public affairs, wouldn't have taken me to Neil Morrison, who really took me off the street and gave me my job. Then when I was working in public affairs, because of my love of drama, I started to do, what you'd call, I guess, sort of documentaries about a civic issue or social problem. Do it in a drama rather than just a discussion. And that went along, and then along the way I moved over into what we called general directing, so I could… That was the wonderful thing in radio. You could direct 17 shows a week, and I directed dramas, and I directed music, and I still did those sort of documentary dramas for public affairs. And you could do all that and kept going with that. And then along came live television, this new entity. And I thought, "Gee, I'd like to try that." And then you had to make a choice because you couldn't do 17 shows a week, and obviously you needed to select, and I did end up in... I took, you know, in drama. And even on the very first live TV that I did, I remember that the Production Designer took place on a ship in the harbor in a fog or something, and the set that he created was that you were looking past the steering wheel to the behind wall, and I thought, "But that's not going to feel like we're out on the water." I said, "No, I want it the other way, where you're looking from the back part, or sideways a little, so that you see the wheel, yes, but you see windows, and you could see some of the dock and things like that." And he said, "You're going to have problems." And I said, "No, it'll be all right." We did it, and boy, did I have problems because you work with three cameras, and they're moving around all the time. And we were, we'd get into position and we'd be seeing another camera, because there was a window there instead of a wall being there. But with a lot of cooperation from the Cameramen themselves and the Technical Director, we worked it out, and it did give a more interesting show.

AH: And so I was doing that [live TV], and then while I was doing various dramas for the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation], Mavor Moore, who headed... I can't remember whether he was the head of the CBC TV or the drama division, but he had moved on, and he was in New York, and he was doing a documentary at the United Nations. And he was having a drink with John McEvedy who was the vice president of programming for NBC, and who was an ex-Canadian, 1933. And he said to him that Hume Cronyn, the Actor who's also an ex-Canadian, had once said to him, "If there's a bright young Canadian, tell McEneny about him." And McEneny said, "What's his name? What's he do?" He said, "His name is Arthur Hiller. He's a Director." He said, "Fine, tell him to send me his resume, and if he's ever in New York to see Richard Pinkham that he be under me." And Mavor Moore asked, "Would I be interested?" And I thought, "Well, okay." And I sent my resume. And about six months later, I was in New York, visiting my sister who lived there. My family had shifted from New York to Edmonton before I was born, and when she grew up she moved back there. And so when I was visiting her I called Pinkham's office, and his secretary said, "Oh, he's been expecting you." And like an hour later I was in the 24th floor of the RCA [Radio Corporation of America] building sitting with Richard Pinkham. He said, "I'm very impressed with your resume, and I'd like you to meet Gordon Duff, who's producing PHILCO PLAYHOUSE [THE PHILCO TELEVISION PLAYHOUSE], which is a live American network show." And I met Gordon Duff, who said, "Very impressed, not interested." And, "Oh, okay." And then they wanted me to meet Albert McCleery, who was starting a new show on the West Coast. And I met with McCleery, and we had a very good meeting, and he said, "Yes, I have good feelings about you." He said, "Send me the closest thing you have to CAMEO THEATRE," he said, "because I'm going to start this new show, MATINEE THEATER, on the West Coast." And I thought, "What's CAMEO THEATRE?" I'd never seen it, and I thought, "Do I tell him I've never seen it? Or do I pretend I've seen it? Or do I say, 'We don't have that up in Canada.'" You know, you go through all that nervousness, and finally I just didn't say anything. And I went back to Toronto, and I had done an hour show called THE MARK, which actually later became a film here with Stuart Whitman as a child molester and Rod Steiger as his psychiatrist. It was a wonderful film. But at that time, it was a television show, and I did it. It was very... I did it as one complete hour. The advantage at the CBC was we used to do act breaks, but there were no commercials. You didn't have to. And I did it one hour, without interruption. And at the beginning had THE MARK; that's all. Then did the whole show, and then did a crawl that said, "You've been watching THE MARK, written by Charles Israel [Charles E. Israel], directed by Arthur Hiller, starring Bill Needles [William Needles]," and I've forgotten. And on that way, and I was very proud of it. It was a very, it was a meaningful kind of show. And then I thought, "That's not American TV. It's too meaningful. No, I better not send that." And I thought, "Ah, THE SWAMP." We had done a live show where we had a robbery of a bank with a shooting, and then the two robbers running away and we had a swamp we'd built on the stage, and they were running through the swamp. And then we had, you didn't see it, but we had the end of a car crash, and it was very impressive logistically. And so I thought, "Ah."

