This is Everybody’s Life

It was 12 years ago, but it seems like only yesterday that PBS premiered its “American Masters” series, setting in motion a fast-growing TV biography business that has become a programming phenomenon.

Earlier this month in one week’s viewing you could have watched more than 30 hours of biographies (11 on Sunday alone) on everyone from Lady Bird Johnson and Katharine Hepburn to River Phoenix and Howard Stern. Eight channels now have regular biographical series with such titles as “Biography” (A&E; has even copyrighted the name), “American Masters” (PBS), “Profiles” (Bravo), “Intimate Portrait” (Lifetime) and “Celebrity Profiles” (E!). Typically an hour in length, they may include artwork, film clips, news coverage, chatty friends, evaluations by authorities and old and new interviews with the subjects (Eve, Jesus and Shakespeare excepted, of course).

The sheer volume of these programs is staggering. A&E;’s “Biography” airs 130 new shows a year. Newcomer VH1’s “Behind the Music” will have 50 shows for 1998, and Bravo’s “Profiles,” also new on the scene, will have 20 new shows this year. Several cable channels have stepped up programming, or plan to soon, from weekly to daily airings. Plus, more cable channelsare launching biography series, including two that will focus on sports figures.

“It is biography by sound bite, by snapshot, by anecdote,” said Marilyn Monroe biographer Carl Rollyson, who added that, nevertheless, TV biographies offer “a kind of immediate access to lives and satisfy our craving for proximity to the great, to the celebrated and to the notorious.”

The grand sum of these numbers--just counting the regular series--means there are more than 850 biographies in the can or ready for their premieres. And if, by some miracle, you missed a biography you wanted to see, don’t worry. One of the beauties of these programs is their recyclability. Dead or alive, interesting people are interesting people.

“Ten years ago, the documentary was considered a dead form,” said Michael Cascio, head of programming at A&E.; “Now it’s just the opposite.”

Why this sudden growth of a format that might seem dull or tedious? How good are these shows, and how do you tell the difference between a well-documented one and a cut-and-paste job?

After viewing more than 40 tapes and watching others through the years, I’ve come to the conclusion--as a biographer of Julia Child and others--that some have the whiff of historical importance (A&E;’s on Charlie Chaplin, airing May 10), while others smell of exploitation (VH1’s on Selena) or are simply clip-and-tape jobs (AMC’s on Steve McQueen).

The better producers, such as PBS, A&E; and Lifetime, focus on the full subject, balancing the life and times of the individual with his or her career. The best biographies--PBS’ 1995 “American Masters” segment on Rod Serling, and its upcoming one on Paul Robeson--include original research, a good narrative that avoids cliches, the best witnesses and interpreters, and quality filmmaking (which includes creative editing). Whether in print or other media, a good biography is more than a court record or a stringing together of already familiar sources. It breathes life into the subject.

Unfortunately, the hour limit of most of the TV profiles often leads to a Reader’s Digest version of a life, one that can leave out decades of a person’s history--in my case, 10 years of Child’s grinding experimentation with recipes have little visual promise.

That said, sometimes TV does what a book can’t do, which is to visually create an atmosphere as backdrop for a person’s life, or show things that a writer can only describe. For example, Jack Kerouac’s despair becomes palpable when Bravo’s camera flies repeatedly over the Desolation Peak fire station where Kerouac wrote his novels.

And here’s a happy thought: Whatever their quality, televised biographies attract a huge audience. They may even whet a few appetites for a good read, and that means more book sales for authors and more people knowledgeable about the important figures of our time.

“We hope our biographies are appetizers for a grander meal,” said one producer.

A more interesting issue is why TV biographies have come into their own. There is, of course, the growing hunger for personal information--high and low gossip. But the roots go deeper. Biography, and to a greater extent autobiography (think Franklin, Thoreau and Whitman), is a uniquely American expression because it implies the existence of a unique and autonomous self. The form valorizes individualism.

After all, we began as a country virtually without a culture, built by individuals. Since our founding documents spelling out the individual’s “inalienable rights,” we have celebrated the self. We adore Huck Finn, who rebels against culture; Daniel Boone, who conquers the frontier.

While protecting “privacy,” “choice” and “freedom,” we clamor for the intimate revelations of private lives (including President Clinton’s). Ironically, our democratic hearts even seem to hunger for intimacies about our historical oppressors, the royals; the Learning Channel alone has made three Diana biographies--pre- and post-divorce and one posthumous.

The growth of the TV biography industry also is due in large part to the need to fill hours of programming that have become available as cable channels have proliferated. Cooking shows, old movies, historical sports events and reruns of documentaries and biographies (based on archival film clips) are cheap fodder for the hungry cable maw.

“Our biographies are very successful and very economical,” says executive producer Jeff Gaspin of VH1’s “Behind the Music.”

Biography has become such a favorite genre that A&E; has spawned a monthly magazine called Biography (“every life has a story”) and also issues books and taped copies of its programs. There’s now even a Web site (https://www.biography.com). (A&E;’s magazine, by the way, should not be confused with the scholarly journal of the same name published at the University of Hawaii.)

The first television biographies began with television itself. Baby boomers will remember the half-hour syndicated series “Biography” from David L. Wolper Productions, which focused primarily on political figures and was hosted by Mike Wallace in the early ‘60s.

But it was PBS that premiered the longest-running biography in 1986 with its “American Masters” series, produced for WNET-TV in New York by Susan Lacy, the mother of the modern television biography. And like all the great PBS ideas, it was plucked and cloned by many commercial networks.

“People are interested in great stories about great people,” says Lacy, who is still at the helm.

“American Masters” now takes six to eight months to produce and edit a biography, which may sound like a lot. But contrast that, dear reader, to the time it takes a reputable writer to write a well-researched biography. Mine on Child, which also resulted in a TV biography on A&E; (see sidebar, Page 96), took six years, and A. Scott Berg’s forthcoming biography of Lindbergh took eight years; some take even longer.

On TV, the strictures of time and the expectations of a general audience lead to portraits that are in most cases a homage to the subjects. Oddly, in fact, television biographies have gone back to the 19th century intentions of what Freud called (when he was contemplating the life of Leonardo da Vinci) “a task of idealization.” The televised life stories are tributes, which also helps explain the easy cooperation of most living subjects.

Only the best programs use scholars and historians to add depth and suggest controversial interpretations. Of course, there are a few that take a critical view, such asthe one on Serling by “American Masters” that frankly accused him of selling out to commercialism. And recent profiles from A&E; mentioned Judy Garland’s drug abuse,

Jimmy Carter’s father’s segregationist past and Liberace’s homosexuality, although these all were established facts that did not break new ground.

In their televised form, most biographies do not have time and space to account for minor figures in a person’s life or to place that person in historical context. They can only suggest context with, for instance, shots of a World War II bombing (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), the bustle of New York City’s streets (Meyer Lansky), Nazi death camp scenes (Roman Polanski) and Harlem classrooms and streets (James Baldwin).

Also, because television, like feature film, is a public art, experienced by viewers of all ages, it caters to the general audience. Thus TV biographies sometimes water down events, or even language, so as not to offend. Lifetime’s recent portrait of Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, for example, blipped the word “tit” from Atty. Gen. John Mitchell’s warning to Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that Graham would get her “tit caught in a wringer” if her reporters pursued their sensational Watergate investigation.

For this general public, as well as for specialized groups such as athletes and musicians, there will soon be nearly a dozen biography series from which to choose (see sidebar).