The Directors Guild of America today unveiled an historical exhibition of photography honoring nearly half a century of Award-winning Directors of movies for television. The exhibit features an impressive collection of production stills, including several culled from private collections, showing Directors at work on productions that date back to 1953.
Several past recipients, including four-time winner of the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television, Lamont Johnson, attended both the opening reception for the exhibit and the Meet the Nominees: Movies for Television Symposium. The Symposium was moderated by Joan Tewkesbury (Sudie and Simpson and Scattering Dad) who discussed the art and craft of directing movies for television with the Guild’s 2001 television movie director nominees: Robert Allan Ackerman (Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows), Jon Avnet (Uprising), Billy Crystal (61* ), Frank Pierson (Conspiracy) and Mark Rydell (James Dean). The symposium included clips of each of the films for which the directors were nominated.
“No directors in feature films can possibly claim higher marks than some of the best of the television movie directors who have won,” said Johnson. He went on to say, in reference to the exhibit, that he felt “tremendous to be in the company of people like Dan Petrie, Michael Ritchie and Joe Sargent.”
The exhibition underscores both how long the Guild has honored the achievements of directors working in this genre and how far technology has come since the first Award for outstanding direction in television was presented to Robert Florey for his direction of The Last Voyage in 1953.
Many of the films for which the directors received the DGA Award represent some of the most elegant, visually exciting, educational and uplifting material produced in its time. The films represented include John Korty’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Lamont Johnson’s My Sweet Charlie, and Don King: Only in America, directed by John Herzfeld.
“I went into filmmaking largely because of political and social ideas and things that I wanted to say in my films,” explains Korty. Of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, he says, “Here in one night was something that seemed to have an impact on 50 million people. That was very inspiring to me and made me want to do more.”
"When you talk about films like Eleanor Franklin and Eleanor Franklin: the White House Years, Sybil and The Dollmaker with Jane Fonda - those aren't stories that would be done as Features,” said Daniel Petrie, Sr., who has won numerous awards for his television movies, including two DGA Awards for that category. “Jane Fonda, who produced as well as starred in The Dollmaker, tried for years to get the production off the ground as a feature. So when she realized it wasn't going to happen and that it was an ideal project for television, she very gladly changed course. It's ideal for television because it isn't a conventional love story. It's very human, very ‘down’ if you will - tragic. And I think in the feature game the entertainment aspect is higher. Stories in television can often be more profound."
Among the past Award winners who attended were:
- Daniel Petrie, who won the DGA Award in 1976 for Eleanor and Franklin, which took home numerous Emmy Awards including one for Best direction; in 1977 Petrie won another DGA Award and numerous Emmys for Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, and in 1984 he won a DGA Award for The Dollmaker;
- Lamont Johnson who won the DGA Award in 1964 for the Oscar Underwood Story; he won again in 1970 for My Sweet Charlie, again in 1972 for That Certain Summer and again in 1988 for Lincoln, which took home numerous Emmys, including one for Best Direction;
- Rod Holcomb who won the DGA Award for his 1994 direction of the 2-hour pilot for ER; and
- John Herzfeld who won the DGA Award for his 1997 direction of Don King: Only in America;
The exhibit is located in the lobby of the Directors Guild of America headquarters at 7920 Sunset Blvd., in Los Angeles and will be open to the public beginning Monday, March 4, 2002.
