Coe, an Early Giant of TV Drama, to Be Remembered

The Museum of Television & Radio is ringing down the curtain on its annual William S. Paley Festival on Tuesday evening with a tribute to one of the visionaries of the golden age of television.

Fred Coe was an innovative and insightful director and producer who was responsible for producing such acclaimed live TV dramas as Paddy Chayefsky’s “Marty,” “Peter Pan,” starring Mary Martin, J.P. Miller’s “The Days of Wine and Roses” and “The Petrified Forest,” starring Humphrey Bogart in his only dramatic small-screen appearance.

Director John Frankenheimer, actors Eva Marie Saint, Cliff Robertson, Rod Steiger, writer David Shaw, director Delbert Mann and Coe biographer Jon Krampner are scheduled to participate in a panel discussion on Coe at the Directors Guild of America Theatre.

Coe also directed the 1965 feature comedy “A Thousand Clowns,” which was nominated for a best film Oscar, and 1969’s “Me, Natalie,” which marked the movie debut of a young actor named Al Pacino.

“I think Coe was an extraordinary producer,” says Frankenheimer, who worked with Coe on four “Playhouse 90” live presentations, including the landmark “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

“He was one of the two or three best that came out of live television,” Frankenheimer explains. “He understood all the director’s problems and he was really able to relate to what you did. He was an extraordinarily creative producer. His strength was dealing with creative people and raising the bar very high so you really felt obligated to do more than what you were capable of doing.”

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Despite all of his accomplishments, Coe has become somewhat a forgotten figure since his death of a heart attack at age 64 in 1979. “He died a very bad death,” Frankenheimer says. “He died a practicing alcoholic, just doing second-rate material. Coe’s story is really a tragic one.”

The museum’s tribute will illustrate through clips and interviews what Coe brought to the fledgling medium before his demons overtook and destroyed him.

Curator Ron Simon has compiled a 46-minute highlight reel of Coe’s career featuring many clips not seen publicly since their initial airings. Simon found the fourth episode of NBC’s “Philco Goodyear Playhouse,” the dramatic anthology Coe produced from 1948 through 1954. During the first season, Coe directed every single episode. Through a collector, Simon acquired the Coe-directed “Angel in the Wings,” an adaptation of a Broadway play.

“Fred Coe was then considered one of the great TV directors, and we are able to show how he took this Broadway play and adapted it for TV,” says Simon.

He also found a clip of Walter Matthau playing Iago in a one-hour “Philco” version of Shakespeare’s “Othello.” One of his biggest finds is the first live telecast of Mary Martin’s “Peter Pan” from 1955, which Coe produced for the NBC series “Producer’s Showcase.” Though this first version has been circulated among collectors, it has not been seen publicly since it first aired live 45 years ago.

Eva Marie Saint worked with Coe on several live dramas, including Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night,” Horton Foote’s “A Trip to Bountiful” and the musical version of “Our Town,” starring Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra.

“Most actors work with directors,” says Saint. “But in this case you worked with the directors and the writers because Fred had everybody involved. There was such integrity. He demanded a lot from everybody and everybody knew that, but along with that came such esteem for everybody. You felt you were there because you should be there because he wanted you there.”

Saint describes the experience working on a Coe production as “close knit but never suffocating.”

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Coe, she says, “kept everybody away from the networks and the sponsors. He was the producer, and to this day I think the producer should call the shots, but this is not true. It was his idea to get true, original dramas from all of these incredible playwrights. All of our lives were affected by him. He was very loyal to us. If he respected your talent, you were part of the group. You were part of the repertory. He had the ability to inspire all of us to work hard and to stretch further than we thought we could.”

Krampner, who wrote the 1997 biography “The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television,” notes that Coe got into television by accident. He had been directing plays in a community theater in South Carolina when he came to New York in 1944 to seek his fame and fortune on Broadway. He couldn’t catch a break until his wife’s employer, a theatrical agent, sent him over to NBC to see if he could get work in a new medium called television.

“He completely blundered into it,” says Krampner. “In 1945, television was nothing. He had the opportunity to learn and make mistakes.”

Coe swiftly moved through the ranks. In less than two years, he was promoted from a floor manager to producer and director. “In some odd intuitive way he just took to it,” says Krampner. “As a matter of fact, often the writers who worked with him said he was kind of a live TV equivalent of [movie producer] Irving Thalberg. He was this genius with this feel for the medium.”

He also had an uncanny ability to recognize writing talent, nurturing such writers as Chayefsky, Foote, Tad Mosel and Miller.

After leaving “Philco “ in 1954, Coe segued to NBC’s “Producer’s Showcase” in 1955. “It was groundbreaking in that it was a series of monthly specials thought up by [NBC head] Pat Weaver. They were very high-profile, big-budget and in color . . . with movie stars and Broadway stars who up until that point had shied away from TV as a low-rent start-up sort of thing.”

In 1957, Coe became one of three producers of CBS’ signature drama series, “Playhouse 90.” Despite his success, Coe’s drinking was beginning to take a toll during this time. According to Frankenheimer, Coe disappeared during the production of the two-part version of “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Though Coe continued to produce and direct on Broadway and work in TV--most notably as one of the producers of the Emmy Award-winning 1976 PBS miniseries “The Adams Chronicles”--Krampner says Coe was at a loss when the world of live TV drama ended.

“He couldn’t quite get his bearings in the same way,” Krampner says.

* A Tribute to Fred Coe, Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America, DGA Theatre Complex, 7920 Sunset Blvd. Tickets are $13 for museum members, senior citizens and students with ID, and $15 for the general public. For information call (310) 786-1016.