AH: And I went up to the library and said, "Could I borrow the kinescope?" There were no tapes in those days, and I told them why [to send to Albert McCleery as audition reel], and they said, "Certainly." And they couldn't find it. And they kept looking and looking, and they couldn't, so finally I sent the third best, which was a Mickey Spillane type detective story. And that proved to be the perfect thing to send, because CAMEO THEATRE was no sets. It was just a black backdrop. And you never shot anybody looser than a waist shot. If you want to say they were wealthy, you put a candelabra in front of them, a good looking one, and you filmed past the candelabra. If you wanted to say they were a lawyer, you put a bookcase behind with law books. That was the way. You had certain movement, but it was, as I say, restricted in size. Well by nature of this detective story, and suspense, there were lots of big close-ups and under the arm shots. It was the perfect thing to have sent. In fact, Winston O'Keefe, who ran it with McCleery said, "10 minutes into it, he was ready to marry you." It just was so right. And why couldn't they find THE SWAMP? William Shatner, who starred in it, had it under his arm in New York, selling William Shatner the Actor. [INT: That's funny.] So as he says, he's responsible for my being in Hollywood. But from that, NBC and McCleery offered me a two-show trial on MATINEE THEATER, which was a live drama every day of the week. It was set up really to sell color sets, and so these were in color and that… Now when I got the offer, it took me... everybody said, "You know, Hollywood, go, go." But what did I know about Hollywood? Except what I read in the, what shall I say, the glossy magazines or what you hear. And I thought, "Is that the kind of life I want to live?" And it was about three weeks until finally they said, "Tomorrow, one o'clock, our time," which was four o'clock ours in Toronto, "yes or no." And I said to my wife, "What's the worst thing? Six months in California and we come back home." And so I accepted the offer and came down for the two-show trial. [INT: That's great.] And it worked well from there.

INT: Was it difficult getting into commercial television from the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] where you had no commercial breaks? And it was a different format? Or was it very similar?

AH: I didn't find working in live drama in Hollywood that different from working in live drama in Canada. Yes there were commercial breaks, and we did have a list of about 210 don'ts that the commercial sponsors didn't want but nothing very extreme. I do remember that on the very first show [MATINEE THEATRE] that I was... well first of all, the first script they gave me when I came, I thought was terrible. And I said, "I don't want to do this." And they were upset. They just brought me down, "What do I mean I don't want to do it?" And I said... and they took me in to meet McCleery [Albert McCleery]. This was Winston O'Keefe, the associate. And oh he's so happy to see me, and this and that, and then O'Keefe said, "He doesn't want to do it." "What do you mean you don't want to do it?" I said, "Look, you brought me down for a two-show trial. At least I should be working on something I like in order to show you whether I can do it or not." And he thought that was fair, and they gave me half a dozen other scripts, and I picked one. And I worked away at it. Now while we were doing this particular show, and I'm up in the live TV booth where you call the shots and you've organi--you know, all the rehearsing and the cameras and all that. And worked with the Technical Director, and pre-designed with the Production Designer for the cameras to move around and the changes of wardrobe, you know, all the wonderful things that you had to do in live television. And McCleery's up in the booth behind me, and the show is going, and it was really going well. And I thought, "Yeah, it's really... yeah, yeah." And he wasn't saying anything. And I thought, "Oh he doesn't want to interrupt me. It's okay." And then I kept going and then I thought, "Is this... do I just think this is going well? Is it not going well?" And I went on some more, and then I thought, "Is this good in Canada and not good in the United States?" And all that sort of feeling. And finally I remember him leaning over and whispering in my ear, and he said, "I'm really very impressed." And I just puffed up. And he said, "You're all dressed up." I was wearing a tie and a jacket, because that was what we wore in Canada. And I deflated. I had so needed him saying that I was doing well. But when I finished that show he said, "You don't have to worry about the second one. You can bring your family down." And it just sort of worked from there. [INT: That's great.]

INT: And what were some other notable shows you worked on? I know you worked on PLAYHOUSE 90 and...

AH: I did other live shows, two others. I did CLIMAX!, which was a drama with a degree of suspense in each one. And I did PLAYHOUSE 90, which was considered the wonderful show, and indeed it was. It was a show that was really trying to do fine dramas. Now MATINEE THEATER did a lot of good shows. Why? Because we were doing five shows a week. We had about 12 Directors. Because it took us, you know, about 10 days to prepare and rehearse and then do the stagings with the cameras and all the moves worked out, the, what I call organized chaos of live television. And how the costumes would be changed and where the booms go. It just was unbelievable, as I say, organized chaos. But having that many Directors there doing that and working on it... Because we had to do that many shows a week on MATINEE THEATER, you couldn't find that many safe shows; shows that wouldn't be disturbing maybe to some people, and so… for instance, I did a 14th century Chinese fantasy. Or we did shows that each of the, like, STUDIO ONE and PHILCO PLAYHOUSE [THE PHILCO TELEVISION PLAYHOUSE], that they had turned down because they were either a little risky or what have you. We got to do them, so we got to do quality, a lot of good shows there.

