Judith Greening; Producer, Humanitas Prize Director

Judith Conway Greening, television producer and executive director of the Humanitas Prize organization, has died of cancer. She was 60.

Greening, who also organized children’s theatrical groups, died Saturday in her Sherman Oaks home, said her husband, Thomas Greening.

The Humanitas Prize, which Judith Greening oversaw and announced each year, is awarded to television and motion picture writers whose scripts affirm human dignity and meaningful values.

Greening produced syndicated television shows such as “Insight,” a series of dramatic anthologies, for more than 20 years.

But she may have been better known for her volunteer efforts organizing theater productions at the Dixie Canyon Elementary School in Sherman Oaks.

A graduate of Immaculate Heart High School, Greening also organized productions there, including “Alumnae Follies” to celebrate the school’s 80th anniversary in 1986. She was a trustee for the high school.

At Dixie, she launched a performing arts program in 1980 as a way to heal the wounds opened by the school’s involvement in busing.

“I realized theater was something all these kids should have access to,” she told The Times in 1991.

She directed many of the monthly plays that gave every pupil the opportunity to act and to work backstage.

“I was determined to give every kid a chance, even the kindergartners,” she said at the program’s outset.

Greening recruited assistants from other parents, many of them entertainment industry professionals.

“I remember one morning an actor-technician for ‘Hill Street Blues’ pulled up in a truck and unloaded a huge papier-mache Halloween prop they had used in a parade in one of the episodes,” she once told The Times. “Parents were always thinking of Dixie.”

Greening also directed plays at St. Francis de Sales School in Sherman Oaks. She was active in Paulist Productions, Women in Film and the Studio City Park Players.

In the 1970s, she and her husband taught and helped develop the Bradley Method of husband-coached natural childbirth.

In addition to her husband, Greening is survived by their daughters, Mary and Nora Greening, and her brother, James Conway Jr.

A memorial Mass is scheduled for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, 10750 Ohio Ave., Westwood, with burial at 10 a.m. Friday in San Fernando Mission Cemetery.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the Judy Conway Greening Scholarship for Performing Arts Students, Immaculate Heart High School, 5515 Franklin Ave., Los Angeles 90028.