AH: But PLAYHOUSE 90 was dedicated to doing good shows. And that was the wonderful thing about that particular series and working on it. And I, just through happenstance, I did the first live drama that had a taped insert in it. And I'm trying to remember why we did that one. It was a scene with Michael Rennie and Zsa Zsa Gabor. I don't remember why I taped it ahead, and I remember also that when we did it, the bed broke. And I thought, "I'm lucky this happened on tape, not on the air." Because that was the excitement of live television, the excitement no matter how organized you were, no matter how prepared you were, when that second hand hit the top, you had to pray, because anything could go wrong. A camera could give out; an Actor could forget a line. Somebody could trip on the way rushing from one set to the other. A costume didn't quite get on the person. Anything could happen. And indeed, many things did happen. Even when I did the tape I mentioned about THE SWAMP. I said there was a bank robbery at the beginning. Well in that bank robbery, a gun comes up in front of the lens and fires, and supposedly hits Frank Pettie, the Actor who was the bank robber. And he's to clutch his heart, and of course when he clutches, he breaks a little blood vessel that we have prepared for him, so that blood will appear. And when we actually did it, and the gun--and of course I'd carefully gone over it for safety reasons with them, and we'd fired, you know, it was all fine. When we actually did it, the gun fired, and instead of the Actor doing that, he did... and I thought, "What's he doing?" you know. And got blood all over here. And during the act break, when I started the second act, my script girl who had run down came back up and said, "He's been shot." What had happened was, that a little piece of the shell that was to disappear flew forward and hit him in the eye, but he kept going. And when I saw that eye after the show, I thought, "How did a man with that much..." It was so swollen and bloody, but as an Actor, he just kept going 'til the show was over. [INT: That's great.] So you do have... [INT: If--] Well I had one time on a, I think it was also on a MATINEE THEATER, where we, two ladies, I think both were models, but they were name, and the program was trying to use name people to get people to watch, which is not unusual, even in film these days. And both of them forgot their lines, and I remember for about five minutes, Darren McGavin carried that scene, because there was nothing that we could do, because they were all on set, you know. Yes, the Stage Manager was trying to sneak over with a line, but it finally worked out, but Darren McGavin just sort of kept it going. With the PLAYHOUSE 90's I was saying about doing the first taped insert into a show. I also did, again, just happened, the first taped-for-broadcast live show. It was taped, and then that's what went on the air. And I'm the only Director who did live PLAYHOUSE 90 and film PLAYHOUSE 90, because they decided to try, they did two on film, and I did one of them. Which actually, I think it was MASSACRE AT SAND CREEK [PLAYHOUSE 90: MASSACRE AT SAND CREEK], got me my first Emmy nomination.

INT: How would you say it was different doing filmed PLAYHOUSE 90s after live? Did you have a preference?

AH: It was interesting to do film and live television, but I think I could say I know my feelings and I think this is true of, I think, all... I think it's true of John Frankenheimer or Delbert Mann, all of us who worked in live TV and then on into film, that if live television was still around, we'd rather work in live television than doing film. The excitement was unbelievable. You had that wonderful rehearsal period, where you just worked with the Actors, and just created the atmosphere. Created the feelings, the ups and the downs. Then you had staging. You did the staging of it. Then you went on a set and worked with cameras and organizing, so that cameras... the sets had to be built in sneaky ways, so cameras could go under something, or a wall would open, so a camera could get by. And we had to make sure cables were lifted to go by. Sometimes you had to change costumes on the run. You'd be running from set to set because you're going to be in another scene that's supposedly another day or another time and the Actors changing and going… And you'd say, "How do the Actors do that sort of thing?" Or Dennis Hopper once played a one-legged character for me, and he had his leg tied up. Now, you say you'd do that for a scene in a film, and you know, you cut and he can relax for a while. On the drama he had to keep it for an hour. You can imagine your leg up for an hour? So there were a lot of trials and tribulations, but that excitement, it was like opening night, all the time. And as I say, anything could go wrong. I lost a camera once on a live show and had to re-stage as I was going, not so much the people but the cameras. And remember carefully, you can't just move them; can they get to there? And somehow... well, actually this was up in Canada and the head of drama had watched the dress rehearsal. Then this happened on the show, and I had to first, over three quarters of the time, just worked with two cameras instead of three. And when we finished, I said, "Let's get another camera now, and we'll do it again," because later the kinescope was played for the West Coast. And I said, "Let the Western half of the country at least see it the way it should be," so. And while I was working on that, the head of drama who'd seen the dress rehearsal and gone home called me just to say how wonderful the show was and that. And I said, "Thank you, but I have to go." And he said, "Where are you running?" I said, "I'm doing the..." He said, "Why are you doing it?" I said, "Because a camera. I lost a camera." He hadn't even noticed. And he had watched, and he was in the department, so you're lucky and sometimes you can get away with it. [INT: That's great.] There are many stories of what, a dead person getting up in front of a camera that's still going. I didn't have that happen, but somebody did, you know.

INT: Can you talk about moving into the other kinds of series television shows that you did? You did so many episodes of ROUTE 66 and NAKED CITY, and so many shows.

AH: My transition from live television to film is an interesting one. I was, as I say, on this MATINEE THEATER, and there were 12 Directors. And one of the two casting people involved with us had a brother who was a Producer at Screen Gems, which was the leading film television company at the time. And he said to his brother, he said, "One of our Directors talks to the Actors." And he said, "Oh? I'd like to meet him." And so I went over and I met him, and he liked me and said, "Send me some film of your work." And I said, "No, no, it's live, this. It's not film." He said, "Well there must be a copy." And I said, "Well there are kinescopes, but their quality is just terrible." He said, "That's all right. Send one over." And I said, "I can't afford it. It's 94 dollars." And at that time I really couldn't afford the 94 dollars. And he said, as he still says to me to this day, "It'll be the best 94 dollars you ever spent." And so I spent it, and I sent over the kinescope, and he liked it. And he showed it to the head of Screen Gems. And he liked it. But he said, "I'd like...but I'd like to see him work." So he came to watch a dress rehearsal on the next live MATINEE THEATER I was doing. Well if you're in a live TV booth, even if everything's going wrong, it's exciting, because pictures are flashing, and shots are being called, and three things are going on. Everything's going on. It's just unbelievable. And he was very impressed, and then he said, as I finished dress rehearsal, he said, "Could I come down and listen to you talk to the Actors?" because that was the big thing that I talked to the Actors. I said, "No, no, that's not a good way for the Director to meet with the Actors and work." And then I thought, you know, we really were in good shape, because in live television, you had to work a little differently than in film TV, where you go all out and do your scene in film. In live, you have to work building it like this, so that at dress rehearsal you're here, because if you're too good in dress rehearsal, 45 minutes later, it's going to be hard to be that good again. And you have to time yourself so that you're just getting better, better, and that you're just on the edge of being right for the next show when you're doing dress. And I thought, we really were in good shape. And I said, "Well, let me ask the Actors." And I went down to the green room and said that he wanted to listen, they said, "No, no." And then they thought too, everybody felt in control, in good shape, and they said, "Oh what the heck, let him come down." I went up, I got him, and I brought him down to the green room. They asked me every question about motivation and emotions that they had asked me all week. I'm sitting there trying not to laugh as I explain to them their relationship to the other character, and why they have to have this kind of feeling and show this. And I'm going through all this with these questions, well he was so impressed; they put on such a show that he said, "Are you interested in film television?" And I had to say, which was true, "I've never seen a camera."

AH: I had no idea what a film camera looked like. And he [Producer at Screen Gems] said, "Come and look at one." And I went and I watched filming on a half-hour series. I watched a day. And the next week or 10 days later, I filmed a half-hour TV. And I still remember that for the first couple of hours, I couldn't figure out what the Assistant Cameraman was doing. I don't know why I didn't notice that on the day I was watching the, but because in live television, the Camera Operator is also focusing. So I didn't realize that the Assistant was focusing. It took me time to figure it out, and I was too embarrassed to ask. And the first one I did was okay, and the next one I'm not saying was better, but at least had my personality and that. And that's when I started, as I say, doing both. And I did some, and then got involved in a lot of the TV series. I did the Hitchcock series [ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS], which was suspense and I did GUNSMOKE, which was Western, and RIFLEMAN, which was Western. TELEPHONE TIME, which was normal dramas, and NAKED CITY, which filmed in New York and gave you the feeling with the streets of New York and those stories. And ROUTE 66, where you geographically traveled in various parts of the country. And it was interesting to work in all those genres. And I'm just thinking how fortunate I was to have, what shall I say, good Producers on most of those series, because in those days we didn't have the Creative Rights that Directors have today. There hadn't been the negotiating of Creative Rights or of the better working conditions and the limit on the hours. We would do a Hitchcock sometimes in two days. Now I grant you they were a little shorter, because Hitch himself would do those little interrupting kind of bits. But on the Hitchcock series, for instance, Joan Harrison, the Producer, and Norman Lloyd, the Associate Producer, were just wonderful in terms of working, coming up with the casting ideas but making sure you understood and were happy. And they did something that was not done in those days. Directors did not take part in the editing. You went on to your next show, and there was an Editor who did the editing. And on the Hitchcock show, yes the Editor would edit, but they would try and work out a time where I could come and see his assembly or cut down the line and make my comments and at least be involved.